Which printer should I buy ?

Ink or Laser Printer ?
The 1st choice is Ink or Laser, and the answer will depend on what you intend to print & how often you plan to use the printer.

For working environments where there will be a high volume of daily usage, there is no doubt that the laser printer is the better option. The laser printer is built to hold up to repeated daily usage and larger print jobs.

If your printer is used simply to print a page or 2 each day - an inkjet printer may be a suitable choice for your needs.

Purchase price of the Printer
The number-one place where people go wrong on printers is they buy based on equipment cost and don't look at the toner or ink prices,” “The first thing they should look at is the price of consumables – some of the lower-price printers wind up having a high price per page.

“If you have any significant volume, more than 100 pages a month, you should buy a color laser printer,” says William Gott, president of Venture Marketing Strategies in Los Gatos, Calif. “A typical color laser, based on five percent coverage per color, is down in the neighborhood of ten cents per pence page, You can expect to pay twice or three times that much for inkjet copies.”

Remember: The cost of replacement cartridges can run much higher than the cost of the printer itself. Refilling your cartridges can reduce the running costs by up to 80%.

Color versus Monochrome

Do you want to print documents in colour - now or in the future ? Fortunately the price of colour laser printers has crashed in recent years making them very affordable. The future is colour. You may be able to set a colour printer to print in "black" only - but you cannot set a monochrome printer to print in colour !

Here are a few more points to consider before you buy a laser printer

Once you've settled on a laser printer you still have to pick the best item from over 500 laser printer models made by more than a dozen manufacturers including Canon, Epson, HP, IBM, Okidata and Xerox. Here are a few criteria to help you make the correct selection:

Multifunction

Do you want to purchase a stand-alone printer or would a multi-function printer (MFP) one that includes copier, scanner and fax capabilities, better suit your needs? Increasingly popular, multi-function printers, both in color and black and white, are replacing copiers and printers, particularly in small and medium businesses. Benefits include space-saving and being economical in terms of purchase price.

Are toner refills available for your model printer ?

Yes - great !

No - you will need to buy replacement cartridges until the refill is launched. Check with us if we have your model under development,

Does your printer use a separate drum and toner cartridge ?

Very important - if you can - purchase a printer that offers the drum (also known as an OPC / Photoconductor unit) and the toner cartridge as separate consumable items. That way, you only need to change the consumable that needs to be changed. i.e. if your toner unit is empty - why should you change the drum unit when it still has life left ?

If you buy a printer that uses a combined toner / drum in one fixed unit, you will limit the amount of times that you can refill. The drum will eventually wear out and you will need to dispose of both the drum and the toner section together. Bad for your pocket and the environment !

Number of prints: Printers are rated at by the number of prints or copies they are expected to produce per month. Buy one that is designed to meet your workload requirements. Cartridges / Drum units are measured by page yield - i.e. how long they will last until they need to be replaced.