Although laser printers cost more to buy than their inkjet counterparts, there are several other reasons why buying one is more advantageous. For starters, their operational and maintenance cost is significantly lower. Liquid inks utilized by inkjets, which cost around twelve to sixty dollars, can rarely yield more than two hundred prints. Toner cartridges in contrast which are priced typically around ten dollars for personal laser printers to two-hundred dollars for workgroup models are able to produce more than 1,000 pages. With that in mind, unlike systems using liquid inks, printing cost for pages produced using laser printers can be just a few cents.

Aside from lower printing costs, laser printers are also better in terms of speed. Although they need to warm up for 10 seconds before use, they can print up to 12,000 monochrome or 6,000 colored pages per hour compared to the less than 600 per hour of inkjets.

An additional benefit to laser printers is that they don’t smudge, since laser printers employ the process of xerography to ‘burn’ the image on the paper using differently colored non-liquid ink.

In terms of text detail, laser printers are king. Although others would say that some inkjets are already capable of producing laser-quality text output, it needs more time and inks to do so. At the same time, laser printers feature a greater DPI score, usually above 600 dots per inch. They also have a higher paper capacity, typically around 800 sheets, meaning you don’t have to stand in front of them to make sure they don’t run out of paper. Interestingly, there are laser printers that are Wi-Fi ready which means you no longer have to deal with unsightly and unruly printer cables.

Multifunction types are a relatively recent addition to the laser printer family. These laser MFPs that have already scanning and photocopying capabilities. The majority of these multi-purpose printers in the market today can also be used as fax machine that runs independently of a PC system. If you do a lot of these things, purchasing one will be a good idea. While start-up cost would most definitely be higher compared to single function ones, an MFP can save you from having to use and mind several separate office equipment.

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