Best Printer – Get the best printer to get your job done well.
There are two main printing technologies available today – inkjet and laser printing. Each printer has different benefits. And for you to choose the best printer, it’s necessary to know what the differences are. If you intend to use your printer mainly for printing color documents and color photographs, then a color inkjet printer will be the best printer for you. They are relatively inexpensive, but the ink and paper can be quite expensive.
If you are planning on mainly printing text documents, laser printers produce a better quality output than inkjet printers. Monochrome laser printers used to be the only practical and affordable option because color laser printers were too expensive for everyday use. Although color laser printers are getting cheaper, their running costs are still greater then color inkjets.
Inkjet printers work by spraying ink on a sheet of paper. The ink contains magnetized plates that direct the ink onto the paper. Inkjet printers can produce high quality print that is quite close to laser printers. Standard inkjet printers can produce a resolution of 300 dots per inch, and some of the more expensive models can produce higher resolutions.
In general, inkjets are much cheaper to buy than laser printers - especially for color printing. However, they are also a lot slower in printing and more expensive to maintain. Ink cartridges need to be changed more frequently and the special coated paper required to produce photo prints is quite expensive. In a cost-per-page comparison, inkjets work out about ten times more expensive than laser printers for high quality output.
Laser printers work by producing an image on a small rotating organic photoconductive drum. The laser changes the electrical charge on the drum wherever it makes contact. The drum is then rolled through a reservoir of toner, which is picked up by the charged portions of the drum. The toner is transferred to the paper through a combination of heat and pressure. The price of color laser printers has also come down considerably.
The main advantage of laser printers is their resolution, i.e. the number of dots per inch they can print. Available resolutions range from 300 dpi at the low end to 1,200 dpi at the high end, with 600 dpi resolution now becoming standard for text printout. Compared to inkjets, laser printers produce much better quality black text documents, and they are capable of producing more pages at a much lower cost per page. They are also better at handling envelopes, card and other non-regular media.