Which Printer Should I Buy?

Inkjet Versus Laser

A decent inkjet printer can pump out quality documents and photographs, and you can buy one for under $50. The catch is the ink cartridges, which often cost nearly as much as the printer. Some PC vendors give you a "free" printer when you purchase a computer, but the cost of the ink refills may come back to bite you.

By comparison, laser printers have a higher initial price tag but in the end can be more cost efficient. Choosing between an inkjet and a laser printer entirely depends on your printing needs. If you don't print that much but want good quality documents when you do, going with a high end inkjet printer will be less expensive than its laser counterpart.

However if you run a business and print fairly consistently, your are going to save a lot in the long run with a laser printer. Depending upon the model, you can generally expect to spend around 2¢ a page with a laser printer compared with 16-50¢ a page with an inkjet. In just a short time you will spend the added cost of a laser printer buying refills for your inkjet.

How Much Do You Print?

It's best to base your decision on the types of documents that you print most often, namely photos or text. For example if you really only want to print black and white documents, you can get a laser printer that yields up to 3,000 pages during the life of only 1 monochrome toner cartridge. Compare this with a single black inkjet cartridge which generally yields just 400 pages in its lifetime. You can easily purchase a personal laser printer like this for around $100 plus the cost of the cartridge which runs about $50. An inkjet printer of this type may only cost $50 but the cartridges, (which would require 10 to do the same job of 3,000 pages) are about $20 each. Of course the cost increases for both printers when you add color to the mix.

The great thing about laser printers is that they offer clearer and crisper graphics and text. They are durable and reliable and print pages at amazing speed. They are a must have for small businesses; far outweighing the expenses and sluggishness of inkjet technology.
However, unless you are going to spend a fortune, inkjet printers currently produce truer colors and better images when it comes to photographs. If printing great lab quality pictures is important to you, an inkjet printer is probably the best option.

Some Printer Reviews

• HP Deskjet 6940 - This is a great printer from the moment you take it out of the box. The prints are fast, accurate, and look exceptional. Photos are almost of the same quality of a dedicated photo printer costing hundreds of dollars more. The cartridges are average priced and seem to last for a long time. The HP Deskjet 6940 is also a stylish printer so it looks nice sitting on a professional desk. This printer costs US$129.99 and prints up to 4800 x 1200 dpi, at up to 27 pages per minute color (36 black) and is network ready.
• HP LaserJet 1020 - This printer won a Small Business Computing Excellence Award in 2006 and was a wonderful buy at US$99 (after rebate). The printer has a very small footprint on the desk and features FastRes technology which nearly doubles the visual quality of the print, from 600dpi up to around 1200dpi. Operation is fast and quiet, but the downside with this printer is one that is shared by all laser printers -- the price of the toner. However, the toner made for this printer is quite a bit cheaper than toner for larger 'business sized' printers. I would classify this as a personal-sized printer. Specs: Laser printing Monochrome Average print speed of 15 pages per minute (ppm) Max print speed of 20ppm Quality: 600dpi without FastRes, 1200dpi effective with FastRes Paper capacity: 150 sheets Paper type: Plain, envelopes, transparent, labels, cards, postcards Paper sizes: Letter, legal, executive, postcards, envelopes.
• Lexmark Z645 - This is a small desktop inkjet printer that sells for $24.99. It offers print speeds of 17 ppm black and 9 ppm for color. The resolution goes up to 4800 x 1200 dpi. Yes, it's cheap, but here's why... black refills cost $25.99 and color refills are $28.99. The cost per page is approximately $.06 for black and $.11 for color. The Lexmark Z645 can hold 100 sheets of paper and connects with a USB cable. Paper jams are also kept to a minimum because of the Lexmark Accu-Feed system.
• HP Photosmart C4180 - This all-in-one (print/copy/scan) printer is one of many in the 180 series, priced at about US$150. This is a color inkjet printer, and uses two ink cartridges, one for black and the other for tri-color, the colors are not separated into different cartridges, which could be a downside for some people, because if you don't use all colors evenly, you may end up having to buy a new cartridge if only one or two of the colored inks is empty. It has a brilliant 2.5" display, great for printing photos; and a separate holder for 4x6" photo paper. Typical of all-in-one models, the scanner is not nearly as good as a dedicated one. Although the inks are expensive to replace, overall most users are satisfied with this printer.
• Brother HL-5250DN - This black and white laser printer sells for US$249.00, is compact, network-enabled, and has crisp print with a maximum dpi of 1200x1200. Print speed is a blazingly fast -- up to 30 text or 10 graphics pages per minute, with reliable duplexing. The primary paper tray holds 250 sheets and a fold-down reveals a secondary tray for 50 sheets or up to three envelopes. The short setup booklet makes the printer easy to install. With the 7,000 page toner cartridge the cost per page is just 1.4 cents. There have been some owner complaints about excessive noise and flimsy construction, but generally users praise the speed, text quality, ease of network installation, built-in duplexer, low price and reliability.
• Samsung CLP-300 - This is a good personal color laser printer. It is relatively inexpensive at around US$300. This printer is ideal for students or small business owners on a budget. It prints 2400 x 600 dpi black text as fast as 17 ppm, but it is slower for color prints (about 4 ppm). Samsung's "NO NOIS" architecture makes this a quiet printer that's small and light.

Cutting Print Costs

If you decide that an inkjet printer is more suitable than a laser printer for your needs there are ways of cutting the costs of cartridges. Many stores provide a discount on ink cartridges when you bring in the empties for recycling saving you about $3 for every empty cartridge. You can also buy generic cartridges for a lot less than the manufacturer's price. These usually perform just as well as the brand name. However, since ink cartridges are a multi billion dollar industry, printer manufacturers are making it harder to use alternative brands by designing printers that reject cartridges other than their own. What's more, many companies are suing generic ink cartridge manufacturers under the pretense that they are violating patents.

If you have a problem with third party ink cartridges, you can buy a refill kit which allows you to inject ink into the empty cartridge with a specially designed syringe. But beware, this can get really messy. If you're not careful, you can ruin your clothes, carpet and even your printer.

Some manufacturers (notably Epson) add a chip to their cartridges which limit it to only one use, or a certain number of pages. This is an ugly practice, intended to force consumers to buy expensive brand-name cartridges. But if you buy a chip resetter, you can in many cases fool the cartridge into allowing indefinite refills. Chip resetters cost under $10 and can be found on Ebay and many other places.

For more info on whether to refill or replace an inkjet cartridge, see the companion article Inkjet Cartridges - Replace or Refill? on this site.