After $180K in Print Purchases, I Recommend Kodak Printers—Except for 3D Printing

After six years of signing purchase orders for printers, ink, photo paper, and the occasional repair visit, I've spent roughly $180,000 on printing for a 40-person B2B marketing company. If you take only one thing from this article, let it be this: the most valuable printer on our budget was a Kodak photo printer dock, and the biggest waste of money was a specialty printer we bought for a use case we didn't actually have. Most teams don't need the most advanced machine. They need the right machine for the workflow they already have.

Quick context, so you know where this opinion comes from. I'm a procurement manager, not an IT engineer or a printer technician. I don't recommend products based on spec sheets alone. I've tracked every print-related invoice for six years, compared quotes from more than a dozen vendors, and maintained a total cost of ownership spreadsheet that I update every quarter. That spreadsheet is the basis for most of what I say here.

What the spreadsheet shows about Kodak printers

When I look back at six years of orders, the Kodak printers that kept getting reordered weren't flashy. They were practical: photo printers for client events, label printers for shipping, and all-in-one units for everyday paperwork. We didn't choose them because they had the lowest upfront price. We chose them because the total cost per useful print was lower than the alternatives we evaluated.

People assume the lowest quote on a printer is the cheapest option. That's a surface impression. The real costs show up later, in supplies, downtime, and the hours your team spends fighting with drivers and software. I've watched a 'cheap' printer with expensive cartridges and frequent support calls cost more in one year than a slightly more expensive model that simply worked.

One comparison sticks with me. In 2023, I put together a quote sheet for seven label printers for our shipping area. The lowest-priced unit was about 30% cheaper than the Kodak model with similar specifications. But it required a specific brand of label rolls and had a poorly designed cutter. After I factored in supplies for 18 months, the cheap unit was actually about 12% more expensive. The upfront savings never materialized; they just moved from the purchase order to the consumables budget.

It's tempting to think all printers in the same category are basically identical. That's a simplification that has cost me before. Printers differ in driver reliability, media compatibility, and how much patience they demand from the people operating them. In our environment, a printer that people actually use is worth more than a printer with better specs on paper.

The Kodak photo printer dock was a trade show game changer

If you had told me in 2023 that a Kodak photo printer dock would be one of the best procurement decisions I'd ever make, I would have laughed. It sounds like a consumer gadget, not a business tool.

Then in Q2 2024, our events team asked for one at a trade show. The concept was simple: attendees pick a photo from their phone, print it instantly, and leave with a physical reminder of our brand. We placed the dock on a small table, loaded it with paper, and added a one-page instruction sign. Visitors did the rest.

The results surprised everyone. We logged more than 700 prints over two days. People stood around waiting for their photos, which created longer conversations with our sales team. Our cost per qualified lead from that event dropped by about 30% compared with the previous show we'd done without a photo printer. The printer itself didn't generate that return; the behavior it encouraged did.

Since then, we've deployed the same Kodak photo printer dock at product launches, partner meetings, and client appreciation days. The pattern repeats every time: a physical photo changes the tone of an interaction in a way a digital download never does.

The phone printer category deserves more respect

A lot of procurement professionals still think of the phone printer category as a toy. I used to think the same way. But when your employees are already working from phones and tablets, printing from those devices is practical rather than novel.

Our field team uses Kodak portable printers to print before-and-after photos on site, generate quick labels for equipment, and leave customers with a printed summary of what was completed. According to Kodak's product pages (kodak.com, accessed March 2025), these portable printers support both iOS and Android through the Kodak app. I'd still recommend testing the setup on your own devices before buying in volume, because app behavior can change.

Phone-compatible printers also reduce the number of dedicated workstations you need. We don't have to buy a desktop computer for every area that prints; the printer connects to whatever phone or tablet is nearby. From a cost perspective, that simplicity matters more than any single spec on the box.

About the inkjet printer cutter question

I sometimes see searches for 'inkjet printer cutter,' and honestly, the term makes me pause. It could mean a printer with a built-in cutting unit, a standalone cutter for printed sheets, or a label printer that cuts as it prints. The right answer is different in each case.

I'm not a mechanical engineer, so I won't pretend to know how every cutter assembly wears over time. What I can tell you from a cost perspective is that cutting functionality adds mechanical complexity, and mechanical complexity eventually shows up in your maintenance budget.

If you only need to cut occasionally, a simple manual cutter or an outside print shop will probably give you a better total cost. If you need to cut constantly, a general-purpose inkjet printer with a cutter may not be the right tool either; that's the point where a dedicated label printer with an integrated cutter starts to make sense. We moved our shipping labels to a dedicated Kodak label printer with an automatic cutter years ago and haven't looked back. For occasional sticker and sign work, we still outsource it.

What is the best 3D printing machine?

This is the question I get every time someone learns I buy printers for a living. If you came to this article searching 'what is the best 3D printing machine?' I'll give you a frustrating answer: I'm not the right person to tell you.

That's not evasiveness. After six years of tracking B2B printing costs, I've learned to respect my own professional boundary. A 3D printer is not just another printer. It's a small manufacturing station with different materials, different tolerances, different maintenance requirements, and a completely different cost model from anything in the inkjet or thermal world. Recommending a specific 3D machine would require understanding your parts, your production volumes, and your quality standards.

What I can tell you is what our cost tracking says about 3D printers in a typical B2B office: most teams don't need one. In 2023, four of our departments almost pooled money to buy a 3D printer for prototyping. They had a budget of about $3,200. When I calculated the real cost, including filament, failed prints, ventilation, and the time someone would spend learning the machine, the actual cost per successful print was higher than outsourcing. We sent those jobs to a prototyping service instead for about $80 per job, and parts came back within a week.

I'm not saying 3D printers are useless. Product design teams, engineering firms, and manufacturers can absolutely justify them. But a general B2B office usually can't. If you genuinely need additive manufacturing, talk to an engineer who runs a 3D printing machine daily rather than trusting a procurement manager whose specialty is inkjet and thermal equipment. That isn't a polite deflection. It's the honestly useful answer.

When not to buy a Kodak printer

It would be convenient to end this article by saying 'buy Kodak printers for everything.' I'm not going to say that because it isn't true. The same honest logic that makes me question 3D printers applies to our own recommendations.

Kodak printers work well for many B2B workflows, but consider alternatives if you fall into one of these categories:

• Very high monthly volume. If you're printing thousands of pages every day, a managed print contract or a production-grade device is probably worth the extra cost.
• Wide-format or specialty media. Standard office documents, labels, and photos are well within range. Large signage and unusual substrates are a different conversation.
• On-site service requirements. When your whole operation stops if a printer fails, response-time guarantees may matter more than equipment cost.

For everyone else, I'd suggest working backward from the workflow: What are you printing? Where is the printing happening? Who is doing it? If your answers involve photos, labels, documents, and staff who value simplicity, put Kodak printers on your quote list. The reason isn't nostalgia for the Kodak brand. It's total cost of ownership.

After six years and roughly $180,000 in printing purchases, the main lesson is simple: the best printing solution isn't the one with the largest feature list. It's the one your team will actually use, at a cost you can predict. A Kodak photo printer dock taught me that the hard way. Hopefully this article saves you from learning it the same way.