Black Friday 2026: calculate your printer’s 3-year cost

Startoner · Buying decisions · 2 October 2026

Printing 100 pages a month means printing 3,600 over three years. Before buying a printer on Black Friday, work out how many whole replacement cartridges you will have to pay for.

Original conceptual illustration generated with AI. It does not depict a real printer or a consumption test.

The printer's price makes the offer's headline. The cost of replacement cartridges comes later, when you need to keep printing. To make a sound decision, include both amounts in the same calculation. One detail changes the result: you can use part of a cartridge, but you usually buy the whole unit.

Black Friday 2026 falls on 27 November, a date also announced by Fnac Spain ^[1]. This guide is reviewed on 3 October: it does not predict offers or promise discounts. It includes CSV examples with consumable prices observed in Spain, stated yields and separately identified assumptions.

First, rule out printers that do not meet your needs

Before calculating costs, write down your requirements: black or colour documents, scanner, paper size, connectivity and double-sided printing. Compare devices that meet the same need. An inexpensive monochrome printer cannot replace a colour multifunction printer if you need to scan and supply colour charts.

Here we focus on the purchase budget. To choose the type of device, consult our guide to printers for home use. Avoid deciding on the price of a printer family: copy the exact model reference, including suffixes and box contents.

The formula: what you will pay over 36 months

Multiply your monthly page count by 36. Subtract the stated yield of the included consumable. Divide the remaining pages by the replacement cartridge's yield and round up. If the starter consumable covers the entire period, do not add a replacement cartridge.

This approach follows the idea of considering purchase and operating costs together, as explained by the European Commission in its description of life-cycle costing ^[2]. Our tool limits the period to three years and calculates nominal cash outlays. It does not estimate resale value, financing or a guaranteed service life.

The difference from cost per page is practical. If you need just a few more pages to reach the end of the period, you may have to buy another cartridge even if it is still almost full at the end. The calculator shows this spare capacity as theoretical pages, without deducting its value from the money paid.

Example 1: one laser printer and three printing rates

We use the Brother HL-L2400DW to explain the method, without recommending its purchase. Brother states a starter toner yield of 700 pages in its consumables manual ^[3]. Startoner's compatible replacement cartridge with SKU ST-BROTHER-TN2510, the “Toner only” variant, was listed at 14.98 € including taxes, with a stated yield of 2,500 pages, on the Spanish product page consulted on 3 October 2026. Shipping is calculated separately.

Check the reference carefully: the compatible cartridge is presented as TN2510XL, but its product page states 2,500 pages. The original Brother TN2510XL has a stated yield of 3,000 ^[4]. We have not applied the original cartridge's yield to the compatible one or tested either in a laboratory.

To complete the exercise, we set 150 € as the assumed printer price. This is neither an observed price nor a Black Friday offer. The table includes only the device and toner; paper, electricity, transport and maintenance are excluded until you add them.

In the middle scenario, the 700 starter pages leave 2,900 still to cover. One 2,500-page replacement cartridge is not enough: you have to buy two. At the end, 2,100 pages of theoretical capacity would remain. We have not used all that toner, but we have paid for both cartridges.

There is even a small jump between 88 and 89 pages a month: that is 3,168 and 3,204 pages over three years. The 700 starter pages plus one replacement cartridge cover 3,200. Under this model, those 36 extra pages take the purchase from one to two replacement cartridges. This does not mean that a real printer stops at exactly that point: it reveals how rounding affects the budget.

Example 2: the ink budget before the printer

The Spanish HP store ^[5] listed the original black cartridge HP 305XL, 3YM62AE#ABE at 30.99 € including VAT on 3 October 2026. The live page states approximately 300 pages for this replacement cartridge. To budget for 3,600 pages using purchased replacement cartridges, without crediting any starter ink, the calculation is 3,600 ÷ 300 = 12 cartridges; 12 × 30.99 € = 371.88 € for black ink alone. This is a manufacturer-stated yield, not a printing result we have measured.

This is a budget scenario, not the total cost of a specific printer: its price, verified starter ink, possible colour ink consumption and other expenses are missing. We have found no verifiable basis for claiming “a 49 € printer costs you 400 €”. The defensible amount here is the cost of replacement cartridges under the stated assumptions.

It is not a direct comparison between technologies either: the previous example uses a compatible consumable and this one uses an original. To compare two purchases, use equivalent alternatives and document the consumable you would actually buy. Do not turn this pair of exercises into a general savings percentage.

How much you can pay for the printer

You can also calculate backwards. Imagine a maximum budget of 300 € for three years, the first example's scenario of 100 pages a month, and a personal allowance of 20 € for other expenses. These are assumptions for the exercise, not market estimates.

The calculation leaves 250.04 € for the device: 300 − 29.96 − 20. If expected shipping, paper or maintenance costs exceed that allowance, lower the maximum acceptable price. Enter your amounts in a spreadsheet before using that limit to decide.

This lets you approach the offer with your own criteria. Save each candidate's total price and its replacement cartridge reference. A purchase discount improves the calculation by that same amount, provided the other conditions remain comparable.

Stated yield, visible uncertainty

Advertised page counts provide a reference, not a promise for your documents. Brother's manual identifies standardised conditions and warns that yield can vary. Our explanation of cartridge yield helps you interpret these figures without mistaking them for a test at home.

You can repeat the budget calculation in a spreadsheet with an effective yield of 80 %. This is a sensitivity assumption we chose, not measured wear or a prediction. It applies to both the starter toner and replacement cartridges. In the first example, at 100 pages a month, it reduces those capacities to 560 and 2,000 pages; two replacement cartridges are still needed.

Check the drum as well. Brother states roughly 15,000 pages at one page per job for the DR2510 in its HL-L2400DW technical data sheet ^[6]. None of the three scenarios above exceeds that reference, but this does not guarantee that no maintenance will be needed. For a used printer, enter the drum's remaining capacity, not that of a new drum.

What to add before comparing offers

• Full expenses: use final prices for your country and address. Record VAT, shipping, units per pack and any essential accessories.
• Paper and energy: enter your paper cost per printed side and an annual electricity estimate. A zero means “not included” if you have not checked it.
• Subscriptions: do not combine a monthly fee with cartridge purchases for the same pages. This calculator does not model page-based plans; compare their terms separately.
• Compatibility: confirm the model and consumable requirements before assigning a price. Our guide to firmware and HP cartridges explains why this needs its own check.

Check prices again when you are ready to buy. The CSV files do not query stores or know about future promotions. They contain scenarios that have already been calculated; use a local spreadsheet to enter your own data and apply the formulas. This page does not offer an interactive calculator.

Decide using your print volume and budget limit

A useful purchase comes down to three questions: what the device needs to do, how much you will print and how much you can pay over the entire period. Try both a low and a high volume before deciding. If an option only fits with a perfect yield and every extra set to zero, the budget still needs completing.

At Startoner, we sell compatible consumables. You can consult the compatible Brother toner category to identify references and copy the current price of the correct variant. Choosing a printer starts with your needs; this budget sheet helps make replacement cartridges part of the decision from day one.