How to Buy a Printer
Introduction
No matter how digital-savvy we think we are, most of us need to put ink to paper from time to time. It may not be as glamorous as the latest tiny gadget, but that trusty, dust-covered printer in the corner is the workhorse many people depend on.
From inexpensive inkjets to monochrome and color lasers, different printers are designed to do different jobs. Here's how they stack up, feature by feature. more
We unravel the mysteries of print speed, print quality, and maximum resolution--and tell you which specs are really important. more
Whether you want an ink jet for home use or a laser printer to take care of the whole office, we've got recommendations to make your purchase easier. more
The Big Picture
For most people, choosing a printer entails balancing price, speed, and print quality. But as models improve, manufacturers differentiate them in other ways. Inkjet printers, along with digital cameras, have changed the way we print photographs. When loaded with special photo inks and paper, inkjet printers are one of the best options for transforming a digital image into a photograph.
For monochrome lasers--whose text quality is so good and uniform that models' output samples are sometimes indistinguishable from each other--breadth of features is a major selling point. This is good news for busy offices: For example, thanks to extra paper trays and more memory, lasers can print more efficiently; they also come with more-capable drivers, and permit easier remote management. And as color lasers drop in price--particularly those with built-in networking support--more users can afford to add color to their workplace documents. The least-expensive color lasers we've seen so far now cost about $300.
Inkjet Versus Laser Printers
To choose the right printer, you have to think honestly about what you'll print and how frequently you'll print it. The type of printing determines the quality you need. How often you print dictates how fast the printer must be and how much you're prepared to spend on each job.
If you print a lot of text, such as letters and other business documents, a laser printer is likely your best bet. They're fast and produce good-looking documents at only a few cents per page.
For office documents containing color charts and other graphics, consider a color laser printer. Color laser prices have dropped so much in recent years as to become affordable for even the smallest office. They often produce black-and-white pages at a cost per page similar to monochrome lasers. And they print color photos that are adequate for plain-paper documents that mix text and pictures, such as newsletters and marketing brochures.
You'll get top photo quality from an inkjet printer. The choice becomes more complicated if you print a mix of photos and text documents. If you're a home user who prints digital camera photos, text documents for your own use (such as driving directions or product recommendations from a Web site), and maybe a few letters a month, an inkjet printer offers a good compromise between quality and speed. You'll need a variety of papers, and you'll have to learn your way around the printer's driver settings. You can reduce how often you swap paper types by purchasing a model with two separate paper trays.
In the past, almost all inkjets offered the same features: one paper tray for 100 or 150 sheets and 10 envelopes, minimal buffer memory, and no networking option. These days, however, vendors are increasingly adding a variety of features--such as larger displays or touch screens, Bluetooth wireless or Wi-Fi, and increased paper management options--to differentiate their products. Makers of business-oriented inkjets are also offering higher capacities, optional paper trays, ethernet network connectivity, and more memory.
Laser printers generally have more features and options than inkjets do. Monochrome lasers hold from 150 to 900 sheets, with corporate models frequently holding around 500 sheets as standard; color lasers hold from about 200 to 1250 sheets. You can also add trays that hold as much as 5000 sheets. Most high-end lasers include at least 64MB of RAM, with expansion options permitting a few hundred megabytes of memory for queuing multiple print jobs at once (for a busy office, equip your laser with at least 64MB to 128MB of memory); some offer optional hard drives that you can use to save complex forms and other preprocessed images or to store passwords for confidential print jobs, and they all have standard or optional ethernet adapters. Some more-recent lasers also have features such as the ability to print directly from a USB flash drive.
Before deciding, check out
Should I Buy a Multifunction Printer, or a Separate Printer and a Scanner?
So-called "convergence products" that combine two (or more) functions in the same device often do neither task well. While that once may have been true of multifunction printers, it's no longer the rule. It's now possible to get good quality prints and scans from the same unit, and both functions usually work better together than if you bought a printer and a scanner separately. For example, it's easy to copy a document directly from the scanner to the printer, without the image going through your computer.
It's important to realize that multifunction printers come in two varieties. Office-oriented models have an automatic document feeder for scanning multiple pages as a single task, and they often have a built-in fax machine. Photo-oriented models let you scan slides and negatives, and they usually have built-in media slots for reading from digital camera memory cards. You'll need to choose which type is right for you.
Furthermore, the office-oriented multifunctions can include either inkjet or laser printers. While the inkjets suit both home and small-office users, the laser units usually replace a printer, a copier, and a fax machine for a small workgroup.
What Type of Printer Is Best for Photo Printing?
If you're printing only 4-by-6-inch photos, consider a snapshot printer. They use either dye-sublimation or inkjet print technologies. They take up little space in the home or office, and they're often portable.
To print larger sizes of photos, or to print text documents as well, you'll need a desktop inkjet printer. Models with four or more colors of ink generally produce the best quality. For top-quality black-and-white photo printing, look for a model with several shades of gray and black inks.
Most color lasers produce photos that are adequate for many uses, such as real-estate brochures, car insurance claims, and missing-kitty fliers. Many models now let you use glossy paper that helps their images look more like real photos. However, they still lack the color accuracy and print resolution to rival inkjet printers.
