Laser printers have long been the standard for high-speed printing at top-notch quality. Many offices feature a large laser printer to handle the enormous capacity requirements that businesses place on their printers. Of course, plenty of people enjoy the speed and quality of a laser printer in their own home. When you're shopping for a laser printer, how do you know if you're getting the right one for your situation? This laser printer buying guide will help you determine how to buy a laser printer that will best meet the printing needs of your home or office.
When you're shopping for a laser printer, one of the first things to ask yourself is how much printing you expect to do. If you're just looking for a printer for your home, you can probably consider nearly any laser printer without any particular concerns about capacity, unless you plan on doing a large amount of printing.
If, on the other hand, this printer will be servicing an office full of people, then you need to make some realistic estimates about how much printing will be done. For example, if the printer will service a small office with a dozen people who print several pages each day, then you should look for a laser printer that's rated to handle several thousand pages each month. If you try to skimp on capacity, you may notice two glaring symptoms: First, the printer may become overwhelmed with the number of queued print jobs, and the printer will start taking longer and longer to push out the next print job (which, if you're curious, is because the printer didn't have enough memory to store all those pending print jobs); second, overworking a printer may lead to its parts wearing down quickly, which may lead to an inordinate amount of visits from the printer service technicians. So, remember: When you're shopping for a laser printer for an office full of people, don't skimp on capacity. Pay attention to the manufacturer's recommendations about printing capacity; this includes both the recommended monthly volume as well as the maximum monthly duty cycle, if the manufacturer makes both recommendations. The initial investment may be larger for a high-capacity laser printer, but you're sure to save money (as well as time and hassle) in the long run.
Speed has long been one of the greatest strengths of any laser printer; in particular, laser printers can maintain their extraordinary level of quality while still printing far faster than your typical inkjet printer. However, the speed of the printer is also one of the major factors in its price.
If your laser printer is destined for a busy office, you'll certainly want a high-speed printer to keep up with the many print jobs; however, you may have to balance the speed of the printer, the total capacity of the printer and its price. Of course, you want to minimize cost; still, avoid exceeding the manufacturer's recommendations on capacity.
While black-and-white printing has long been considered the strength of laser printers, you can certainly find laser printers that print in color as well. On the up-side, these printers will print high-quality images and print them quickly; on the down-side, color laser printers tend to be expensive.
If you're looking for color printouts of your digital photos or other color images, consider if a photo printer or color inkjet printer will get the job done. Also, color laser printers may not reach the standard of quality that graphic artists or other professionals need, so those people would probably prefer a dye or wax sublimation printer over a color laser printer.
If you need your color printing to be of the highest quality, you may want to have a printer in your office devoted to color and a separate laser printer for black-and-white document printing.
Early laser printers for the home often used the parallel port, much like any other type of printer. Nowadays, if you want to connect your laser printer directly to your computer, you're much more likely to use a USB connection. Of course, if you want to share your laser printer over a network, look for a laser printer with a network connection -- you can find laser printers with either Ethernet or wireless network connections. A network connection is a must for office printers, and you can expect any high-capacity laser printer to have network connection options.
Do laser printers use ink cartridges like inkjet printers do?
Instead of ink cartridges, laser printers use toner cartridges, which contain a powdery substance called toner. The printing process for laser printers is fundamentally quite a bit different from inkjet printers, hence the different type of printing material. When comparing ink cartridges to toner cartridges, popular opinion says that toner cartridges last much longer than ink cartridges (which they should, because they're usually far larger than any ink cartridge) but cost a lot more. Ideally, you shouldn't let the choice of using ink cartridges versus toner cartridges sway your decision about whether to go with a laser printer or an inkjet printer -- the speed, quality and capacity of laser printers are their real selling points.
Can I have my laser printer automatically print to both sides of a sheet?
Many laser printers exist that can print to both sides automatically. However, like inkjet and other types or printers, you'll have to make sure your specific model supports auto-duplexing. High-capacity laser printers for offices are very likely to support double-sided printing, but support is less common among lower-end laser printers.
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