When shopping for a new printer, you should consider the ability of the machine to meet your needs, not necessarily the hot deal of the day or the model that looks good. Remember that the cost of your printer will not only be the purchase price but also the cost of supplies as well as the impact to productivity due to print speed.

 

In this article, we will discuss the following criteria:

We will share with you “Our Picks” and make some general recommendations based on different printing needs.

 

 

 

The first question you should ask about your new printer is: “What is the monthly duty cycle or maximum recommended pages per month?” Although these figures tend to be nothing more than a marketing tool, they do give a relative indication of the durability of a printer. You should definitely make sure your printer is rated for at the very least 5 times what you believe you will use. Laser printers have typically much higher monthly duty cycle than inkjets. However, there are business inkjet printers capable of meeting higher duty cycle requirements.

 

 

If you wish to refill, you need a printer that uses inexpensive ink or toner, that can be easily refilled and does not have any chips or other restrictions that stop you from refilling. It it the same factors that make refilling cost-effective that also make compatible cartridges more cost-effective. Some manufacturers go out of their way to make cartridges that are difficult to refill or copy. They do this so that they can sell their OEM supplies more expensively. Therefore, regardless of whether you wish to refill or buy compatible cartridges, you need to make sure that the cartridges in your new printer do not have chips or other restrictive devices that are designed to cost you more money in the long run. In general, if you buy a Brother laser or inkjet printer, you will avoid all these problems and will be able to refill at will. Furthermore, we offer refillable cartridges for Brother inkjets that will allow you to refill with even greater ease! Brother laser cartridges always have caps for easy refilling without piercing holes. If you plan on only using compatible cartridges, we can also recommend HP Laser Printers. This is because the high production volumes lead to low aftermarket prices even though these cartridges have chips. Be sure to stay away from most LEXMARK and HP inkjets or other inkjet printers that have cartridges with expensive print heads or chips built in.

 

 

 

If you do not need color, then don’t buy color! There are plenty of very inexpensive, high quality, black-only laser printers that will do an amazing job at a very low cost. However, if you do not print very much and were planning to buy an inkjet printer then color will come for free.

 

 

Let’s get something straight, all printers claim they can handle photos. However, only a true photo printer can produce photo lab quality. A good photo printer will not only produce excellent color but will also work very well with most glossy photo papers and will produce photos that are long lasting. You need to look for UV Resistant ink or Pigment based ink and remember that and there is no such thing as a laser photo printer. All photo printers are inkjets. You also need to make sure that you have as many color cartridges as possible. The more cartridges your printer has the better its capability to reproduce the color gamut you need to make your photos look as good as the lab. Furthermore, you definitely want to consider refilling if you want to print lots of photos because photos use up a lot of ink. It is for these reasons that we exclusively recommend EPSON printers for photos. EPSON has a wide range of quality photo printers from entry-level to professional models used in the photography industry. Thanks to our refillable cartridges for EPSON, you will easily be able to use our ink refill kits to minimize your photo printing costs.

 

 

 

You need to seriously consider speed if you are planning to print large documents or in a business environment. Typically, laser printers are much faster than inkjet. However, some business inkjet printers have speeds that rival even the fastest lasers. Therefore, you must also evaluate other factors in order to make the right decision. For example, if you need to print double sided, then a laser printer wins every time. This is because when you print double sided with an inkjet printer, the printer can wait up to 10 seconds before printing the back side. This is required because the ink needs to dry. That means that regardless of how fast the printer is, you will have trouble getting more than 3 double sided pages per minute from an inkjet printer.

 

 

 

Most printers specify print resolution, for example 2400 x 600 dpi. Let’s face it, unless you will be printing professional photography, all printers today have sufficient resolution for even the most demanding application. Therefore, resolution has become irrelevant. What is important is to choose the right technology. If you are doing business document printing, it really does not matter. However, for graphic artwork, brochures or photo intensive documents, inkjet is highly recommended. Laser printers have trouble reproducing solid uniform graphics such as large blocks of color. The drums and other components tend to wear out. This is especially true if you wish to refill the cartridges. The quality will drop very quickly for refilled laser cartridges in a graphics environment. Refilling your own laser cartridges is only recommended for normal business applications, not graphic arts. Therefore, for graphics applications we recommend EPSON Durabrite-based printers because they use pigment-based inkjet ink. Pigments are required in order to have water resistance and color durability that is similar to laser printing and is an absolute must for marketing and graphics documents. In addition, our refillable cartridges for EPSON will make using our ink kits easy, allowing you to minimize costs.

 

 

 

Do you need a fax, scanner, photocopier, double sided printing, ability to plug in a camera or other memory device? Do not use these factors to choose your printer. Choose your printer based on all the other criteria discussed in this article. This will let you choose a technology that suits your needs. Once you have chosen that, ask the salesperson to give you a printer with your chosen technology that has all the “bells and whistles” you need. One more thing, if you need a scanner, make sure you get a flat bed scanner. This is because it is absolutely impossible to feed a book through those one page type feeders. You will regret buying one of those feeding type scanners the second you need to photocopy or scan something from a magazine or a book.