This decision gets made backwards most of the time. Offices ask which machine is better, when the only question that matters is what percentage of your pages a client will ever look at.
Start with the ratio, not the machine
Go through a normal week's printing and sort it into two piles: pages that stay inside the building, and pages that a client, patient, member or applicant sees.
If the second pile is under 5% of your volume, a monochrome machine plus occasional outside printing will almost certainly cost you less. If it is meaningfully more than that, and especially if it happens weekly, a color machine starts paying for itself.
That ratio decides it. Everything else is detail.
What monochrome is genuinely better at
Lower cost per page. One toner instead of four, and a simpler imaging path.
Speed at volume. Mono machines run faster and hold that speed through long runs.
Fewer consumables to track. One cartridge line, fewer parts, simpler maintenance.
Our mono lineup runs from 25 to 105 pages per minute across the imageRUNNER ADVANCE DX, imageFORCE and imageRUNNER ADVANCE lines. The 4900 Series is the one we place most often, it suits a small team or a busy floor, and it is where most offices land.
Good fit for: law firms, accounting practices, title companies, insurance agencies, and anywhere the work is text, filings and internal documents.
What color buys you
Work stays in-house. Proposals, brochures, presentations and client-facing collateral printed when you need them instead of ordered from a print shop with a lead time.
One machine covers everything. Color machines print mono too, and most default to it.
It costs less than it used to. Color pages still cost more than mono, but the gap has narrowed enough that offices printing color weekly usually come out ahead once outsourcing fees stop.
Our color range runs 26 to 80 ppm. The imageRUNNER ADVANCE DX C5800 Series is the mainstream workhorse, enough speed for a busy office with room to grow. The C3900 Series is the sensible first color machine for offices that need color now and then rather than all day.
Good fit for: marketing and design, real estate, schools, healthcare practices with patient-facing materials, and anyone producing their own proposals.
Two things people get wrong
A duplex page counts as two. So does anything on 11×17. A double-sided-heavy office burns through a page allowance roughly twice as fast as it estimated. Worth knowing before you guess your volume.
Color creeps. Left on default, a color machine prints internal drafts and meeting agendas in color because nobody chose otherwise. Set the driver default to black and white and make color a deliberate choice. It takes fifteen minutes and shows up on the next meter read.
What we would actually ask you
Not which you prefer. These three:
- Roughly how many pages a month?
- Of those, how many does someone outside your office see?
- What are you sending to a print shop now, and what does it cost?
That is enough to spec it. You do not need to know model numbers, that is our job.
Both types lease on identical all-inclusive terms: equipment, all toner, all parts and labor, every service call, delivery and installation in one flat monthly rate. Black and white from $150, color from $225, both covering up to 5,000 pages. No credit check, no long-term contract, thirty days' notice to cancel.
And if the volume shifts after you choose, we swap the machine at no charge, in either direction. Getting this decision slightly wrong is not expensive with us, which takes most of the pressure off it.