How to select a home printer

Although there are actually fewer options than there used to be, selecting a home printer for your PC or Mac can still be a daunting task. Here are some pointers.

There once were more kinds of computer printers than there are today. The dot matrix printer, once ubiquitous in the basements of computer hobbyists, is almost gone. Even rarer are the word-processing impact printers, which were more or less glorified typewriters for use with computers. The field has been reduced almost exclusively to ink-jet (sometimes called bubble-jet) and laser printers.

Both are available in color and black and white, though the latter is now exceedingly rare in the ink-jet variety. Let’s take a look at the basics about these two common types.

Ink-Jet

Inkjet printers operate by propelling variably-sized droplets of liquid or molten material (ink) onto almost any sized page. They are the most common type of computer printer for the general consumer due to their low cost, high quality of output, capability of printing in different colors, and ease of use. The emerging ink jet material deposition market also uses ink jet technologies, typically piezoelectric jets, to deposit materials directly on substrates.

The modern inkjet printer has been built on the shoulders of many earlier versions. Among many contributors, Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Canon can claim a substantial share of the credit for the development of the modern inkjet. In the worldwide consumer market, four manufacturers account for the majority of inkjet printer sales: Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Epson, and Lexmark.

Laser

A laser printer is a type of hardcopy output device that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers (MFPs), laser printers employ a xerographic printing process but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer’s photoreceptor.

Laser printers were invented at Xerox laboratories in the early 70s, then improved and made into common consumer products by Canon, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Xerox. Early laser printers were black-on-white only. Many of today’s laser printers are full-color output devices, some of which are capable of photo-quality output. The prices of laser printers have dropped dramatically since their introduction.

Paper

Both types of printers print on regular paper of all kinds. Paper-handling hardware has gotten much better and most quality printers in both categories will print on a wide range of papers, both types and sizes, including envelopes. Companies such as Avery also make a wide variety of media for both types of printers, from labels to photo paper to business card blanks. If you have special need in the area of paper supplies, such as large sizes or heavy card stock, make sure to test before you buy.

Supplies

This is the part of printing that gets expensive. Especially in the ink-jet marketplace, manufacturers almost give away their printers in order to get you locked into their supplies. With ink-jets, that is mainly ink cartridges. With laser printers, it involves toner cartridges and some mechanical parts of the printer, such as the fusing element.

It is supplies upon which you will be making the largest part of your decision from a financial standpoint. If you dig deeply enough, you will be able for find the manufacturers claim for how many pages you can print with each supply refill. That will allow you to calculate the supply cost per page, simply by looking up the prices of the supplies on the Office Depot or Staples Web site, or perhaps on a site like Newegg.com. Yes, the manufacturers are not entirely honest about supply lifetimes, but they all fudge by about the same amount.

This is a pretty straightforward calculation with black and white laser printers. A toner cartridge will print so many thousand pages, and every so many thousand pages you will need a new fuser roller, or other such part. Let’s say your toner cartridge ($60) will print two thousand average pages, and that you have to replace the fuser assembly ($100) every six thousand pages. Thus, every six thousand pages will cost you $280 in supplies and every page that emerges from the printer will cost 4 cents, plus the cost of the paper. Those are not actual prices or how long your supplies will last. They are all over the map, which is why you need to do the research.

This calculation will also work for color laser printers if the printer uses a single toner cartridge for all the colors. Regardless of how much yellow ink there is left in such a cartridge, when the blue ink runs out, you have to buy a new cartridge. Generally you are better off, though, to buy a printer that uses separate cartridges for each color: you don’t waste nearly as much ink. For purposes of piece comparison, just pretend that you will get the same mileage out of each cartridge.

Ink-jet printers are different in that you replace only the ink. All of the other considerations are the same as for laser printers. You can make the same cost per page calculations, and you are still better off buying a printer which uses one cartridge per color instead of a printer that uses a single cartridge containing all of the colors.

Also on the topic of supplies, it is generally possible to purchase both ink and toner cartridges which have been refilled by third parties. All printer manufacturers warn you against doing this. Some people have good luck with these refilled cartridges. Others tell horror stories of ruined printers. My experience is somewhere in the middle. The refilled cartridges have caused me problems but have not ruined any of my printers. Nor have the savings been worth the problems. I stick with factory cartridges, but your mileage may vary.

Printer Usage

You also need to consider what you will be using the printer for. First, when you include the cost of supplies, laser printers (despite their higher price tags) have a generally lower supply cost per page and also last longer than ink-jets. That price is a lot lower if you will be printing mainly black and white laser pages.

I, as an example, am a writer, so I use my Brother monochrome laser printer to print manuscripts to send to editors and publishers. That has a very low cost per page. I do not print a lot of color pages, mainly just whimsical personal correspondence, but I do occasionally print 8 x 10 photos to frame. So I also have a fairly pricy Canon photo printer with even pricier supplies, but I don’t use it much so that doesn’t matter.

As an aside, when it comes time to buy the fuser assembly for my laser printer, I have found that it is cheaper to buy a whole new printer instead. The new printer comes with a new toner cartridge and a new fuser assembly and is priced lower than the combination of the two supply parts. Go figure.

Another consideration is longevity and safety of printed product. One of the shortcomings of ink-jet hardcopy is that it runs when it gets wet. That means that if you spill water on ink-jet pages, or walk with them in the rain, they bleed and smear. Laser pages generally do not do that. If this situation is likely to cause you trouble, buy a laser.

Photographs and color graphics look better for less printer investment on an ink-jet, water danger notwithstanding. They also look slightly more professional on a color laser printer when printed on plain paper, such as you would do for reports or presentations, since the ink-jet process tends to ripple the paper slightly when you use a lot of ink in one spot, like you do with photos and graphics.

Those are the main considerations, and the major differences between the two primary types of printers. Consider what you are willing to pay for a printed page and to what use you will be putting that page. That, plus a little research, should allow you to make an informed printer purchase decision.