Inkjet or Laser Printer for Home Office?

Shopping for a printer should not sound like a mission to the International Space Station especially if you know what you are looking for. In other words, you don’t have to be tech savvy in order to make the right choice of a printer.

The most important thing to have at the back of your mind is the two major types of printers you are likely to come across on the market today. The two types are the inkjet and laser printers.

Whether you want to use them in your office or at home, it is prudent that you know that one will exhibit superior quality and features than the other in terms of meeting your personal needs.

While that statement may have thrown you back, this article will help you unearth the existing differences between the two technologies, what to look for when buying your printer, advantages, and disadvantages of each type and the final decision on which type of print to choose. Read on and find out more.

Choosing the Right Printer for Home Office

In the world of ever-changing technology and innovations, you can never fail to find the right product to suit your needs. One of such products is the printer and you can rest assured that you will get one which will work perfectly for you.

With different brands and models on display in various stores within your neighborhood and beyond, it is likely that you will get mixed up when choosing the right product for you.

In this era of HP, Canon, Epson and other competitors, your main concern should not be price but the features and performance of your ideal printer. As a matter of fact, prices have gone down in such a manner that you can walk into a shop or local supermarket and simply walk out with a new printer for less.

But choosing a home office printer can pose a challenge to many people given that there are many options to choose from. In addition, you can find yourself at crossroads with the type of terminologies that go hand in hand with printing much to your newfound confusion.

However, don’t let anything stand on your way to acquiring a brand new printer when we can guide you accordingly on your quest to own it. Here is a complete guide to selecting your new printer:

– Print Quality

When it comes to print quality, everything boils down to the type of output you are looking forward to. For example, if you are in need of printing vivid exhibit quality photos or pictures, then it is a sound idea to settle for a nice professional photo inkjet printer that is designed to produce pictures that have a higher resolution.

This means if you are looking for a printer that is reliable and can serve you better especially when printing top quality documents, then you should pay attention to a laser printer. Why is the case?

There is a common belief out there that most of the inkjet printers are designed primarily to produce better-colored images while laser printers are good at printing black and white documents. Inasmuch as this statement could be bearing some element of truth, the latest models of color laser printers on the market today seem to tell a completely different story.

This is due to the fact that the latest advancement in technology as far as printer technology is concerned, has come up with laser printers that are capable of producing very impressive and eye-catching colored pictures as well.

Even though inkjet printers are still miles ahead of laser printers when it comes to producing perfectly toned and highly detailed photographic prints, most of the people prefer using color laser printers when printing medium quality colored photos.

The main reason for this emerging trend is attributed to the fact that laser printers allow users to enjoy their reliability, endurance as well as being beneficial economically.

In short:

• Monochrome Laser Printers: They are excellent in printing texts and documents
• Color Laser Printers: They are the latest type of laser printers and are excellent in producing high-quality documents and texts. Also, they are designed to produce colored images that are of medium quality such as family pictures for personal use.
• Photo Inkjet Printers: These models of printers are designed primarily to produce high-quality photos using a wide range of colors with tonal depth. Inkjet Printers are a perfect choice for you if you are making photo gallery prints.

– Print Speed

Laser printers are designed specifically to meet the huge demand of any workplace including your home office. These printers are engineered to work faster and efficiently.

For example, a typical laser printer is capable of printing between 15 and 100 pages in a single minute in comparison to inkjet printers that are known to be A little bit slower. An inkjet printer can produce 16 pages per minutes (ppm) and as you can see, this is slower than the laser printers.

The fact that laser printers are somehow faster, you can use them to produce large numbers of documents in high quality compared to inkjet printers. This way, you can have higher print volumes per month and this is of a great advantage economically.

In summary:

• Laser Printers: They are able to produce between 15 and 100 pages per minute.
• Inkjet: They are a little bit slower whereby they can only manage to print 16 pages per minute.

– Print Volume

Don’t confuse the print volume and the print speed when comparing laser printers and inkjet printers. As explained above, print speed is determined by the number of pages each model can print in a minute while print volume refers to the total number of prints your printer is capable of producing at a given time.

In this case, laser printers take much of the praise because they are considered to be the best option to handle bulky office work. This is because they have the ability to quickly produce prints in large amounts of documents within a short period of time.

Take a closer look at the following comparison between the HP LaserJet-Pro M401n’s speed and print volume and the Canon Inkjet PIXMA-MX922 in the table below:

From the comparison in the table above, it is obvious that there is a striking contrast that is emerging between the print volume and print speed for the two models of printers.

Maximum Monthly Duty Cycles versus the recommended Monthly Print Volumes

Often times consumers get confused about the number to follow regarding the number of pages they are supposed to print in order to maintain the status of their printers in good working condition. Here is a clarification of the existing differences between the maximum number of monthly duty cycles and the recommended monthly print volumes of pages

First of all, the maximum monthly duty cycles is a term used to describe the number of pages your printer can produce in a given month without causing any form of damages to its parts. On the other hand, the recommended monthly print volumes are the number of pages you need to print each month in order to keep your printer’s performance at the optimum level.

