Spoilt for choice - Choosing a Printer
Dec 11 '04 (Updated Dec 21 '04)
The Bottom Line What is your primary use for the printer? Always keep this in mind, and research, research, research.
A printer is an evil necessity in today's world. Sure, we can have top of the range computers, digital cameras and scanners - but they don't mean squat without a really good printer. This article is a distillation of what I've learned about the art of buying your next best friend (or worst enemy).
If you've decided to purchase a printer, take a moment (I find chamomile tea is good at a time like this) to consider what exactly you need a printer for. There are such a wide range of printers in the market nowadays, that buying a printer solely based on cost is akin to choosing a girl/boyfriend based on breast/shoe size.
At its most primordial, you should decide on the following specifications before beginning printer-hunting:
1. Black on white or Colour
If you only use your computer for standard document printouts (i.e. for faxing, standard business printing or archival purposes), or, if you do a large amount of solely black on white printing, consider getting a dedicated black on white printer. You'll save on costs in the long term, and at the lowest price range, these printers are usually faster than their comparatively priced colour cousins (if printing large documents, speed is an important factor).
If you want a colour printer, you must decide between a simple colour printer and a photo printer. Generally a low-end colour printer will print your photos -just not good enough for any purpose other than for a laugh - but they are good enough for basic graphics in newsletters, logos etc. If you are considering a photo printer, additional considerations are included at the end of this review.
If you do a lot of black and white standard document printing as well as photo printing, consider getting two separate printers - one dedicated to each task (buying a good quality photo printer and using it extensively for black and white standard printing will eventually kill you in terms of ink costs as colour printers usually have smaller ink tanks than dedicated black and white printers).
2. Laser or Ink-Jet
Ink or bubble jet printers squirt ink through nozzles onto paper in little droplets - hence they sometimes result in "wet" documents. Laser printers transfer ink particles (in a toner "depository") to paper using a rubber belt, an electrostatic charge and a light sensitive drum. Yeah, I don't get it either. For a good guide on purchasing laser printers check out opinionated3's review
Also, generally, inkers print slower than their laser counterparts (lasers print 1 page at a time, inkers print 1 line at a time).
Keep in mind that the fixed cost of a laser is higher than the ink jet, but the variable cost (i.e. your running costs) are lower.
The price differential between the two are decreasing with more "home-office" (ie. Low end) lasers coming onto the market - check however that you don't loose out on quality of print outs and printer durability. There's a big difference between the high end and low end lasers - you only have to look at them side by side to see the difference in construction quality.
The long and short is, if you're looking for a printer for an office environment (i.e. on a network where large documents are regularly printed frequently by multiple persons), it is better to look at lasers.
Alternatively, if you want super-fast quality printing, there are many lasers that have found their way onto the second hand market. In the past, lasers were built like durable lumberjacks (especially compared to old inkers) - and like old lumberjacks, these things still have lots of life in them.
3. Footprint or Portability
Check out the size of the printer - how it fits into your workspace fully extended (meaning all the paper trays are as they should be positioned when printing). Most company sites will include a printer's "footprint"(the amount of space the printer will take up). Underestimate this aspect and no matter how wonderful a printer is in every other aspect, you'll eventually resent its intrusion on your desk-space.
Printers have a wide array of in and output arrangements - if space is one of your primary concerns check out portable printers - they are more expensive, but they'll pretty much fit anywhere.
4. Printing Speed and Noise
Are you ok with waiting a minute for that page to print or did you want it yesterday? Print times can vary greatly from printer to printer. Although manufacturer provided specs are not always accurate, they do provide a good guide. When looking at manufacturer specs make sure you look at print times for the type of printing job you are most likely to do. A printer may print a draft quality pure-text document in a matter of seconds, but the highest quality color print could take much longer than a different machine with a slower pure-text printing time.
Noise is another important factor. My brother has a HP 3550 that, while small and fast, is noisy enough to hatch emus. Conversely, my suspicious paranoia causes me to constantly check whether my i9100 is actually printing.
5. Ink Cost
The need to research replacement ink costs before purchasing any printer cannot be emphasized enough. Unless you want absolute top of the range print-outs, ink costs should be one of your (if not the) primary concern.
Manufacturers nowadays often sell their low- and mid-range printers as loss leaders. What they make their moolah on is selling you the ink, meaning they get to milk you slowly instead of killing fatted calf . Unfortunately, this also means that they don't put as much effort into the actual printer itself - which is why some of those low-range printers are as flimsy/barebones as one of L'il Kim's outfits.
Check out the cost of replacement ink tanks and the size of them. If you live in the United_States, Australia or UK you can also buy ink tanks at a discount online. If you're going to be using a lot, some stores will give you bulk discount (or approach the printer manufacturer). Some reviewers have even worked out an ink cost per page.
If you're buying an ink-jet, check out whether the printer driver is built into the driver or comes built in with every new ink tank. Personally, given the pricing strategy of manufacturers, I prefer printers with built in drivers - they're so cheap I just chuck the printer and buy a new one when it breaks (as opposed to paying extra for a new driver every time my tank empties - remember, the profits come form selling you the ink tank, not the printer). Some may argue it the other way (better a new driver every time so they don't have to buy a new printer). It's really up to you to do the math on the individual printer you're looking at.
Look also at the availability of 3rd party ink providers. For common brands like Canon, HP and Epson, you can often buy "ink refills" from 3rd party suppliers - these are bottles of ink you can "inject" or pour into your empty ink tank - giving it another 3 lives or so. Usually, these refills are 1/3 the price of a new tank. The manufacturer warns against use of these and it will probably void your warranty (*shrug* - just start using them after the 1 year warranty period, no biggie), although I've never had any problems with black ink replacements - color replacements are less satisfactory in terms of quality. If you've shelled up for anything equivalent to or more than a mid-range photo printer, you should pretty much disregard this paragraph.
