How to Buy a Printer

Introduction

No matter how digitally savvy we think we are, most of us need to put ink to paper from time to time. It may not be as glamorous as the latest tiny gadget, but that trusty, dust-covered printer in the corner is the workhorse many people depend on. PC World tests and reviews three different types of printers--inkjets, monochrome lasers, and color lasers--on an ongoing basis, and also regularly tests multifunction devices that use each of those printing methods. No matter which kind of printer you're looking for, here's the information you need to make a well-informed purchase.

The Big Picture From inexpensive inkjets to monochrome and color lasers, different printers are designed to do different jobs. Here's how they stack up, feature by feature. more

Key Specs Explained We unravel the mysteries of print speed, print quality, and maximum resolution--and tell you which specs are really important. more

Printer Shopping Tips Whether you want an ink jet for home use or a laser printer to take care of the whole office, we've got recommendations to make your purchase easier. more

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 laser printers--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 laser printers 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 ten 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.

Multifunction Printer or Separate Printer and Scanner?

An MFP combines print, copy, scan, and sometimes fax functions in one occasionally large or odd-looking package. This combination is especially attractive for personal use, small or home-based businesses, and even busy satellite or executive offices. 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 and Ethernet or Wi-Fi networking. Photo-oriented models sometimes 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 Inkjet Multifunction Printers and Top Multifunction Laser Printers rank our current favorites.

What Printer Type 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.

PC World's Top 5 Snapshot Printers chart ranks our current favorites and our recent report on digital photography Digital Photos: Print Them, Share Them, Perfect Them, explains each model in greater depth.

To print larger sizes of photos, or to print text documents as well, you'll need a desktop inkjet printer.

Here's a list that correlates a camera's megapixels to print size:

• 2 megapixels = 1200 by 1600 pixels = 4 by 5 inches
• 3 megapixels = 1536 by 2048 pixels = 5 by 7 inches
• 6 megapixels = 2400 by 3000 pixels = 6.5 by 10 inches
• 10 megapixels = 2592 by 3872 pixels = 8.5 by 13 inches
• 12 megapixels = 4368 by 2912 pixels = 9.7 by 14.5 inches

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.

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 ten 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 Printers 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 network capable 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 out Printers 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 Printers 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 (often in draft-mode) ranging from 5 to 22 ppm, while our tested speeds (conducted in standard mode) ranged from 1.7 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 17 to 31 pages per minute (ppm)--but our results had the actual text speeds ranging from just 11.6 to 26.3 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.

Printer Shopping Tips

Shopping considerations include the cost of cartridge or toner refills. We'll also list things to watch out for when shopping for an inkjet or a laser printer.

Refilling the Tank

Ink cartridges.

Inkjet printers might be inexpensive, but the cost of replacement ink can drive up the overall cost. Check the prices of ink cartridges, and find out how many pages each cartridge is rated to print. Once you figure out how many pages you will print per month, you can determine the cost of the printer plus ink over the course of a year. Consider getting individual cartridges if you know you'll need one color more than others--for instance, if many of your documents have a red logo.

You can save significantly on the cost of printing each page by buying ink and toner made by a company other than your printer's manufacturer. That's fine, if you want just the cheapest possible printing for short-lived documents. However, you're taking a risk if print quality is paramount. For example, at the temperatures applied by your printer's engine, generic toner may not fix to the paper as well as the manufacturer's compound. The result could be poorly shaped characters and gray banding across the page--and that's not a great way to impress a potential customer.

There are several ways to spend less on ink and paper for your printer. See our recent report, Six Savvy Ways to Get More Prints for Less Money, for sensible ideas to increase the efficiency of your printer and extend the page life of your ink cartridges.

Laser toner. Several laser printer manufacturers, including Dell and Lexmark, sell toner cartridges at a discount if you return the cartridges for recycling when they're empty. For example, Dell charges $90 for each 6000-page cartridge for its Laser Printer 1710n when you return it, but a nonreturnable version costs $130. In part, this is to discourage customers from refilling the cartridges, but it can also help to save the environment.

Other manufacturers have programs for recycling their inkjet and toner cartridges. For example, HP includes postage-paid shipping materials with most of its printers for returning used cartridges, but you can also order these from its Web site. Brother and Oki have similar programs through their Web sites. Konica Minolta includes prepaid shipping labels with its new cartridges for returning the used part.

Your local school or charity may participate in a collection program that helps it raise funds. You can also look for an office supply store that pays you a small sum or offers a discount in exchange for refillable cartridges. Check out our report for other tips on staying green.

Inkjet Printers

Speed. Manufacturers often list faster print speed specifications on their packaging than we see in testing.

Photo printing. Most color inkjets can print photos at a quality that approaches the level of a professional photo lab. If you plan to use your printer primarily for photos and graphics, look for models that specialize in that type of printing. If you plan to print mostly photos, look for photo printers with features such as media card readers and an LCD panel that allows you to view and print an image without using your PC. Also look for bundled image editing software.

Overall value. Price does not necessarily translate to print quality or speed. Shop around, and check the latest Top Inkjet Printers chart on PC World's Printers Info Center for the most recent test results. If you plan to print lots of graphics, keep an eye on our tested print speed for full-page graphics. Don't forget to research prices in PC World.comShopping before making a purchase.

Monochrome Laser Printers

Text only? If you print lots of text-only documents, consider buying an inexpensive monochrome or color laser printer. These printers provide superior text quality compared with inkjet printers.

Value lasers. Some monochrome and color lasers cost as little as $150 and $400, respectively, making them a good deal for home users.

An inkjet for photos. If you need to print a lot of text and glossy photos, buying a good photo inkjet printer in addition to an inexpensive monochrome laser printer could save you money on ink and maintenance costs in the long run.

Is ethernet necessary? Most monochrome lasers come with optional ethernet ports for networks. If you plan to use the printer with just one PC, however, don't pay the extra money for an ethernet card.

Color Laser Printers

High-yield cartridges. When buying toner for laser printers, look for high-yield cartridges. Many manufacturers produce cartridges for the same printer that come in larger capacities at a better price. For example, Dell offers cartridges rated for 3000 pages for its Laser Printer 1710n at $70, whereas a 6000-page cartridge costs $90.

Print speed. PC World tests consistently find that color laser printers print color graphics more slowly than the printers' manufacturers claim they do. If print speed is a factor for you, always check the speeds on the latest Top Color Laser Printers chart listed on PC World's Printers Info Center page before deciding on a model.

Toner vs. cartridge. Color laser printer toner cartridges are the most expensive consumable you can buy for a printer, but their yield is so much higher than an inkjet cartridge that, in the long run, color laser toner is less expensive on a per-page basis.

Recyclability. Color laser toner cartridges are also potentially hazardous to the environment. Make sure your office supply store or supplier accepts spent units for recycling.

The cost of color. If you're not running a graphics department but still want to print color, you'll most likely choose an inkjet printer, which can create beautiful photo prints at a tenth of the cost of a color laser--when it comes to initial purchase price, that is. Keep in mind that the inexpensive price of an inkjet is quickly surpassed by the cost of replacement ink.

Paul Jasper, Dave Johnson, and Melissa Riofrio contributed to this Buying Guide.