Key Specs Explained
Here we'll look at specifications for each of the three most popular types of printers: inkjet printers, monochrome laser printers, and color laser printers.
Inkjet Printers
The slowest but most affordable type of printers, inkjets shoot tiny sprays of colored ink through microscopic holes in a printhead onto a page, one printhead-height row at a time. Most inkjet printers offer resolutions of up to 4800 by 1200 dots per inch, which makes them suitable for printing high-quality graphics and photos, though typically more slowly than a monochrome or color laser printer would.
Inkjet printers are inexpensive printers for the masses, designed for home users, students, or anyone who isn't concerned about the highest text quality. However, a high price does not necessarily indicate excellent graphics and photo prints. The real cost of an inkjet printer comes not from the price of the unit itself, but from the ongoing cost of replacing ink cartridges. Printer manufacturers use a business model similar to that of razor makers: You can buy a great razor for very little money, but you spend a lot replacing the blades.
In the past, almost all inkjets offered the same features: one paper tray for 100 or 150 sheets and 10 envelopes, minimal buffer memory, and no networking option. However, vendors these days are increasingly using features such as larger displays or touch screens, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and increased paper management options to differentiate their products. Makers of business-oriented inkjets are also offering higher capacities, optional paper trays, ethernet network connectivity, and more memory.
For a ranked list of all the recent inkjet printers
Inkjet printers generally have a maximum color resolution of 4800 by 1200 dots per inch (dpi). Many printers also use software to interpolate an image and to smooth out patches of color, fill in gaps, and sharpen more-detailed sections. Such enhancements can affect print quality as much as the printer's resolution. The best way to determine print quality is not to look at the resolution specs but to print out a sample and judge for yourself.
A few lasers, such as the HP Color LaserJet 2605dtn and Konica Minolta Magicolor 2430DL, have media slots or a PictBridge port for printing from a digital camera.
In tests of inkjet printers conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology on behalf of
Many vendors offer higher-capacity cartridges; though more expensive, they contain more ink, so they cost less per page. Most vendors also sell printers with individual cartridges for each color instead of one cartridge for all three colors. These are worth a look, because in our experience printers using multi-ink cartridges have a higher cost per page on average.
Monochrome Laser Printers
From home offices to businesses, monochrome laser printers offer the best balance among price, print quality, and speed. They're almost ubiquitous in the business world, as any office with a PC almost always has a monochrome laser printer as well. Home users might choose a laser printer over an inkjet model if they print a lot of text documents. Prices for monochrome lasers have dropped to a low of around $150 for a personal printer, making them a viable alternative to inkjets: For almost the same price as an inkjet, some monochrome laser printers are faster, produce much better text quality, and are less expensive to maintain because laser toner cartridges are much less costly than inkjet cartridges. For a ranked list of all recent monochrome laser printers PC World has tested and reviewed, see
Color Laser Printers
Designed for offices where color brochures, photographs, or graphics are paramount, color laser printers are rapidly dropping in price. If you need color, you'll probably want an inkjet printer, but color laser printers are becoming increasingly more affordable. Even though color lasers use toner cartridges bearing a higher initial investment cost, you'll get striking color prints on plain paper at less cost per page. Some new color lasers are also capable of printing glossy photos, though their results usually can't match the quality of an inkjet in this area. Again, for more information, see
Printer Shopping Tips
Shopping considerations include the cost of cartridge or toner refills. We'll also list things to watch out for when shopping for an inkjet or a laser printer.
Refilling the Tank
You can save significantly on the cost of printing each page by buying ink and toner made by a company other than your printer's manufacturer. That's fine, if you want just the cheapest possible printing for short-lived documents. However, you're taking a risk if print quality is paramount. For example, at the temperatures applied by your printer's engine, generic toner may not fix to the paper as well as the manufacturer's compound. The result could be poorly shaped characters and gray banding across the page--and that's not a great way to impress a potential customer.
There are several ways to spend less on ink and paper for your printer. From the printer's driver settings dialog box, set draft mode to save on ink when you don't need the best quality. You can also save by turning off color printing; black ink and toner are usually cheaper than their color counterparts. Save on paper by printing two pages side-by-side on the same sheet and, if your printer has a built-in duplexer, always print on both sides. Use cheap multipurpose paper for most jobs, such as Web pages and draft documents only you will read. Keep your best paper for when you need the highest quality, such as for business letters and your r??sum??.
When you do purchase ink and paper, buy in bulk. Many manufacturers offer bundles of ink and paper that dramatically lower the cost of printing photos. For example, HP's value pack for its Photosmart 375 and Photosmart 385 combines one tricolor ink cartridge with 50 sheets of snapshot paper for $20--less than the $25 cost of the cartridge alone.
Other manufacturers have programs for recycling their inkjet and toner cartridges. For example, HP includes postage-paid shipping materials with most of its printers for returning used cartridges, but you can also order these from its Web site. Brother and Oki have similar programs through their Web sites. Konica Minolta includes prepaid shipping labels with its new cartridges for returning the used part.
Your local school or charity may participate in a collection program that helps it raise funds. You can also look for an office supply store that pays you a small sum or offers a discount in exchange for refillable cartridges.
Inkjet Printers
Monochrome Laser Printers
Color Laser Printers
PCWorld Staff
