Factors to Consider When Purchasing Printers

Major Brands

HP, Lexmark, Epson, Canon, Brother and Samsung are the market leading manufacturers of home and home office printers. All manufacture quality products and provide good customer service and technical support. Click here to se what we recommend...

The Type

Most home and home office printers fall into one of four functional categories: Multifunction, Photo, Personal and Workgroup printers.

Multifunction Printers are the most popular type of printer in our survey because they are able to print both text documents and photos as well as fax, scan and copy.
Photo printers are designed primarily to print photos, although they can also print documents as well. Unless your business must print high quality photos, photo printers are not a good choice due to their massive use of toner and ink. There are also a limited number of Dye Sublimation printers available for photo printing.
Personal printers are designed for single user office applications.
Workgroup printers are intended for sharing between multiple users with high volume output. Printers in each of these four functional categories use Laser and Inkjet print technologies.

Depending upon your final selection, you should expect to pay between $75 and $200 for a black & white laser or inkjet printer. Color laser printers and high end inkjet printers start at about $300 and go all the way up to $1500.

Understanding The Consumable Supplies Factor

The major manufacturers of printers regard your future purchases of ink, toner cartridges and photo paper as an important source of revenue --- so much so that you can expect to pay several times the cost of your hardware for ink refills over the life of your printer. It can be tricky to figure out the total cost of printer ownership, but you should at least consider how many pages you expect to print on a monthly basis so that you can see how often you will need to replace your cartridges. If you buy an inkjet printer, you should also consider the cartridge configuration of your printer. A printer that comes with at least 5 cartridges means that you can usually replace individual color cartridges as they run out. Printers that only support one black and one combination color cartridge waste more ink, since you have to replace the color cartridge once one of the colors runs out. While this is more convenient, it is also more expensive.

Other Factors

There are a few more factors when purchasing printers for your home or office:

What other printers do you have? Ideally, an office or business would have as many printers using the same consumables as possible, for two reasons:

Ordering Efficiency - meaning that you order the same toner cartridge every time (possible getting volume discounts).
Compatability - running out of toner in a critical situation is not desireable. If all of your pritners use the same toner cartridge, you will be able to grab one quickly and exchange it.

UIS Efficiency Tips

Know how to adjust the different modes of the printer such as Toner Save, Draft Print, and the Graphics modes to conserve toner. You do not need presentation quality prints for general operations. Setting these parameters will increase printer efficiency.
Keep an extra toner on hand for every printer.
Set up employee policies that disallow personal printing on company machines, at the very least, and especially on COLOR printers. With color copies retailing at places like Kinko's for upwards of $1 per print, your business color printers are an easy target for unscrupulous behavior.