Letâs be straight with each other. Hanging on to a 2020 photocopier rarely adds up the way it feels like it should. On paper, it looks frugal. In practice, it often becomes a quiet drain on margin, time and risk appetite. Let’s takea look at photocopier cost compared to a modern lease.
What we usually see by 2026 is not a âfully depreciated asset doing its jobâ, but a machine sliding into end-of-life behaviour while still demanding premium treatment. Hereâs how that shows up in real numbers and real headaches.
Why are service costs climbing even though the machine is older?
Copiers age along a predictable failure curve. By year five or six, youâre on the upward slope.
Most service agreements allow annual increases, often RPI plus a margin. That means youâre paying the highest contract rate at exactly the point the machine is most likely to fail.
Parts are the second squeeze. Manufacturers typically commit to five to seven years of availability. As components like fusers or transfer belts become special-order items, downtime stretches from hours into days. The contract still runs. Productivity does not.
Where does the hidden IT cost actually sit?
Itâs rarely on an invoice.
Every jam that needs a reboot, every driver conflict, every print server hiccup ends up with internal IT or ops staff getting involved. In my time auditing print estates, this âtechnician taxâ often exceeds the annual lease cost of a newer device, but it never gets labelled as such.
That time is pulled from security, infrastructure or revenue-facing projects. The copier just happens to be the thing stealing it.
Why does security suddenly matter for a photocopier?
Because printers stopped being dumb peripherals a long time ago.
A 2020 device is built on 2019-era architecture. Firmware updates taper off. Endpoint protections lag behind modern attack patterns. Printers are well known soft targets because theyâre often unpatched and quietly trusted on the network.
Weâve seen more than one case where a legacy copier became the weakest link on a VLAN. Modern devices ship with hardened firmware, encrypted storage and self-monitoring features that simply did not exist as standard six years ago.
How does GDPR risk show up in day-to-day use?
Usually in very ordinary ways.
Older machines rely on basic PIN printing or none at all. Documents sit in output trays waiting to be collected. In a shared office, that is an everyday data exposure.
Newer platforms default to secure release and full-disk encryption. Jobs only print when the user authenticates at the device. Itâs not about gold-plating compliance. Itâs about removing a routine failure point that no one wants to explain after the fact.
Are energy and toner savings really material?
They are now.
Post-2022, manufacturers pushed hard into low-energy print engines and low-melt or heat-free technologies, such as those used by Epson. Compared to a 2020 laser fuser that stays hot all day, the energy delta is stark, especially at current UK electricity rates.
On consumables, modern managed print leases fix cost per page. Older machines rely on ad-hoc toner purchasing with poorer yields. Over a year, that variance is rarely trivial.
What changes in tax and cash flow once the machine is fully depreciated?
This is where the emotional logic often breaks down.
The 2020 copier is effectively worth scrap on the balance sheet, but it still absorbs capital repairs and unpredictable spend. None of that is helpful for cash planning.
A lease sits cleanly as operating expenditure. Payments are fully deductible, predictable and spread. You also lock in todayâs pricing for three to five years, which matters in an inflationary environment.
How do the trade-offs actually compare?
| Feature | 2020 Photocopier | Modern Lease (2026) |
| Financial model | Spiky repairs and consumables | Fixed monthly OpEx |
| Security | Static, often unpatched | Current endpoint protection |
| Productivity | Slower, higher jam rate | Faster, cloud-native workflows |
| IT burden | Internal troubleshooting | Vendor-managed |
| Asset value | Scrap | Revenue-supporting tool |
A practical way to weigh the decision
If your current machine needs more than one service call per quarter, or if your cost per page hasnât been renegotiated since 2020, the maths is probably already against you.
The common myth is that owning old hardware is âsafeâ because itâs paid for. In practice, youâre just carrying all the risk yourself while paying rising running costs for the privilege.
Treating the copier like infrastructure, not furniture
If I were sitting on your side of the table, I wouldnât be looking to buy another machine outright. Iâd be asking how to move the depreciation, maintenance and failure risk back to the vendor, fix the monthly number, and remove a low-value distraction from the business.
Leasing isnât about shiny kit. Itâs about predictability, security and freeing up attention for work that actually moves the needle.
