Inkjet or Laser:

How to Pick the Right Printer

By Mark Toft
Staples Editor

The price difference between inkjet and laser printers used to be considerable, but now you can get a quality laser printer for just a few hundred dollars. There are, nevertheless, real differences between the two. Inkjet printers are preferable for some personal and business uses — laser printers for others. Ultimately, the printer you choose depends on your needs.

Printing in black-and-white, color, or both?

Inkjet printers

If printing in color is important to you, then you'll almost certainly want an inkjet printer. And that's almost certain because (though the average price is going down fast) color laser printers cost between $1,000 and $2,000, an investment that would probably only appeal to a graphic design firm, or a similar business that generates a large volume of color prints. Many small businesses find that they need at least one color inkjet and one laser printer to meet all of their printing needs.

Bottom line: Inkjet printer for color printing. For black–and–white printing, base your decision on printing load (see below). If your business produces large volumes of color prints, consider a color laser printer.

Large, moderate, or small printing loads?

The cost of printing in black–and–white with an inkjet cartridge generally ranges from 5 to 7 cents per page; laser cartridges cost between 2 and 4 cents per page, with the highest end lasers (those costing around $1000) generating black–and–white prints for less than a penny per page. The more pages you print, in other words, the more money you stand to save by opting for a laser printer, especially one that's high–end.

Bottom line: Laser printer.

Speed

Laser printing speeds range from 12 to up to 45 pages per minute (and, for the color laser models, up to 28 for both color and black–and–white prints). Inkjet printers run from 6 to up to 20 pages per minute in black–and–white, 4–16 pages per minute in color.

Bottom line: Laser printer. Keep in mind, however, that higher–end inkjets can match mid–range lasers in speed.

Smudgeproof and waterproof prints

In recent years, inkjet printer output has become much more resistant to smudging. Since laser printers fuse text and images to paper, however, they're still the only route to guaranteed smudge– and waterproofing.

Bottom line: Laser printer. Especially if archiving is essential to your purposes or your business.

Digital camera prints

Unless you're a professional designer or photographer, you'll want to use a color inkjet rather than a color laser printer. A few important tips: use photo–quality printing paper and choose a digital camera that will have a megapixel rating that can manage the print sizes you want to create. (Read an article about how megapixel ratings determine the size of prints you can produce.)

Bottom line: Color inkjet printer.

Laser printers have their own memory and, therefore, can process and manage several, simultaneous print requests sent over a network.

Networking and sharing

Laser printers

If you anticipate having a lot of people share one printer, keep in mind that the typical inkjet printer holds around 100 pieces of paper at a time — 150 at the most. Laser printers, on the other hand, allow for more input trays and can hold as many as 3800 pieces of paper. If there's going to be lots of printing and refilling–of–trays at your home or office, you may want to opt for a laser printer.

For this reason, host–based inkjets can't gather several print jobs into their own memory and work through them one–by–one. Laser printers have their own memory and, therefore, can process and manage several, simultaneous print requests sent over a network.

Bottom line: Laser printer (or high–end inkjet printer).

Other considerations

A lot of home and business users ultimately decide to purchase both an inkjet and a laser printer. In these instances, the inkjet is used as a color printer, the laser as a black–and–white workhorse. If you run a business, there also comes a time when buying a second, third, or fourth (etc.) printer ultimately saves money by cutting down on the amount of time employees spend waiting for their printouts.

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The information contained in this article is only an overview of the subject matter made for general guidance to the reader, and is subject in all cases to limitations and disclaimers set forth in Staples' Legal Terms and Conditions.