Aspects To Consider When Buying A Printer

Whether you need a good home printer to cover your daily printing needs, or a hard-working fleet of office printers, making the right choice can prove quite challenging for most of us. This guide covers the aspects you need to consider when deciding if you need a single-function or all-in-one printer; and if it should use ink cartridges or toner cartridges.

Assessing your workload

There’s no point in buying a super-expensive printer if you don’t print thousands of copies weekly. The same applies to buying a printer for a business or office with a huge printing demand, don’t buy a model designed for printing the odd page.

Printers come in various sizes and price ranges. Those designed for less frequent use are cheaper and more compact, taking less out of your budget and as little space as possible.

Printer type – inkjet or laser printer

There are several reasons why this is important. These are printing costs and printing frequency. When choosing a printer, you have two choices – either an inkjet or a laser printer. What are the characteristics of each?

Inkjet printers

Inkjet printers are affordable and their set up is very easy. Printing is done by ink cartridges that combine the colors black or cyan, yellow, and magenta. These combinations created by the pigment-based inks offer higher color concentrations than other printer types and they are capable of printing high-quality photos. These are the most popular printers for homes and small offices. One drawback, if the printer is not used often, the ink cartridges become clogged and dried ink may congeal on the print heads. Then again, the ink cartridges are affordable and last for several months, depending on the workload.

Laser printers

A laser printer uses toner cartridges that are capable of handling large workloads. The toner is fused to the paper to produce the printed document. The printers and their toner cartridges are more expensive than inkjet printers, but the toner lasts longer than printer ink. Despite being ideal for offices with huge workloads, these printers are also perfect for situations where you often have clogged ink cartridges because of infrequent printing.

Printing needs

Inkjet and laser printers are ideal for printing both documents and photographs since they yield high-quality printing in both. However, printing a photo with an inkjet printer requires a lot of ink that takes a long time to dry. This can lead to ink bleeding or smudging unless proper photograph paper is used. With a laser toner, you can print photographs, but the colors are not as rich.

Therefore, buy a laser printer if you are printing visual aids for the office, but buy a special photo printer that uses pigment-based ink and high gloss paper if you want to print your photographs.

Additionally, consider whether you require printing on both sides of the paper, or just want one-sided printing. Some printers have this feature, allowing you to automatically print on both sides of a page, while with other printers you can do it manually.

Printer functions

There are two types of printers, the all-in-one, and the single function. An all-in-one printer or multifunction printer (MFP) that can handle printing, copying, scanning, and even faxing tasks. This is the ideal printer for just about everyone in a business and offices, home-based professionals, and students. These printers are designed to handle multiple document types and allow you to quickly create and send documents or images, even for artists working on other media and digital art programs.

If you only require a printer for printing a few documents or assignments, then a single-function printer is all you need. These are both affordable, have smaller loading trays, and have fewer space requirements, making them ideal for anyone with lower printing requirements.

Printing on-the-go

If you are a student, traveling rep, or working remotely from several locations, then a mobile printer may be what you need. These are compact, easy to carry around, may have built-in batteries and can connect to all other devices through Wi-Fi.

Conclusion

Whatever type of printer you decide best suits your needs; remember you require printer ink to keep it running. Whether your printer uses ink cartridges or toner cartridges, at Cartridge Save you can find Epson Printer Ink, HP Ink, and toner cartridges, ensuring you are always ready to print that document or image.