The complete guide to buying a Printer.

Author- Vibhor Shergill (Brother of Sabhyata Shergill)

This world revolves around documents, pie-charts, presentations etc. We can not imagine a single day when we don't take a piece of printed paper in our hands, be it your company's latest project details, your Resume, your classroom notes and even a newspaper, all are able to give us meaningful information in the printed form because of a simple yet very essential machine known as printer.

Now, if you are a frequent visitor to the posts on this blog, you might be probably aware that we take each topic from the grass root level and we’ll do the same with this post as well. We’ll begin with the basics first, understand how a printer works, wherein we’ll discuss about the various types of printers available in the market along with their pros and cons, then we’ll move on to discuss how some brands trick the consumers and make recurring and often huge profits from them and then proceed onto deciding which type of printer would be the best for you, according to your needs.

You might be glad to know that I am a web designer and my job requires me to print a lot of high quality designs for the websites that I design at my workplace and then comparing them with each other. This requires a printer that is precise in the colors it prints, the cost and the time taken for each print. Having printed more than 3000 designs till date, I have formed a good opinion about what makes a printer a good one, what goes into making them, how brands try to do cost cutting etc. Today, I'll try my best to pass on the knowledge that I have acquired over the years to you, so as to help you make a good decision.

So without further a do, let’s begin…

The Basics
A printer is an output device that can print everything from text, photos, charts etc that you make on your computer onto a piece of paper. Printers have been in the market since the late 1980s in the name of dot matrix printer, though the technology used then was vastly different and often inconvenient from what we see nowadays. Currently, there are broadly two types of printers that are available in the market:-

1. Inkjet/Ink Tank Printer
2. Laser Printer

Inkjet and Ink Tank Printer
An inkjet printer uses liquid ink to print the information onto the paper. This liquid ink is sold in the form of cartridges in the market and each cartridge is compatible with a select few printers.
The cartridge consists of a series of nozzles that spray the ink in the form of dots that are even smaller than 50 microns onto the paper. The ink inside the cartridge is heated with an electrical charge and an extremely small amount of ink is vaporized in the form of a bubble. This bubble comes on the surface of the nozzle and then collapses. The pressure difference pulls a droplet of ink out of the cartridge and sprays it on the paper.

A slightly enhanced variation of this print technology is gaining popularity in the market in recent times and are known as ink tank printers. The working principle of both the inkjet and the ink tank printer is the same and the only difference between the two is the manner in which the ink is utilized. An ink jet printer makes use of cartridges to store the ink whereas with ink tank printers, there is a dedicated tank attached to the body of the printer.

(Picture of the working mechanism of Inkjet Printer)

Pros of Inkjet/Ink Tank Printers

• Compact design. Inkjet printers are relatively smaller, lighter and easier to maintain than laser printers.

• No warm up time is needed and hence can print as and when required without warm up delay.

• Suitable for printing high quality images and presentations.

• The ink cartridges though have high one time cost can be refilled and reused. This is the biggest plus point of ink jet printers.

Cons of Inkjet/Ink Tank Printers

• The ink used in Ink jet printers are susceptible to blotting and fading and thus, one has to be careful with the printouts and they should not be exposed to moisture.

• The print speed of Inkjet printer is lesser than the Laser printer and so, if your lifestyle requires you to print in bulk, go with the Laser printers.

Laser Printer
A laser printer does not make use of liquid ink. Rather, a powder (toner) is stuck onto the paper. With the help of photosensitive static electricity the toner is melted onto the paper using a hot roller.
This printer in addition to the hot roller and static electricity use mirrors to print the document on the paper. When a document is sent to a laser printer, laser light is reflected by the mirrors on to the cylinder which neutralizes electric charges in specific areas.

Due to the rotation of both cylinder and the mirrors, as well as the lasers, that are turning on and off at precisely correct moments, the areas hit by the laser correspond to the actual print. So when the toner particles hit the cylinder they only stick to the areas exposed to the laser light, since the toner itself has an electrical charge. Then a sheet of paper is pressed against the cylinder and the toner is transferred through the paper using heat and this is the reason that pages printed by a laser printer are warm to touch.

(Picture of the working mechanism of Laser Printer)

Pros of Laser printers

• Per print time is much less than Inkjet counterparts. So if you require multiple prints on a daily basis, go with the Inkjet ones.

• Laser toner cartridge prints more number of sheets than a similarly priced ink cartridge of the Inkjet printers and thus in the long run, Laser jet printers prove to be more cost effective.

• Designed to produce larger quantity of prints and due to their less complex internal design, laser printers are hassle free devices and require less maintenance.

Cons of Laser printers

• Restricted use. Inkjet printers do a fabulous job in printing text and simple graphics. But, if one needs to print high quality images, Inkjet printers do a much better job.

• Requires warm up time, thus if you like to print things on the last minute, Inkjets would serve your purpose better.

• One time up front cost of laser printers are higher than the Inkjet ones, though the toner cartridges are cheaper than ink cartridges.

