Laser Printers Shopping: How to Buy a Laser Printer
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When shopping for laser printers, take a look at the printer specifications and match them with your needs. Will it stay at home, where you need to print fewer pages at a time, or at the office, where lots of people will hook up to the printer and use it more often? How about other needs such as photo-quality printing? Bigger paper sizes?
Text and photo quality
You need to know what you're going to use your printer for. Does it need to print out simple documents filled mostly with text? Or do you wish to print good-looking photos and graphics? Or do you want to do both? Laser printers are more often associated with printing crisp, bleed-free text, but there are also laser printers that support a wide array of colors. The safest way to check the way text and photos turn out is by looking at printed samples. Any laser printer worth its price tag should have those print samples nearby when a customer asks for it!
Aside from getting a nice-looking printout, though, find out if the ink that's been transferred onto the paper will, indeed, last a reasonable number of years—otherwise, it won't make sense using it to print your memories with it. Other features you'd want to look into when shopping for a photo printer include: borderless printing, memory card support, photo preview support (often with LCD screens), and six-color ink tanks.
Ink
Speaking of ink, sometimes printer maintenance has a lot to do with how often you have to change toners or cartridges. Larger ink cartridges or toners mean more expensive replacements, but should take a longer time to get used up. The opposite means a cheaper purchase the next time your printer needs ink, but it may also spell inconvenience when you print much, or print often. It's best to inspect your printing habits and spending power here.
For colored laser printers, a wiser buy is to choose ink tanks that can have individual colors replaced and not one container for all colors in one go; this means less waste when you print a lot in a specific hue. Make sure you have a separate cartridge for black (usually a K cartridge in a CMYK printer), otherwise these colored printers will be using up all your colors just to print black! If you want even higher standards, choose six-color printers for even better detail.
As mentioned above, check how long these inks last. Some fade more quickly under direct sunlight.
Learn more about these supplies in Inks, Toners, Cartridges.Resolution
Printer resolution measures the number of "dots" that a printer can cram onto a given area, usually an inch; hence the unit of measurement is DPI or dots per inch. Of course, higher resolution printers or higher dpi measurements mean greater detail, which are especially useful for graphics and fine text. Choose at least a 600x600 dpi laser printer for day-to-day document printing. A dpi of 1200x600 should be good enough for photograph-quality printouts.
Speed
Laser printers are generally faster than inkjet printers, so at the very start you already have an advantage when you buy any laser printer. The question is, how fast does your printer need to be? If you don't print a lot of documents at a time—at home, for example—then the PPM or pages per minute measurement does not really matter. Photo printing also takes longer in general in order to ensure higher quality. But in a busier environment such as an office, ppm may matter since a lot of people may be queuing up their documents to a single printer, and they may need to get those pages immediately.
Laser printers commonly print at 15 ppm and up, while 6-8 ppm may be for higher-quality text. A rate of 2-3 ppm is considered common for photo printing.
Note that a ppm rate may not take into account how long a printer processes a printing job before actually printing on paper, so you have to find out about that as well. Again, requesting a test run before buying may help.
Memory
Printers are pretty much computers by themselves since they can automatically perform a specific task. These days having a good amount of memory on a printer means efficiently handling a document. Take into consideration buying laser printers with higher memory if more users will be queuing documents at a time, or if you will be printing graphics and photos at higher resolutions.
Paper and other media
Related to your printer's purpose is the type paper or non-paper you'll be feeding it. Some questions to consider are:
How does it handle the paper (or other media) you feed it? Does it make a U-shaped, 180-degree angle and makes the paper turn when fed out? Or does it use an L-shaped, 90-degree feeder? This may not matter for ordinary printing purposes, but may matter for special types of media such as envelopes, business cards, stickers, labels, acetate, etc.
How does it stock up your paper/media? How many sheets can it handle in its tray? Does it provide multiple trays—for those who need to print different types of paper often?
What is the maximum paper size you can feed into the printer? Some printers can only handle A4, letter, or legal-size documents, while others can print A3 or tabloid-size (11"x17") ones. For smaller sizes such as photo papers, also check if the printer can properly feed them in.
Learn more about paper and other media here.
Computer compatibility, interfacing, and networking
Connectivity is an important feature that one must look out for. These days, USB (version 1.1 and version 2.0) ports are more common than parallel and serial ports since they are faster; this is important particularly for computers networked to a single computer, all waiting for their turn to print out documents. Firewire is also fast, though less common. You may also print photos by hooking up your camera directly to the printer; just make sure you have the proper cables to ensure compatibility. Aside from cables, does your printer also support wireless connections, such as Bluetooth, Infrared (IR), or even Wi-Fi?
Also check other compatibility issues, such as the operating system a printer supports and how a computer (or camera) and a printer can communicate (e.g., Printer Command Language, Windows Graphical Device Interface, Adobe Postscript).
Multi-function printers or all-in-one printers
MFPs or AIOs may be the answer for you if you need that extra space in the home or office, and you want to cut back on costs by buying something that does more things at once. Of course, the obvious drawback for these devices is when it isn't working; that means you cannot do any additional function you bought aside from printing! Also, this means you will have to consider an additional list of specifications for those additional functions, be it faxing, photocopying, scanning, et cetera.
Also consider if you can use the all-in-one device you wish to buy without having to turn on your computer if you want to fax or photocopy, for example.
Learn more about Multi-function printers or all-in-one printers here.
Portable printers
Portable printers make it a lot easier for traveling or frequently mobile people to get documents and photos printed quickly. Aside from checking out all the elements we've mentioned above, be on the look out for additional factors such as battery life. Inspect how long can the printer stay on, and how many pages can it print before running out of power. Also check how long it takes to charge the battery, and how much it costs to buy an extra one.
Some mobile printers even provide support for scanning just by swapping your ink cartridge with a scanning cartridge.
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