Brother DCP-9020CDW review

PRINT COSTS

The cost of toner for the DCP-9020CDW is surprisingly high. The highest-yield cartridges available are a £58 2,500-page black toner and 2,200-page colour cartridges priced at £81 each. That alone gives you an inordinately high (for a laser-class printer) mono page cost of 2.3p and a mixed black and colour cost of 13.4p. That’s before you take into account other consumables, including a drum unit and belt. Include these, and a full-colour page costs 14.1p.

Total Ownership Costs are also high, although low-yield users who take their time going through the supplied 1,000 pages worth of toner will do better than heavy-duty business users, thanks to the printer’s relatively low purchase price of £237. If you do a lot of printing, as in our high-yield example of 2,000 mono and 1,000 colour pages a month, the cost of consumables will sting you for a massive £6,422 over three years. Light users end up paying a somewhat more reasonable £538.

CONCLUSION

The DCP-9020CDW has generally good print quality, but its slow print speeds and high costs make it a poor buy for most businesses, despite its surprisingly low purchase price. This is a pity, as we love the MFP’s interface and particularly its ability to print from and scan to our favourite cloud storage services. Unless you’re a very light user who requires these specific features, though, the Xerox WorkCentre 6605DN has an equally approachable interface and costs less to run.