Now, having discussed about the Pros and Cons of the print technologies, it is imperative to learn about two important aspects related to printers, the knowledge about which go a long way in making the buying decision to cater to one's requirements - 

• Print Resolution

Print Resolution is the amount of ink that a printer can place in a one-inch line of a print document and is measured in Dots Per Inch(DPI). For instance, a printer with a 300x300 DPI print resolution puts 90,000 dots per square inch of the document. Now, as a rule of thumb -

• For someone considering to purchase a laser printer, it is imperative to decide on the one that provides at least 600x600 DPI print resolution. With such DPI, the printed text is visibly crisp and the images are decently high in resolution. Printers with print resolution of 1200 x 1200 DPI or higher produce images in fine detail and rich in colours. 

• When inkjet/ink tank printers are in consideration, a printer with a print resolution of 1200x1200 DPI for Monochrome printing and 4800x1200 DPI for Colour printing makes for a decent choice.

• Print Speed

Typically, inkjet printers are capable of printing about 12–15 pages per minute in Black ink and about 10 prints in Colour. On the other hand, laser printers typically print about 20–25 pages per minute in Black ink and in Colour the average is about 15–18 pages per minute. The nature of the print and the resolution too influences the print speed to some extent. 

So, if one has extensive print requirements and under a time constraint, it would be wise to decide on a laser printer. Whereas, for regular use and in situations where time is not at a premium, an inkjet/ink tank printer would be a suitable option. 

Now, having learnt about the different types of printers and their pros and cons, let’s proceed to understand how some brands use smart marketing tricks to loot the customers in the long run.

• Nowadays, some brands, to lure the customers are manufacturing printers which are very friendly on the customer’s pocket and so, the innocent customer falls for the low price trap. Everything works as intended until the cartridge ink needs to be replaced or refilled. Here comes the trap, the replacement ink cartridges are very steeply priced to recover the initial low cost of the printer. Most customers, though unwillingly purchase the replacement cartridges and thus over time, one ends up paying more than five times the initial cost of the printer to the brand.

• Secondly, to cut costs, some manufacturers use low quality parts in manufacturing the printer. Since, printers work by the integration of numerous tiny parts, malfunctioning of even one part leads to the malfunction of the entire printer, repairing which, again is a costly and tedious process.
  

So now, having discussed the cost cutting techniques that are used by some manufacturers to trick the customers, let’s proceed to discuss what type of printer would be the best one according to your needs and work/life style.

Your Needs

Print requirements

• An inkjet/ink tank printers make for a better purchase in situations where one intends to print high resolution colour images for work/academic projects. Furthermore, since the cost of these printers is comparatively lesser than that of their laser jet counterparts, if one does not have heavy printing requirements, inkjet/ink tank printers make for a better choice.

• If one requires to print more than 50 pages a week, where most of the prints are textual in nature, deciding on a laser printer would be a wise choice as the ‘per print’ cost would be substantially lesser than the ‘per print’ cost of an inkjet or ink tank printer. The cost of toner cartridge of a laser jet printer is considerably lesser than the cost of the ink cartridge as well. Additionally, an ace laser printers have up their sleeves is their toner cartridge. Because inkjet printers use liquid ink, the ink is prone to smudging if it is rubbed before it dries. Laser printers do not have this problem since they melt the solid toner to the paper.

• If you require a mix of both the worlds, i.e. bulk printing as well as some color prints that are not very graphic, you too are in luck as color laser printers are available in the market and offer the best of both the worlds, though high quality printing is still a forte of the Inkjet ones.

Other functionality requirements

• Multi purpose printer - As the name suggests, this category of printer serves various other purposes in addition to printing. The functionalities include scanner, copier, fax etc. and thus, is an ideal printer for home.

• Single purpose printer - This category is intended to serve only one functionality, i.e., printing. This type of printers are most commonly seen at work places and business environments where intention is just bulk printing.

Having said that, let’s proceed to zero down at some of the best Inkjet and Laser printers that are available in the market currently, that not only offer one of the best printing solutions but offer the most bang for the buck as well.

Note: In our constant endeavour to assist you in making an informed buying decision, we test the new launches of the products on multiple parameters, and if they stand tall in our analysis we periodically add them to the below mentioned list of our recommended products. So, if you plan to make the purchase at a later time, you may visit the links once again at the very time of buying to ensure that the purchase turns out to be a very fruitful one.

Inkjet Printers

Best Choice 1, My Preferred Choice, Best Choice 2, Best Choice 3 and Best Choice 4

Ink Tank Printers
Best Choice 1, Best Choice 2, My Preferred Choice, Best Choice 3, Best Choice 4 and Best Choice 5

Monochrome/Grayscale Laser Printers
Best Choice 1, Best Choice 2, My Preferred Choice, Best Choice 3, Best Choice 4, Best Choice 5, Best Choice 6 and Best Choice 7

Colour Laser Printers
Best Choice 1, Best Choice 2, My Preferred Choice and Best Choice 3