6. Acceptable Paper
What kind of paper does the printer accept? This is more if you have special needs, such as printing large format (anything bigger than A4/Letter) or printing on thick paper (including envelopes) or mediums other than paper (e.g. CDs, DVDs, transparencies..).
7. Connectivity
Nowadays, most ink-jet printers only have USB connectors. If you are using an older computer which does not have USB connectivity, make sure you get a printer with a parallel port.
Note you'll probably also need to buy a USB cable, as they're not usually included in the mid-range printer packages (common gripe among consumers, but seems to be the way all the manufacturers are going).
If you are printing photos from your printer, consider getting a printer with a "direct print port" - meaning you can connect your camera directly to the printer and print, bypassing turning your computer on.
Additional Factors for COLOUR PRINTERS
7.Paper Size - A3, A4, roll paper
What function will you be using your color printer for? If you want anything larger than an A4, you're looking for a large format printer, and your choices become a lot narrower. If you're looking to print banners (e.g. on paper that comes in rolls), then they become narrower still. Further, some high-end printers use archival ink on archival paper - meaning your print outs last much longer than regular ink. Note, there's little point on using archival paper with non-archival ink. Make sure you check these specifications before buying to prevent later disappointment(as happened with some i9900 purchasers who found out to late they can't print on roll paper).
Some printers are now also coming out with cartridges which store the smaller sizes of photo paper (i.e. 3x5 or 4x6). This is good if you're really crappy at putting paper in your printer, or constantly worried about paper jams, or if there may be long periods of time between photo printing (the cartridge will prevent dust particles from messing up your paper). Not to mention when traveling (hey, built in paper storage!).
8.Ink Cost
The best advice I can give here is for you to purchase a printer with individual ink tanks. This will save you much heartache from throwing away an ink cartridge you know you only used a third of (i.e. the yellow's gone, but blue is still mocking you from the now useless tank).
9.Print Quality Issue: Droplet Size / dpi
The "sharpness" quality of your print out is determined by the number of "dots per inch" (dpi) of paper. Obviously, the higher the dpi, the better your print quality. Dpi can go all the way up to 4800dpi x 2400dpi.
Another way to measure dpi is to look at droplet size (i.e. the size of the drop of ink being pushed out of the nozzle of the inkjet). The smaller the drop, the clearer the picture (i.e. there will be less pixilation - or places where you can tell the print out is not a photo evident in the print out). Droplet size is measured in picolaters. An mid-range photo printer will have a 5pl droplet size, while the top of the range goes down to a tiny 2pl droplet size.
For colour printers, to ensure you're comparing apples to apples, make sure the dpi or droplet size of printers you're considering are the same. I've compared a 3pl and 2pl print out (same manufacturer, same paper, same photo, direct printing from the camera, so no editing issues) - there is a significant difference when printing photos at A4 size - if you look closely with the naked eye, one looks like a print out, the other looks like a photo.
10.Print Quality Issue: Number of Colours
The "realism" or colour quality of your print out is partially determined by the number of colours your color printer has. This can range from a mid-range of 4 to the top of the range 8. Goes without saying that the more ink tanks there are, the more stunning your print outs will be.
The actual colours vary from manufacturer to manufacturer - for example, Epson includes a grey colour tank, while Canon does not, choosing instead to add a wider range of colours - you'd need to determine whether black and white photo printing is a significant part of your printing repertoire (although some say there's no discernable different for b/w photo printing between top of the range Canon and top of the range Epson).
11.Print Quality Issue: Archival Quality of print outs
If you are a serious amateur and want your print outs to out last you to the grave, you will need to get a printer that caters for archival-quality ink and archival quality paper. Very few printers actually offer this option, so you will definitely be paying extra for this feature.
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If you're still reading, here's some handy printer tips:
* When not using your printer, it's best to "close up" holes as best you can to prevent dust clogging your system (yes. I am, officially, an a*nal retentive)
* When not using your printer for a long period of time, remove the ink tanks, seal the nozzle part (I use a length of sticky tape) and store in a ziplock bag in your fridge. This prevents drying out of ink and will prolong your ink tank's life.
* Don't use crinkled paper (especially photo paper) in your ink jet printer. If the crinkled parts of your paper touch your nozzles, you are pretty much done for.
* When you first get your printer, experiment with a range of papers (especially if you're printing graphics or photos). The quality of print out varies widely depending on what paper you use - and the best paper for one printer is not necessarily the best for another (and neither is the manufacturer's own paper always the best). When printing black and white print documents check for "bleeding" (i.e. when the print just doesn't look very sharp).
* If you have more than one un-networked computer in your home, you can buy an auto data switch, allowing two computers to share a printer. This doesn't work if the computers are in different rooms or if you hate wires.
* Consider donating your out-dated printer to a local charity or NGO which can re-furbish said machine if necessary and re-direct it to an orphanage / underprivileged school or other such, where it can be of continued use
* Used up ink tanks can be sent to certain companies that refurbish them for future use (reducing land fill hopefully!)
And never forget - if your printer is playing up on you, simply turn off or pull the plug - works perfectly for me almost every time!
If you want to go even more indepth, check out the following article comparing the total costs of owning an inkjet (including ink costs) over a period of 18 months - also includes a good discussion on ink-jet vs lasers;
http://www.pcw.co.uk/features/1154787
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