How to Buy a Printer

The Big Picture

For most people, choosing a printer entails balancing price, speed, and print quality. But as models improve, manufacturers differentiate them in other ways. Inkjet printers, along with digital cameras, have changed the way we print photographs. When loaded with special photo inks and paper, inkjet printers are 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 sometimes 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. And as color lasers drop in price--particularly those with built-in networking support--more users can afford to add color to their workplace documents. The least-expensive color lasers we've seen so far now cost about $300.

Inkjet Versus Laser Printers

To choose the right printer, you have to think honestly about what you'll print and how frequently you'll print it. The type of printing determines the quality you need. How often you print dictates how fast the printer must be and how much you're prepared to spend on each job.

If you print a lot of text, such as letters and other business documents, a laser printer is likely your best bet. They're fast and produce good-looking documents at only a few cents per page.

For office documents containing color charts and other graphics, consider a color laser printer. Color laser prices have dropped so much in recent years as to become affordable for even the smallest office. They often produce black-and-white pages at a cost per page similar to monochrome lasers. And they print color photos that are adequate for plain-paper documents that mix text and pictures, such as newsletters and marketing brochures.

You'll get top photo quality from an inkjet printer. The choice becomes more complicated if you print a mix of photos and text documents. If you're a home user who prints digital camera photos, text documents for your own use (such as driving directions or product recommendations from a Web site), and maybe a few letters a month, an inkjet printer offers a good compromise between quality and speed. You'll need a variety of papers, and you'll have to learn your way around the printer's driver settings. You can reduce how often you swap paper types by purchasing a model with two separate paper trays.

In the past, almost all inkjets offered the same features: one paper tray for 100 or 150 sheets and 10 envelopes, minimal buffer memory, and no networking option. These days, however, vendors are increasingly adding a variety of features--such as larger displays or touch screens, Bluetooth wireless or Wi-Fi, and increased paper management options--to differentiate their products. Makers of business-oriented inkjets are also offering higher capacities, optional paper trays, ethernet network connectivity, and more memory.

Laser printers generally have more features and options than inkjets do. Monochrome lasers hold from 150 to 900 sheets, with corporate models frequently holding around 500 sheets as standard; color lasers hold from about 200 to 1250 sheets. You can also add trays that hold as much as 5000 sheets. Most high-end lasers include at least 64MB of RAM, with expansion options permitting a few hundred megabytes of memory for queuing multiple print jobs at once (for a busy office, equip your laser with at least 64MB to 128MB of memory); 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. Some more-recent lasers also have features such as the ability to print directly from a USB flash drive.

Before deciding, check out PC World's top printers charts at our Printer Info Center. Look for a model that gives the speed and quality you need, and that fits your budget.

Should I Buy a Multifunction Printer, or a Separate Printer and a Scanner?

So-called "convergence products" that combine two (or more) functions in the same device often do neither task well. While that once may have been true of multifunction printers, it's no longer the rule. It's now possible to get good quality prints and scans from the same unit, and both functions usually work better together than if you bought a printer and a scanner separately. For example, it's easy to copy a document directly from the scanner to the printer, without the image going through your computer.

It's important to realize that multifunction printers come in two varieties. Office-oriented models have an automatic document feeder for scanning multiple pages as a single task, and they often have a built-in fax machine. Photo-oriented models let you scan slides and negatives, and they usually have built-in media slots for reading from digital camera memory cards. You'll need to choose which type is right for you.

Furthermore, the office-oriented multifunctions can include either inkjet or laser printers. While the inkjets suit both home and small-office users, the laser units usually replace a printer, a copier, and a fax machine for a small workgroup.

PC World's charts of Top 10 Inkjet Multifunction Printers and Top Multifunction Laser Printers rank our current favorites.

What Type of Printer Is Best for Photo Printing?

If you're printing only 4-by-6-inch photos, consider a snapshot printer. They use either dye-sublimation or inkjet print technologies. They take up little space in the home or office, and they're often portable.

To print larger sizes of photos, or to print text documents as well, you'll need a desktop inkjet printer. Models with four or more colors of ink generally produce the best quality. For top-quality black-and-white photo printing, look for a model with several shades of gray and black inks.

Most color lasers produce photos that are adequate for many uses, such as real-estate brochures, car insurance claims, and missing-kitty fliers. Many models now let you use glossy paper that helps their images look more like real photos. However, they still lack the color accuracy and print resolution to rival inkjet printers.