How the inkjet vs laser calculator works
The two technologies, honestly
Inkjet: cheap hardware, expensive ink, superb photo quality, slow speed, and head-cleaning maintenance (dried nozzles punish infrequent use). Laser: pricier hardware, cheap toner, fast output, bulletproof idle tolerance — but mediocre photos. The volume decision: under ~50 pages/month, inkjet hardware wins; past 100, laser ink economics win the five-year math.
The break-even calculation
Hardware price difference ÷ per-page savings = pages to break even. $160 of hardware premium ÷ 5.5¢/page saved = ~2,900 pages — at 80/month, three years. Past that point every page prints at 2.5¢ instead of 8¢. The calculator runs it at your volumes; the rule of thumb is 100 pages/month.
The tank-printer disruption
Ink-tank printers (EcoTank, MegaTank lineage) sell mid-priced hardware with bottles yielding thousands of pages at ~0.3–1¢/page — collapsing the razor-blades model entirely. For households printing anything meaningful, they have become the default recommendation: the calculator's laser-competitive rates with inkjet color quality.