Printer Review Comparisons

In today's market, there are basically 4 types of popular printers.

o Inkjet

o Laser

o Thermal Transfer(Dye Sublimation)

o Dot Matrix (Yes, they're still selling these!)

The factors that separate them are simple.

o Initial cost

o Operation cost

o Speed and Performance

o Durability

o Specialty jobs

If you are going to be printing strictly in Black & White (B&W), you're going to be happiest with a laser printer. They offer faster print speed, crisper text, and lower cost of operation. A good one is usually more expensive than an Inkjet, but with the costs of ink cartridges, you'll soon recoup that initial investment.

A typical B&W laser printer for home-office type use will run $300-$500 and will give you 20-24 pages per minute(ppm). For big office printing, expect over $1,000. Also expect 30+ppm. You will also achieve a resolution of 1200 x 1200. Higher resolution means crisper text. Laser printers are also usually rated on monthly volume. This is something to consider if you are purchasing a printer that will get a lot of usage. Don't buy one rated for 10,000 pages a month if you know you'll be printing 20,000. You'll wear it out quick.

You can also get color laser printers, their cost has come down a lot from the $5,000 units 10 years ago. They're usually fine for business type graphics, but I still like a nice photo inkjet for printing photos.

Inkjet's and Thermal printers have much smaller cartridges and usually run out quicker than the toner in a laser. Because of that, the cost of printing each page can be much more. These printers can also be purchased with the ability to print onto CD/DVD, which is a nice feature. Duty cycle isn't as high as a laser, but for home/office printing, most of them can keep up fine. Their B&W text is generally suitable for business, though some of the photo printers have slightly jagged text. Again, they're less expensive to purchase, but can cost 4 times as much to operate as a laser. If you don't do a lot of printing (