The Quick Guide: Which Printer Should I Get?

Both colour laser and colour inkjet will print in colour. If you do not need to print in colour, choose a Black and White Laser. While the black toner cartridges are pricier than black inkjet cartridges, they have a higher capacity and can print more pages compared to standard inkjet cartridges. In the long run, it is cheaper to go with a black and white laser. The cost per page is much lower.

With the right media, gloss or matt photo paper, a high resolution colour photo inkjet printer will produce superb photo quality prints. Some printer will even support borderless printing. Choose a colour photo inkjet printer if you are a photographer or visual creator and need photo quality prints. Professional grade photo inkjet printers use more separate colour components to achieve more superior colour definition, see image below. If you only do the occasional brochure or document with colour, choose a colour laser. Otherwise, choose a black and white laser printer for monochrome printing.

All printer manufacturers offer wireless mobile printing option. These allow you to print directly to the printer from your mobile devices be it a smartphone or tablet. If you need to print from iOS devices, choose a printer that supports Air Print. Other mobile printing options include Google Cloud Print, Cortado Workplace, Wi-Fi Direct, Mopria and printing via proprietary app. The latter requires you to install the company’s mobile printing app to scan and print wirelessly. If you have no need for wireless and mobile printing, a USB laser or inkjet printer will do.

All-in-One printers be it laser or inkjet have a flat bed scanner built on top of the printer. Besides printing,  it is a document copier, capable of duplicating documents with a press of a button. It does this independent of a computer. Simply place your document face down on the flatbed scanner and press to copy button. If you just wish to scan the document and not print, you can also do that with the scanning app installed on your end point device. These can scan to email, file, image, OCR and even Microsoft SharePoint. More advanced All-in-One printers come with fax and automatic document feeder. The latter allows for scanning and printing of multi page documents with some even supporting double-sided copying. These are sometimes known as a Multi Function Center (MFC).

If all you do is just black and white or monochrome printing, a black and white laser is what you need. Not only is it faster at churning out pages, it is also more robust and cheaper to print.

Laser printers are well known for high capacity printing. A workgroup laser printer will meet the requirement for high volume printing. It will cope better than inkjet printers and cost a lot less to print per page. Having said that, there are now inkjet printers with refillable ink tanks that will take on high volume printing too but may need to watch out for the inkjet print heads. Even if you occasionally print in small batches, it would still be advisable to pick a laser printer. Ink jet printers when left alone for too long, can dry up. The ink will dry and jam up the print head. You will then need to replace the print head or the cartridge entirely.

For connectivity, printers come with wired USB for direct connection, WiFi for wireless connection and RJ-45 for wired LAN connection. Each of these connectivity options have its merits and place. For a small business with computers in the office, a workgroup network printer may be more suitable. Printer drivers can be rolled out via group policy to the workstations and the printer shared from the server allowing the computers on the network to have direct access to the printer. If on the other hand, you only have a small number of wirelessly connected computers or devices (most home office situation), a WiFi enabled printer will offer the same convenience, but will require each computer to have the correct driver and software installed.

Finally, in searching for a printer that best meet your requirements, decide if speed or quality is your priority. If speed is what you are after, choose a fast laser printer for quicker printing. If quality is paramount, choose a high quality photo inkjet printer.