Printer Buying Guide – Inkjet or Laser Printer Buying Tips & Recommendations

You have decided to buy a printer. With the great amount of models to choose from in today’s printer market, are you confused about which one you should get?

Wondering which printing technology is right for you? Should you go for an inkjet printer or a laser printer?

Inkjet Printers

Inkjet Printers can be categorized as 3-color inkjet printers, 4-color inkjet printers and photo printing inkjet printers. The 4-color inkjets are the most popular ones in the industry.
4-color Inkjet Printers usually hold two ink cartridges (one for black and one for color). Some hold two additional ink cartridges to separate the colors and have one ink cartridge for each color (black, cyan, magenta and yellow).

3-color Inkjet Printers are usually equivalent to the low-end 4 color inkjet printers with the exception of holding only one ink cartridge at a time. So you need to switch the ink cartridge to change between black and color. The 3-color inkjet printers are no longer popular as the 4-color inkjet printer prices are continually dropping.

The photo printing inkjet printers are a bit more complicated than the first two. Many of the 4-color inkjets print photos with good quality and most photo printing inkjets carry the same features as 4-color inkjets with just a few special photo printing features added such as directly printing from the digital camera. Most of the photo printing inkjets use additional colors such as light cyan light magenta, green, and red to provide true photographic quality outputs.

Laser Printers

Laser Printers have two different technologies for black & white (monochrome) and color printing. Among the laser printers, monochrome laser printers are the most popular ones in the industry. In general, laser printers are a lot faster than inkjet printers. Laser printers are quite popular as they offer fast printing, good print quality and low cost per page. They use toner cartridges instead of ink cartridges found in inkjet printers.

Whether it’s for home offices, businesses or home users, we can say that Monochrome Laser Printers offer the best balance between print quality, price and speed
Color Laser Printers are generally designed for offices where a lot of graphics or photographs are being printed. If you are a home user, probably you will not need a color laser printer. The high-end laser printers are capable of printing good quality photographs but still none can reach the true photo quality of high-end inkjet printers.

Once you choose between monochrome and color laser printer, you can decide whether you need a personal or workgroup laser.