How to Buy a Printer

Key Specs Explained

Here we'll look at specifications for each of the three most popular types of printers: inkjet printers, monochrome laser printers, and color laser printers.

Inkjet Printers

The slowest but most affordable type of printers, inkjets shoot tiny sprays of colored ink through microscopic holes in a printhead onto a page, one printhead-height row at a time. Most inkjet printers offer resolutions of up to 4800 by 1200 dots per inch, which makes them suitable for printing high-quality graphics and photos, though typically more slowly than a monochrome or color laser printer would.

Inkjet printers are inexpensive printers for the masses, designed for home users, students, or anyone who isn't concerned about the highest text quality. However, a high price does not necessarily indicate excellent graphics and photo prints. The real cost of an inkjet 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.

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. However, vendors these days are increasingly using features such as larger displays or touch screens, Bluetooth, 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.

For a ranked list of all the recent inkjet printers PC World has tested and reviewed, consult PC World's Printer Info Center.

Important: print quality. While price doesn't always indicate the print quality of an inkjet printer, there is some correlation. Before deciding on a specific model, check our Top 10 Inkjet Printers chart to see how it did in our print quality tests.

Important: cartridge replacement cost. For inkjets, the cost of ink has the biggest impact on the overall cost of the printer over time. 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. Vendors generally charge $10 to $40 or more for a three-color cartridge and $5 to $35 for an individual color or black cartridge. Usually, the cheaper a cartridge is, the less ink it holds; yields range from about 300 to 1000 pages per cartridge. See "Refilling the Tank" in "Printer Shopping Tips" for more.

Worthy of consideration: maximum print resolution. 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.

Inkjet printers generally have a maximum color resolution of 4800 by 1200 dots per inch (dpi). Many printers also 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.

Worthy of consideration: paper tray and ink cartridge capacity. 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.

Minor consideration: PictBridge. Many mainstream photo-oriented inkjets include a feature called PictBridge, which is a dedicated USB port for connecting your digital camera directly to the printer. Most also have built-in media card slots that let you plug in a storage card and press a button for instant prints, as well as an LCD menu for selecting prints; each of these options means you don't have to go through a PC to output images. These printers can produce beautiful color photographs. If you change the settings in the driver to "Best" or "Photo" mode and use premium photo paper, many inexpensive, sub-$100 printers can generate high-quality photo prints.

A few lasers, such as the HP Color LaserJet 2605dtn and Konica Minolta Magicolor 2430DL, have media slots or a PictBridge port for printing from a digital camera.

Minor consideration: media card slots. Many inkjet printers have media slots for printing from your camera's memory card, or for transferring the images to your PC. It may also a good idea to check that your digital camera's removable media (SD, Memory Stick, xD, and so on) is supported. A good-sized LCD on the printer is worth having if you intend to print directly from a memory card.

In tests of inkjet printers conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology on behalf of PC World, the cost per text page ranged from 2.1 to 7.7 cents per page. The cost per color graphics page ranged from 7.7 to 15.8 cents per page. For full-size photo printers, the total cost (including paper) per 4-by-6-inch photo ranged from 46 to 97 cents. For compact snapshot printers, the range was 23 to 81 cents.

Many vendors offer higher-capacity cartridges; though more expensive, they contain more ink, so they cost less per page. Most vendors also sell printers with individual cartridges for each color instead of one cartridge for all three colors. These are worth a look, because in our experience printers using multi-ink cartridges have a higher cost per page on average.

Monochrome Laser Printers

From home offices to businesses, monochrome laser printers offer the best balance among price, print quality, and speed. They're almost ubiquitous in the business world, as any office with a PC almost always has a monochrome laser printer as well. Home users might choose a laser printer over an inkjet model if they print a lot of text documents. Prices for monochrome lasers have dropped to a low of around $150 for a personal printer, making them a viable alternative to inkjets: For almost the same price as an inkjet, 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 inkjet cartridges. For a ranked list of all recent monochrome laser printers PC World has tested and reviewed, see PC World's Printer Info Center.

Important: text print speed. 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. In PC World's most recent monochrome laser printer tests, vendor-rated text speeds ranged from 12 to 30 pages per minute (ppm)--but in our tests, actual text speeds ranged from 11 to just 21.6 ppm.

Worthy of consideration: print quality. Most monochrome and color lasers print razor-sharp text, grayscale graphics, and line art.

Worthy of consideration: maximum print resolution. 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. Monochrome lasers usually have a maximum resolution of either 1200 by 1200 or 600 by 600 dpi. Even these fairly modest resolutions for lasers suffice for printing sharp text and simple grayscale graphics.

Worthy of consideration: memory. 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 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).

Minor consideration: connections. 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.

Minor consideration: paper tray capacity. Corporate lasers, designed for large offices where many employees share the printer, have two to three times the paper capacity of home models. As a group, Monochrome generally lasers hold from 150 to 900 sheets, with corporate models frequently holding around 500 sheets as standard.

Color Laser Printers

Designed for offices where color brochures, photographs, or graphics are paramount, color laser printers are rapidly dropping in price. If you need color, you'll probably want an inkjet printer, but color laser printers are becoming increasingly more affordable. Even though color lasers use toner cartridges bearing a higher initial investment cost, you'll get striking color prints on plain paper at less cost per page. Some new color lasers are also capable of printing glossy photos, though their results usually can't match the quality of an inkjet in this area. Again, for more information, see PC World's color laser printers chart in the Printer Info Center.

Important: color print speed. 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. In PC World's most recent color laser tests, vendors claimed graphics speeds ranging from 5 to 24 ppm, while our tested speeds ranged from 1.6 to 5.5 ppm.

Important: text print speed. In general, color laser printers can print all documents--color or monochrome--faster than monochrome lasers can. Again, in PC World's most recent color laser tests, vendor-rated text (monochrome) speeds ranged from 12 to 31 pages per minute (ppm)--but our results had the actual text speeds ranging from just 8.9 to 19.5 ppm.

Important: print quality. Crisp graphics are the most important factor in deciding which color laser printer to buy. Our Top 10 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. Color lasers print color charts and other two-dimensional graphics well, but they still can't quite match inkjets in handling glossy photograph prints--yet.

Important: maximum print resolution. 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 a negligible factor with text). Color lasers usually offer a maximum color resolution of either 2400 by 1200 dpi or 2400 by 600 dpi. Even these fairly modest resolutions for lasers suffice for printing sharp text and simple grayscale graphics.