Should you go for an inkjet printer or a laser printer?

Inkjet Printers

Inkjet Printers can be categorized as 3-color inkjet printers, 4-color inkjet printers and photo printing inkjet printers. 4-color Inkjet Printers usually hold two ink cartridges (one for black and one for color). 3-color Inkjet Printers are usually equivalent to the low-end 4 color inkjet printers with the exception of holding only one ink cartridge at a time. The 3-color inkjet printers are no longer popular as the 4-color inkjet printer prices are continually dropping.

Many of the 4-color inkjets print photos with good quality and most photo printing inkjets carry the same features as 4-color inkjets with just a few special photo printing features added such as directly printing from the digital camera.

Laser Printers

Laser Printers have two different technologies for black & white (monochrome) and color printing. Among the laser printers, monochrome laser printers are the most popular ones in the industry. In general, laser printers are a lot faster than inkjet printers. Laser printers are quite popular as they offer fast printing, good print quality and low cost per page. They use toner cartridges instead of ink cartridges found in inkjet printers.

Inkjet Printers Vs Laser Printers

As a rule of thumb, laser printers produce crisp, speedy text documents and decent images, while inkjet printers produce top-quality, long-lasting photos and not-so-crisp text, all at an uncomfortably-slow pace.

Inkjet printers are best if printing high-quality photos are much more important that high-quality text and graphics and if speed is not an issue for you. Laser printers are best if high-quality text documents are more important than high-resolution photos and that speed is essential. Laser printers major selling point is their ability to quickly print crisp documents at a very low cost per page. Overall, laser printers and color laser printers cost much less to maintain and operate and have a lower cost over the printer’s lifetime, but have a higher price-tag initially.

An inkjet printer costs a lot less initially but its cost per page is much higher than a laser printer’s cost per page. The cost of the inkjet ink cartridges would almost double the cost of the laser toner cartridges. If you print a couple hundred pages per month or a thousand pages per month, laser printers are more cost effective overall.

Conclusively, if your business’ output volume is moderate to heavy, your best bet is to go with a laser printer due to the laser printer’s total cost of ownership. If you print very infrequently, whether it’s for personal use or for your small office, then an inkjet printer would be more cost effective.

At the end of the day, the types of documents you need to print may determine what printer, or printers, you select. If you print a lot of text documents and are cost conscience, then a budget monochrome laser printer would be your best fit. HP printers are great in both the inkjet printers and laser printers categories. Epson printers, Canon printers, and Kodak printers are very popular for inkjet and photo printers. Brother printers, Xerox printers, HP printers and Samsung printers are best in class for laser printers with Xerox probably the best in class for color laser printers for businesses.