In a simpler explanation, printing at monthly duty cycles is likely to result in your printer’s failure to perform optimally as you would have expected. To maintain its performance, you should try as much as you can to stay within the manufacturer’s recommended monthly print volumes rather than overworking it. In this way, your printer will last longer while serving you better all the time.

– Printing Cost

More often than not consumers find themselves at the deep end of the pool after buying printers thinking that the upfront cost they incurred is the ultimate. Little do they know that there’s more to come when using their printers.

And printing costs are a major concern for those owning printers. Comparing the two types-inkjet printers and laser printers-you will be surprised to realize that inkjet printers come with a lower upfront cost than laser printers.

Most of the inkjet models are priced starting as low as $30 while laser printers are a little bit costly with the cheapest ones starting from $60, which is twice the amount you can spend on acquiring the cheapest inkjet printer.

But one thing remains certain; cheap commodities come with their own price-tags but can turn out to be expensive much to your surprise. This implies that cheap models of printers are costly in terms of the printing cost of a single page as well as the cost of cartridges used.

In the end, you may end up spending more on the printing process than what you spent when buying your printer.

If you compare the two types of printers-inkjet and laser printers-the inkjets are a little cheaper because:

Their minimum life span is three years compared to laser printers which have a minimum life span of five years. All these factors depend on the frequency with which the printers are used.

Most significantly, you need to put into consideration the cost of cartridges when buying your printer for home office use. The prices for cartridges depend largely on the type of printers they are designed for.

Now that you know laser printers to be expensive, their cartridges are expensive too and that is vice versa for inkjets. The main reason for that difference is that laser cartridges (also known as toners) have the ability to print more pages than those cartridges built for inkjet printers.

Pros and Cons of Inkjet and Laser Printers

Inkjet Printers

Pros of Inkjet Printers

• Smaller and lighter in weight which makes them a better option for your home office.
• Ideal for printing photo quality prints as well as image-heavy documents
• They are relatively cheaper
• No warm-up time is necessary prior to printing
• You can use it on various types of papers
• Can easily accommodate larger sizes of paper
• You can reduce the cost of printing by use of ink refill kits

Cons of Inkjet Printers

• Ink can be costly for users who print regularly
• Slower
• Their paper trays have low capacities
• Lower monthly duty cycles.

Laser Printers

Pros of Laser Printers

• They print faster
• Produce sharper text
• Have a higher monthly duty cycle
• Cheaper if you are printing frequently
• The toner is relatively cheaper for high volume printers

Cons of Laser Printers

• Complex images and pictures can pose a challenge to laser printers
• They are generally larger and heavier
• Cannot handle the same variety of papers in the same way as inkjets
• The upfront cost is higher than for inkjets.

The Final Verdict

At this point, you must be mixed up especially when asked to choose between laser and inkjet printers for your home. Inasmuch as inkjets are cheaper (upfront cost), lighter and small in size, they may not be a good choice for your home office.

Laser printers are recommended despite the fact that they are larger and costly when buying them. But in the long run, they are cheaper compared to inkjets in terms of cartridge use, the number of papers printed per month and print speed. All these factors make laser prints the best option for your home office.

– Monochrome Laser Printer-HL-L2350DW

The HL-L2350DW is a highly productive but compact printer that is perfectly sized to fit in small spaces. As such, this model is perfect for your home office because it is optimized to work efficiently, letting you print 32 pages per minute.

With its maximum monthly duty cycle of 15,000 pages and the recommended monthly print volume of up to 2,000 pages, you can rest assured that this printer will meet all your needs. In addition, the printer gives you top quality prints from its 250 sheet paper capacity in a timeless manner.

The printer can handle both the legal and letter sized papers with ease. Apart from that, this compact laser printer is designed to print papers on both sides using high yield replacement cartridges that deliver two times the print volumes at the lowest costs ever.

Most importantly, you can print your papers wirelessly using its easy to link technology from your laptop, desktop, smartphone or tablet. This compact monochrome laser printer is definitely the right option for you to use in your home office.

– Color Laser Printer-Brother HL-L3230CDW

Brother HL-L3230CDW is a compact digital color laser printer that you should have for your home office use. This printer was designed to provide you with the quality results through its wireless printing as well as duplex printing capability.

This printer lets your printing work done faster, producing up to 25 pages per minute. Additionally, you stand a chance of enjoying easy and readily affordable color printing in the comfort of your home once you have this printer within reach.

Its versatility in handling papers will help you in increasing productivity while saving you time and money in the process. This means you will be able to minimize refills thanks to its 250 sheet paper tray capacity that can handle both legal and letter papers including a variety of paper sizes and types.

Whether you are printing from your mobile device or laptop, this printer has you covered through its built-in wireless, Wi-Fi Direct, Ethernet and USB interfaces. Therefore, you can make your home office the best workstation by simply including the color laser printer in your budget.

Conclusion

The choice of a printer depends solely on your needs and what you are going to print. You can choose to go with an inkjet printer or settle for a laser printer depending on your preference. But for your home office, laser printers are a better choice if you really want to save more on printing costs.