Buying a Canon printer based on the upfront price is a mistake. The real cost is in the ink, the support, and the time you lose troubleshooting.
I've been managing office equipment procurement for a mid-sized e-commerce company for about 3 years now—roughly $80,000 annually in printing and supplies alone. When I first took over, I made the same mistake most people do: I picked the cheapest Canon model that fit our basic specs. That $99 Pixma MG2522? It cost us over $400 in the first year. Here's why.
Most buyers focus on the printer's sticker price and completely miss the cost of consumables—ink cartridges, paper, and the time spent on support calls. That's the real budget killer. Let's break it down.
What a $99 Printer Actually Costs
The question everyone asks is, 'What's the cheapest Canon printer?' The question they should ask is, 'What's the total cost per page over 12 months?' Because the answer is never what you expect.
Take the Canon Pixma MG2522. It's a solid little printer for occasional home use. But in a small office printing 500 pages a month, it's a financial trap. The standard ink cartridges (PG-245 and CL-246) yield about 180 black pages and 180 color pages each. At roughly $15 per black cartridge and $20 per color, your cost per page is around $0.08 for black and $0.11 for color. Sounds manageable? Not when you factor in how often they run out.
Over a year, with 6,000 pages (mix of black and color), you're spending about $550 on ink alone. That's 5.5 times the cost of the printer itself. And that's before you add the hours your admin spends on 'Canon printer not printing' troubleshooting, or the cost of wasted paper from misprints.
The Hidden Time Tax
I audited our 2023 spending and found that 40% of our 'printer issues' were related to ink replacement and connection problems. The MG2522 doesn't have Wi-Fi Direct; it relies on a basic wireless connection that drops frequently. Fixing 'how to connect Canon Pixma MG2522 to Wi-Fi' became a weekly task. One of our team members spent 6 hours last year just reconnecting printers. At $25/hour burdened cost, that's $150 of lost productivity—again, more than the printer itself.
And then there's the scanner. The MG2522 has a flatbed scanner, but it's slow and requires a separate software setup. When a manager needs to quickly digitize a contract, the extra 2 minutes per page adds up. Over 200 documents a year, that's another 6 hours of wasted time.
What You Should Actually Look For
Industry standard for an office printer should be a TCO (total cost of ownership) under $0.03 per black page and $0.10 per color page. For a 5-person team printing 500 pages a month, a Canon imageCLASS MF series (like the MF264dw) brings that cost per page down to $0.02 black and $0.08 color—using high-yield cartridges that last 3x longer. Plus, it has built-in network scanning that takes 5 seconds per page instead of 30.
The upfront price is higher—around $250—but the annual ink cost drops to $240, and the time spent on Wi-Fi issues nearly disappears. Over 3 years, that's a total savings of about $800.
People think expensive printers are a waste of budget. Actually, cheap printers waste far more. The causation runs the other way: the initial investment is a tiny fraction of the ongoing cost. Paying more upfront for a reliable, low-ink-cost model is the most cost-effective decision you can make.
When the 'Cheap' Option Makes Sense
To be fair, the MG2522 isn't a bad printer. If you're printing under 100 pages a month and your team can handle the occasional Wi-Fi reset, it's fine. The boundary condition is this: if your monthly print volume is under 200 pages, the TCO difference shrinks. The time cost is minimal because you're not using it daily. But for any team relying on their printer for core operations, the math is clear: don't buy the cheapest printer. Buy the printer that costs the least over time.
And if you ever need help with setup, Canon's toll-free support has actually been helpful in my experience—just don't call on a Monday morning unless you're ready to wait.