Procolored's F13 DTF Printer Breaks Even at 229 Transfers, or 553
Verdict $2,399.00 against the same vendor's published ladder for a 12x17 transfer: break-even is 229 pieces at the 1-14 price and 553 at the 250-up price. Neither figure counts your labour or the $400.00 oven the box leaves out.
Prices are US list prices at the time of publication. Shipping, duties and local taxes vary by country — check with the manufacturer before ordering.
NinjaTransfers will print a 12” x 17” transfer of your own artwork and charge $12.28 for one. Order 250 of them and the same file costs $6.14. Both numbers are on the same product page, in the same table.
Procolored sells the printer that makes them for $2,399.00, and publishes its own cost to print one: about $1.80.
Break-even is 229 pieces, or 553. Nothing changes between those two except how many transfers you order at a time.
The Machine
The F13 Panda is a roll-fed direct-to-film printer with one L1800 head, a 13” (330 mm) print width and a CMYK+WW ink configuration. Procolored’s spec block gives 1440x1440 DPI at eight passes, 6 prints per hour at Letter/A4 size, 3.75 ml of ink per Letter print and 20 kg on the bench. A single job can run up to 31” long.
The $2,399.00 box is not just a printer. The page lists a DTF ink set of 250 ml x 5, 250 ml of nozzle protection liquid, a PET film roll of 330 mm x 100 m and 500 g of powder. Those 1,250 ml of ink, at 3.75 ml a print, are 333 Letter-size prints before you buy a bottle. The spec calls the machine CMYK+WW and the box lists five bottles, so whether a second white is in there is DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM SOURCE. Shipping is free, 3 to 7 business days.
What the box does not contain is the oven. Powder has to be melted before the film reaches a shirt, and the cheapest Procolored configuration that includes one is the F13+Oven at $2,799.00 — $400.00 more.
The Numbers
| Item | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| F13 Panda, bare printer | $2,399.00 (was $2,999.00) | Procolored |
| F13 + Panda Oven | $2,799.00 | Procolored |
| Vendor’s cost to print one 13” x 16” | about $1.80 | Procolored FAQ |
| Ink per Letter/A4 print · prints per hour | 3.75 ml · 6 | Procolored |
| DTF ink, 6 x 500 ml (CMYK+WW) | $229.00 | Procolored |
| PET film roll, 13” x 328 ft | $169.00 | Procolored |
| Powder, 1 kg · 2 kg | $55.00 · $99.00 | Procolored |
| Ninja 12” x 17”, 1-14 pieces | $12.28 | NinjaTransfers |
| Ninja quantity ladder | 15-49 -20% · 50-99 -30% · 100-249 -40% · 250+ -50% | NinjaTransfers |
| Ninja gang sheet, 22” x 30 ft | $179.99 — $6.00 a linear foot | NinjaTransfers |
| Replacement L1800 head · motherboard | $360.00 · $299.00 | Procolored |
Run the ladder against the machine and the answer moves every rung: 229 pieces at $12.28, 299 at $9.82, 354 at $8.60, 431 at $7.37, and 553 at $6.14. The last number is 2.41 times the first, and the only thing separating them is the size of the order.
What Breaks
The two sides are not the same product. $12.28 buys a finished transfer, printed, powdered, cured and delivered. $1.80 buys materials. Every break-even above counts zero minutes of your own time and zero kilowatt-hours.
$1.80 is the vendor’s own figure and it says “about”. Only one part of it can be checked against a published price: 16 inches of the $169.00 roll is $0.69 of film. The other $1.11 is ink, powder and nozzle liquid together, and Procolored publishes no grams of powder per print, so that split is DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM SOURCE.
The sizes do not match exactly. Procolored’s $1.80 covers 13” x 16”; Ninja’s $12.28 covers 12” x 17”. The machine is charged for the larger print, which favours the service.
Gang sheets are a cheaper route and the ladder above ignores them. Ninja sells 22”-wide film by the foot — $179.99 for 30 feet, or $6.00 a linear foot. A 12”-wide design fits one to a row on a 22” sheet, so one 12” x 17” costs $8.50 of sheet: cheaper than every rung down to 50-99, dearer than 100-249 and 250+. For small art ganged tight it wins outright, and nothing here measures that case.
The cheapest machine that finishes a transfer is $2,799.00. Against the $12.28 rung the oven bundle breaks even at 268 pieces instead of 229.
The warranty is six months and single-use. Procolored covers one free printhead and one free motherboard replacement each, within 6 months of delivery. After that the L1800 head is $360.00 — 15.01% of the machine, and listed out of stock on 26 October 2026 — and the board is $299.00, $659.00 for the pair.
Warranty eligibility is tied to the ink. The registration form says the printer “must use genuine Procolored inks”; the policy page softens that to a recommendation plus a right to decline service. The lock costs nothing here: Ninja’s own 500 ml ink bundle is 1.18 times the price per millilitre of the set the warranty asks for.
The discount has no end date. The listing shows $2,999.00 struck through against $2,399.00 — $600.00 off — under a banner reading “Valentine’s Day Sale” in late October.
Two published speeds, and they agree. Six Letter prints an hour is 3.90 square feet against the 4 the FAQ claims. At that rate, 229 transfers of 13” x 16” is 82.69 hours at the machine.
It may ship from China. The policy ships from the nearest warehouse, or from China if that one is empty. Import tax and VAT are not in the price.
Who Should Buy This
The shop whose orders arrive in ones and twos. At the 1-14 price the machine clears itself in 229 pieces. That shop is the one already sending cut files out every month with the invoices to prove it — the same buyer, with print files instead of cut files.
Not the shop that orders 250 at a time. At $6.14 the margin is $4.34 and the count more than doubles to 553. A business with that order book is already buying at the bottom of someone else’s ladder, which is the opposite of the case the plasma table made against per-piece cutting.
Not for anyone without a heat press and a cure step already paid for, anyone who wants the warranty past month six, or anyone whose work ganged tight on a 22” sheet would cost less than $8.50 a piece.
The Stack
No affiliate links in this issue. When a link earns us a commission, we always say so. Verdicts are never for sale.
Orders under 15 pieces at a time: the F13 Panda at $2,399.00, 13” wide, 333 Letter prints of ink already in the carton. No cure station yet: the F13+Oven at $2,799.00, the first configuration that turns film into a shirt without borrowing a press.
Before either, read the other side’s list: Ninja’s by-size page carries the whole quantity ladder, and its gang sheets the per-foot rate that undercuts it.
The machine never changed price in this report. The transfer did, five times, and the vendor printed all five.
One machine. All the numbers.
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