The Specs Explained
Given the wide variety of printers available on the market, we've made a specific chart for each of the three most popular types of printers: Ink jet printers, monochrome (black and white) laser printers, and color laser printers.
Ink Jet Printers
The slowest but most affordable type of printers, ink jets shoot tiny sprays of colored dyes through microscopic holes in a print head onto pages, one print-head-height row at a time. High-end ink jet printers offer resolutions of up to 4800 by 1200 dots per inch, which makes them suitable for printing high-quality graphics and photos, albeit much more slowly than a monochrome or color laser printer would.
Ink jet printers are inexpensive printers for the masses, designed for home users, students, or anyone who isn't concerned about the highest text quality. A high price does not necessarily indicate excellent graphics. We've found a few low-quality ink jet printers in the highest price ranges, and some really great printers in the lowest price tiers. The real cost of an ink jet printer comes not from the price of the unit itself, but from the ongoing cost of replacing ink cartridges. Printer manufacturers use a business model similar to that of razor makers: You can buy a great razor for very little money, but you spend a lot replacing the blades.
Our Top Rated Ink Jet Printers chart, updated every other month, shows how well the most recently tested models performed. (Compare the latest prices for ink jet printers.)
| Feature |
Inexpensive ink jets ($150 and below) |
High-end ink jets ($200 or more) |
| Print quality |
Adequate to very good |
Good to very good |
| An important consideration. While price doesn't always indicate the print quality of an ink jet printer, there is some correlation. Before deciding on a specific model, check our Top Rated Ink Jet Printers chart to see how it did in our print quality tests. |
| Maximum print resolution |
1200 by 1200 to 2400 by 1200 |
2400 by 1200 to 4800 by 1200 |
| Somewhat important. Resolution is the number of dots in a square inch that a printer can spit out onto a sheet of paper. More dots give you a finer level of detail, which is especially important with graphics but negligible with text. |
| Paper tray & ink cartridge capacity |
50 to 100 sheets |
100 to 250 sheets |
| Somewhat important. Expect that you will have to frequently add paper if you use the printer regularly, as most home-oriented models come with only one paper tray. Many inexpensive printers require costly cartridge replacements every 50 to 100 pages, which is usually about the maximum capacity of one paper tray. If you print lots of photos or graphics, you may have to replace ink cartridges even more frequently. |
| Typical cost of cartridge replacement |
$20 to $50 |
$20 to $75 |
| Somewhat important. The printer may be cheap, but the price and capacity of ink jet consumables will determine the lifetime cost of a particular printer. Before plunking down your cash, ask how much the replacement ink cartridges cost and how many pages each cartridge can print. |
Monochrome Laser Printers
From home offices to businesses, monochrome laser printers offer the best balance between price, print quality, and speed. Almost ubiquitous in the business world, any office with a PC almost always has a monochrome laser printer as well. Home users might choose a laser printer over an ink jet printer if they print a lot of text documents. Prices for monochrome lasers have dropped to a low of under $200 for a personal printer, making them a viable alternative to ink jets. For almost the same price as an ink jet, some monochrome laser printers are faster, produce much better text quality, and are less expensive to maintain because laser toner cartridges are much less costly than ink jet cartridges. PC World publishes a Top 10 Monochrome Laser Printers chart three times a year.
If you need color, you'll probably want an ink jet printer--but if you have the space, it's almost worth it to buy both. You'll need to replace those ink cartridges less often because you won't be using them for black text, which may end up costing less in the long term.
| Feature |
Small/home office lasers ($500 and below) | Corporate lasers ($750 to $2000 or more) |
|
Print speed for text |
9 to 12 ppm |
11 to 18 ppm |
|
An important consideration. This is the speed at which the printer can output full pages of text, which is the primary use for monochrome laser printers. Corporate lasers can print text at nearly twice the speed of home models. |
|
Maximum print resolution |
600 by 600 to 1200 by 1200 |
1200 by 1200 |
|
Somewhat important. Resolution refers to the number of dots in a square inch that the printer can output. More dots provide a finer level of detail, which is especially important with graphics. |
| Memory |
2MB to 8MB of built-in RAM |
16MB to 64MB of built-in RAM |
|
Somewhat important. Printers queue documents in memory and store trueType fonts locally to produce the best output. More memory lets you print more documents more quickly, or upload more fonts for higher-quality text. Most printers let you upgrade RAM as needed without shipping the unit back to the factory. |
| Connections |
Parallel, USB, optional ethernet |
Parallel, USB, ethernet, optional IrDA |
|
A minor consideration. A USB or parallel port is all that home users need to connect a printer to a single PC. Business users or those with home networks will want an ethernet port so more than one user can share the printer. Some high-end business models have an infrared (IrDA) port option, which allows notebook or PDA users to print by pointing their infrared ports at the printer. |
| Paper tray capacity |
150 to 350 sheets |
350 to 650 sheets |
|
A minor consideration. Corporate lasers, designed for large offices where many employees share the printer, have two to three times the paper capacity of home models. |
Color Laser Printers
Designed for offices where color brochures, photographs, or graphics are paramount, color laser printers are among the most expensive printers you can buy. Few home users will need a color laser printer. We test the current and newest models every four months for our Top Rated Color Laser Printers chart. (Compare latest prices.)
| Feature |
Inexpensive color lasers ($2300 and lower) |
High-end color lasers ($2500 to $5500) |
|
Print speed in color (full-page graphics) |
Less than 1 to 2 ppm |
1.5 to 3 ppm |
| An important consideration. This is why you might spend the extra money: High-end color laser printers not only print higher-quality graphics, but they also output the pages more rapidly than less-expensive models. If you print a lot of color graphics, this will be the most important factor in your decision. But note that when we test printers, we often find that vendor-stated speeds are higher than actual tested speeds; see our Top Rated Color Laser Printers chart. |
| Print quality |
Adequate to very good |
Very good to excellent |
| An important consideration. Crisp graphics are the most important factor in deciding which color laser printer to buy. Our Top Rated Color Laser Printers chart describes the results we get when printing standardized test patterns and full-page graphics. Both color and monochrome lasers print text extremely well. |
| Maximum print resolution |
1200 by 600 to 2400 by 1200 |
2400 by 1200 to 2400 by 2400 |
| An important consideration. Resolution means the number of dots in a square inch that the laser can output. More dots provide a finer level of detail, which is especially important with graphics but negligible with text. |
| Print speed in monochrome (text) |
5 to 10 ppm |
11 to 15 ppm |
| Somewhat important. In general, color laser printers can print all documents--color or monochrome--faster than monochrome lasers can. |
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