How To Pick The Right Printer For Your Home Office
Knowing what printer is best for your needs can be a confusing business, should you go inkjet or laser? How about printing on the move? With so many choices it can be hard to know what’s suitable so in this article Sofia Lockhart goes through your options.
If you’re thinking about buying a printer, you must’ve felt overwhelmed once you saw the offer. So many different types and manufacturers, not to mention the prices. How is one to know which printer is the best when they all look more or less the same and have a zillion features? It can be hard when you get recommendations on the best cartridges, like HP Officejet Pro 8600 Printer Ink but you’re not sure which printer will best accommodate that ink. Well, let’s take it one step at a time.
First of all, you need to answer yourself one question: Why do I need a printer in the first place? In this way, it should be fairly easy to choose from the following types.
Inkjet printers
Look for these if you wish to have a printer at home or you own a small business. Basically, the number of pages you need to print out in one go shouldn’t be too large. On the plus side, they’re good when it comes to printing photos – inkjet printers have a higher resolution than laser ones. Resolution over 1440 dpi is considered decent. Take a closer look at the HP Deskjet 3630, Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 or Canon Pixma TS8050.
It’s also important to check the price of the ink that you’re buying as getting it from a major high street or online store may mean you’re paying up to 4 times the amount for ink! Just a quick search for HP Officejet Pro 8600 Printer Ink will give you a lot of results and it’s worth looking through the first couple of pages of search results to make sure you’re getting the best deal.
Laser printers
The first ever laser printer was made by HP back in 1984 and from that time they are essential in every office. Their PPM (pages per minute) or CPM (copies per minute) speed is higher, hence your productivity will increase. Also, there will be no smudges like with the previous type. Not to mention you can turn on time-saving duplex printing. As for photos, you’d better do it elsewhere, though Samsung M2885FW 4-in-1 Multifunction Xpress is said to produce great images. Brother HL-3140CW was also a best-seller.
Photo printers
As the name suggests, this is the perfect choice if you indulge photography, but their weak spot is word processing. Make sure you check the IPM (images per minute) speed here. Canon’s Pixma Pro-100 is hot right now.
3D printer
On of the main reasons why someone might want a 3D printer is simply because it’s fun. 3D Printers can also be a great outlet for your creativity. You can print out the products of your imagination. What is more, it’s easy to print out some spare parts, or use it for generating income! One of the main criteria for purchasing is the available build area.
Mobile printers
Yes, there is such a thing. They’re very handy if your job involves lots of travel and last-minute report and chart printing. Now that you’ve determined which type caters best to your needs, here are a few more useful tips.
It’s become quite common to have a MFP or a multifunctional printer. It can be 3 in 1 (printer, scanner and copier), or 4 in 1 (all that plus the fax). Once again, it depends on your requirements.
Before purchasing any printer, ensure that it is fully compatible with your operating system. For instance, Lexmark printers do not support Linux.
There’s more to the printer price than meets the eye. You must be really careful about the supply costs and do the math. Sometimes the sum you pay for quickly used up supplies surpasses the reasonable price you had paid. Explore how much time it takes for an ink cartridge to become empty, and see the price of the replacement. If you need a multicolor printer, you should know if you must replace the whole cartridge when you run out of a certain color, or you can just buy that particular one and save money. Usually, what you need are multiple color cartridges (CMYK).
Another feature of modern printers is a real dream. Today you can print photos from your phone, or connect the camera with the printer (use PictBridge for this). Also, you’ll absolutely love these applications: Apple AirPrint and Google CloudPrint for cloud-based printing services.
Finally, here’s another factor which is usually overseen. If you don’t wish to get “Paper Mismatch” notifications every time you print something, you’d better check which type of paper is recommendable for that particular machine.
Hopefully, now you have a better idea what kind of printer to look for. But once you decide on it, hold your horses! Go online and try to find the best deal before your final purchase. You’ll see there are always some great discounts.