How to Buy a Printer

The Big Picture

• Introduction
• The Big Picture
• The Specs Explained
• Printer Shopping Tips

For most people, choosing a printer entails balancing price, speed, and print quality. But as models improve, manufacturers differentiate them in other ways. Ink jet printers, along with digital cameras, are changing the way we print photographs. When loaded with special photo inks and paper, ink jet printers have become one of the best options for transforming a digital image into a photograph.

For monochrome lasers--whose text quality is so good and uniform that models' output samples are almost indistinguishable from each other--breadth of features is a major selling point. This is good news for busy offices--for example, thanks to extra paper trays and more memory, lasers can print more efficiently; they also come with more-capable drivers, and permit easier remote management. As color lasers drop in price, more users can afford to add color to their workplace documents. The least-expensive color lasers we've seen so far cost about $1000.

Key Features

Speed: The marketing war among printer vendors has escalated so far that it has yielded utterly meaningless rated print speeds. Vendors frequently cite ratings based on printing only the simplest text documents, or printing in draft mode, and some don't include the time it takes for the PC to send a job to the printer. In any case, claimed speeds are frequently two, three, or more times the speeds you'll see in real-world printing. For the models ranked in our "Top Ink Jet Printers" chart (click on PC World's Top Rated Ink Jet Printers in the left column), the rated text speeds ranged from 5.2 to 21 pages per minute. But in our tests, actual text speeds ranged from just 1.9 to 7.2 ppm. Similarly, vendors claimed graphics speeds ranging from 2.2 to 15 ppm, while our tested speeds ranged from 0.5 to 1.5 ppm.

Though you'll get similarly misleading promises from monochrome and color laser vendors, you will find faster speeds. In our tests, monochrome lasers printed text at 10 to 18 ppm; color lasers printed text about one-third slower, at 7 to 12 ppm. For graphics, color lasers' printing speeds ranged from 1 to 3 ppm--up to eight times slower than advertised.

Print quality: Almost all monochrome and color lasers print razor-sharp text. Color lasers print color charts and other two-dimensional graphics well, but they can't match ink jets in handling photographs. On the other hand, while ink jet photos can be beautiful, especially on glossy paper, most ink jet printers produce somewhat fuzzy, jagged text and can't reproduce fine detail in line art or graphics.

Resolution: Ink jet printers generally have a maximum color resolution of 2400 by 1200 dots per inch (dpi); newer models boast up to 4800 by 1200 dpi. But even if you plan to print a full-color 8-by-10 photograph, you're unlikely to see any improvement once you get above 1200 by 1200 dpi, which any ink jet on the market can achieve. In addition, many printers use software to interpolate an image and to smooth out patches of color, fill in gaps, and sharpen more-detailed sections. Such enhancements can affect print quality as much as the printer's resolution. The best way to determine print quality is not to look at the resolution specs but to print out a sample and judge for yourself.

Monochrome lasers usually have a maximum resolution of 600 by 600 dpi or 1200 by 1200 dpi, and color lasers usually offer a maximum color resolution of either 1200 by 1200 dpi or 2400 by 1200 dpi. Even these fairly modest resolutions for lasers suffice for printing sharp text and simple graphics.

Cost per page: For ink jets, the cost of ink has the biggest impact on the overall cost of the printer over time. Vendors generally charge $21 to $38 for a three-color cartridge and $12 to $34 for a separate black cartridge. Usually, the cheaper a cartridge is, the less ink it holds; yields range from about 300 to 800 pages per cartridge. PC World's tests of individual cartridges show that a page of black text can cost from 1 to 7 cents, and a page of color, 6 to 18 cents. Many vendors offer higher-capacity cartridges; though more expensive, they contain twice the amount of ink, so they cost less per page. Canon, Epson, and HP sell models with individual cartridges for each color instead of one cartridge for all three colors. Though you'll save small amounts of ink by replacing cartridges one at a time, the individual cartridges cost a few dollars more, so per page, they cost about the same.

Monochrome and color laser cartridges cost about 2 to 4 cents per page of black text, but color lasers have separate toner cartridges for each color, which can cost as much as $250 each (less for black). Even with their very high cost, however, in sufficient volume the cost per page of a color laser's cartridges is still less than for color from an ink jet, because the yields are much higher--ranging from 6000 to 12,000 pages.

Features: Almost all ink jets offer the same features: one paper tray that holds 100 or 150 sheets and 10 envelopes, minimal buffer memory, and no networking option. But a few vendors offer business-oriented ink jets that include higher capacities, optional paper trays, ethernet or 802.11b wireless networking, and more memory.

Lasers generally have more features and options than ink jets. Monochrome lasers hold from 150 to 700 sheets, with corporate models frequently holding 600 sheets standard; color lasers hold from 200 to 1200 sheets. You can add trays that hold as much as 5000 sheets. Most corporate lasers include at least 8MB of RAM, with expansion options permitting up to four or five times that amount for queuing multiple print jobs at once (for a busy office, equip your laser with at least 32MB); some offer optional hard drives that you can use to save complex forms and other preprocessed images or to store passwords for confidential print jobs, and they all have standard or optional ethernet adapters.

Photo printing: Some photo-quality ink jets include extra features such as a dedicated USB port for connecting your digital camera directly to the printer, built-in media card slots that let you plug in a storage card and hit a button for instant prints, and an LCD menu for selecting prints; each of these options means you don't have to go through a PC. These printers can produce beautiful color photographs. But don't rule out general-purpose ink jets, which can serve very well as photo printers, too. If you change the settings in the driver to "Best" or "Photo" mode and use premium photo paper, many inexpensive, sub-$100 printers can print high-quality photo prints.