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Whether it’s an inkjet for high quality photos or a laser that churns out documents, every printer shares similar traits. Here are some commend specifications you should keep in mind when your purchase your next printer.
Color or monochrome
Most ink jet printers to day offer both color and monochrome options, but the question becomes more pertinent with laser printers. Color laser printers usually pricey are now available for less than $500 well with the reach of small businesses who want to add extra pop to their printed materials. For the most part, however monochrome laser are a far better value for home user and small businesses.
Resolution
Resolution figures refer to the maximum number of horizontal and vertical dots a printer can lay down within a 1 inch square. In theory, a higher resolution printer can produce more detailed text and images, but manufactures inflate these numbers for marketing purposes, meaning these specs often have a little or no bearing on real world performance. If possible view actual output from printer before you decide.
Print speed
This spec measures how many pages per minute (ppm) or photos per minute a printer churn out. To determinate the fastest possible speeds, some manufactures user basic text documents at the lowest quality setting (draft mode) on plain paper. In your tests, use a printer’s automatic mode for test and its photographic paper setting photos (when applicable), typically achieve about half the speed the manufacture promises.
A large company with many employees needs a workhorse laser printer with features such as upgradable memory, fast print speeds, high capacity toners and one or more large capacity paper tray. The printer needs to be networkable to allow for multiple print jobs. Some printers even have security options for sensitive documents as well as monitoring features that help you keep track of print jobs and how many pages your employees are printing. Colors laser printers continue to drop in prince so consider buying one if your office outputs a lot off full-color documents.
Connectivity
Most printer connect to your PC or USB, but you’ll have to buy a cable separately, although you can still find some printer that offer a parallel port, this form of connection is nearly obsolete, for PC-free printing look for memory card slots, as well as port that allow for direct printing from supported cameras or external storage devices. Many models also support wireless printing over infrared or Bluetooth or via built-in Wi-Fi capabilities.
Consumables
Before you buy, consider the cost of items such as in and paper, replacement ink can quickly exceed a printer’s price, more expensive printers may be more economical in the long run because the often have higher capacity ink tanks and separate tanks for each color, paper can cost anywhere from 10 cents to $2 per letter size sheet, for best result use what the manufacture recommends.
Paper handling
With the exception of specialty machines like snapshot printers, all ink jet and laser printers accept standard letter size and legal size paper of various thicknesses, as well as envelopes, the printer should have a paper tray that holds at least 100 sheet, if you do high volume printing, get a printer with a larger capacity tray on one that accepts additional tray. Other printers offer advanced features like duplexing (automated printing on both sides of a sheet), automatic document feeder and tabloid size printing, although these are often found in more expensive models.