The Total-Cost Guide to Buying Printers & Printing Supplies (Kodak Photo Paper, EcoTank Ink, Cricut Machines, IPP Printers)

Six Printing Questions I Ask Before Approving Any Order

I run procurement for a 45-person creative studio, so most of my day is answering requests that start with a brand name and end with 'isn't this the cheaper option?' Since 2020, I've managed roughly $200,000 in printing and merchandise spend—photo paper, event printers, shirt decoration, office printers—and I've learned that the price tag doesn't tell you what something costs.

Here are the six questions I actually ask when those requests land in my inbox. If you want to skip around:

• Is Kodak photo printer paper worth the premium?
• Will a Kodak Step wireless mobile photo printer survive real office use?
• Is Epson EcoTank printer ink actually the cheap option?
• Is a 'Cricket' printing machine (it's Cricut) a good idea for shirts?
• What is an IPP printer, and why do I keep seeing it on spec sheets?
• What formula do I use before I approve anything?

1. Is expensive Kodak photo printer paper worth it?

Short answer: sometimes. Long answer: I stopped buying photo paper by unit price years ago. I buy by cost per usable print.

In 2023 we ran a head-to-head test for a client job: Kodak Premium Photo Paper against a no-name brand that cost about 35% less. At normal viewing distance the cheap stock looked fine, but the job included a dark gradient that fell apart—muddy shadows, less depth, noticeably flat in the areas that mattered. We reprinted that portion on the Kodak paper. The reprint alone ate most of the savings, and when a second budget pack left residue in the feeder, we added cleaning labor to the cost column too.

Here's the nuance I've learned to put in writing: paper isn't just a box of pulp. The coating controls how ink sits on the surface, how fast it dries, and how much detail survives. There's also an objective reference point for color accuracy—Pantone's guidelines put brand-critical tolerance around Delta E below 2. That's tighter than most eyeballs can reliably judge, which is exactly why reprints are the real expense.

Am I saying only Kodak paper works? No. I'm saying that a brand that publishes profiles and tests its paper on its own printers lowers your failure rate. If you calculate total cost per print you actually keep, that's worth a lot more than a 35% discount on a box of sheets that don't pass the first time.

2. Will a Kodak Step wireless mobile photo printer survive office use?

A colleague once asked me whether a Kodak Step wireless mobile photo printer would work for an event guest book. We bought one. It works fine—if you set expectations honestly.

The Step is a Bluetooth photo printer that produces small 2 x 3 inch sticky-backed photos. It uses Zink paper, which means the color chemistry is inside the paper itself. There's no ink cartridge to replace. That changes the whole cost structure: the hardware is modest, but your ongoing spend is the paper.

The procurement trap is treating it like a tiny office printer. It isn't built for 400 prints in an afternoon. It's built for a few dozen fun prints now and then. If you need hundreds, the per-print cost and the recharge pauses will make a rented photo booth or a higher-volume setup cheaper.

One regret from our first off-site: I checked the printer, checked the phone, and forgot to check how many sheets were left in the pack. Eleven. We ended the photo wall after 11 prints. Now the paper count is on the event checklist right next to the charging cables. For a 30-print event wall, the Step is easy to recommend. For anything bigger, do the per-print math before you hit buy.

3. Is Epson EcoTank printer ink actually cheaper?

Real talk: an Epson EcoTank can be the cheapest printer you'll ever own, or the most expensive one that sits in the corner. It all depends on volume. The tank printer costs more upfront, but the ink bottles cost much less per page than cartridges. That's not magic savings—it's a prepayment. You're buying ink in bulk by paying extra at the register.

The real question is break-even:

Extra hardware cost ÷ ink savings per page = pages to payback.

Put your own numbers in. Say the tank model costs $150 more than the cartridge model you're comparing. If it saves roughly 4 cents per page, payback happens at 3,750 pages. An office printing 1,000 pages per month breaks even in about four months. A small team printing 150 pages per month needs 25 months, which is close to the useful life of an office printer.

Then add the costs that never show up in per-page claims. Inkjet printheads can clog when they sit idle. Cleaning cycles consume ink. Your IT person's time has a rate, even if it isn't itemized on the invoice.

I would absolutely buy an EcoTank again for a high-volume team. For a low-volume department, I wouldn't choose one just because the ink is cheap. Look at yield numbers, not bottle prices. Bottles are only cheap if they produce enough pages before the printer gets replaced.

4. Is a 'cricket printing machine for shirts' actually a good buy?

The machine you're searching for is spelled Cricut, and no—it isn't a printer. It's an electronic cutting machine. For shirts, you cut heat-transfer vinyl (HTV), weed out the excess, and press the design onto fabric with heat and pressure.

I say that first because a lot of people buy a Cricut expecting full-color photographic prints on shirts. It won't do that. For photo-quality shirt graphics, you need DTG, DTF, or screen printing. Cricut is for cut vinyl designs: names, logos, simple text, and graphics with clean edges.

The total-cost question is labor. Last year, we priced 80 branded conference tees at about $850 from a local print shop. The DIY route looked like roughly $350 in materials. So we tried the DIY route. The machine itself was fine, but nobody accounted for 14 hours of cutting, weeding, and pressing. Six shirts came out slightly crooked. One had bits of mask stuck in the letters. And we still had to rush an order to the print shop when the deadline got close. Final cost: about $720 plus overtime nobody wants to recalculate.

Does DIY ever win? Yes. It wins when you need one shirt, a dozen samples, or a design that changes every week. It loses when you need 80 identical shirts by Friday. Put a volunteer's hourly cost in the spreadsheet before you buy the machine.

5. What is an IPP printer?

IPP stands for Internet Printing Protocol. It's the standard language a computer uses to send a print job over a network. I know that sounds like an IT answer, but it has a procurement angle: printers that support IPP—especially IPP Everywhere and Apple AirPrint—usually don't need dedicated drivers.

In practice, that means a laptop can connect to the printer and the operating system already knows how to talk to it. No driver CD, no manufacturer utility, no version matching. For a small office, that saves a little time. For a larger one, it saves a lot of IT hours, and IT hours are part of the total cost of any printer.

You'll also see IPPS on spec sheets. That's the secure version of IPP, which encrypts the print job while it travels over the network. Older printing setups often send jobs in plain text or rely on fragile file-sharing connections. Given how many print-related security headaches have surfaced over the last few years, my IT team now asks one question before any printer purchase: does it support IPP securely, or do we need to make an exception?

So, what is an IPP printer in plain English? It's a printer that behaves the way a network printer should—no proprietary bridge, no driver scavenger hunt, and less work for the person who gets called when printing breaks.

6. What formula do I use before approving anything?

After years of spreadsheets, the only method that consistently works is this:

Total cost = hardware + consumables + waste + labor + rush fees.

Hardware means the device, delivery, setup, and any accessories you discover you need. Consumables means paper or ink based on what you actually print, not the maximum yield on the box. Waste means reprints, misprints, and failed experiments. Labor means the human hours spent installing, troubleshooting, and fixing. Rush fees mean everything you pay extra when the first plan didn't work.

That's the whole formula. It doesn't require a fancy calculator. It requires honesty about time and failure rates. Buy whatever fits your real volume and your tolerance for rework. I don't care whether the winning product says Kodak, Epson, Cricut, or something else—the brand becomes obvious once you stop comparing price tags and start comparing total costs.