New York, NY – Depending on your size and how quickly your business is going, you may be faced with the decision of upgrading your printer. PrinterComparison.com has presented the case for or reasons why to move past a consumer inkjet and onto a laser printer. We now present it to all of you so you can make an educated decision.
Duty cycles and page yields
Laser printers will offer much higher duty cycles than their inkjet counterparts. Even the duty cycle of many personal laser printers will be higher than that of an inkjet. Based on our research though, inkjets have closed the gap somewhat especially with the business-grade/professional models being produced by the major vendors. Despite the seemingly large disparity between a printer’s maximum monthly print volume and its recommended monthly print volume, both numbers are important to note.
Due to their workmanlike ability to keep cranking out pages, laser printers generally give companies one less thing to worry about. The pages a toner can put out before being changed is also far greater than an inkjet. For inkjets, the page counts will mainly be in the hundreds, but for lasers, the toner can last for thousands of pages. This difference, despite the expense, will actually lower one’s cost per page. The savings will be increased even more by choosing to go with high-yield toner cartridges as much as possible.
Speed of the printer
Another advantage of laser printers is the speed at which they can print. A midrange printer that offers speeds of 40ppm translates to a page being printed every 1.5 seconds. One thing to keep in mind here though in regards to printer speed is that a printer, laser or inkjet, still needs time to warm up before it prints, so you may see a figure that says “first page out” which is how long it takes to get the initial page out of the printer. One of the latest innovations, for instance, from HP is what they call “Instant-on Technology” which claims “zero warm-up” time.
The other thing to keep in mind with regard to print speed are the CPU speed and the memory your printer comes with. Following conversations with print manufacturers, PrinterComparison says that “we recommend a minimum of a 400MHz processor and 32 MB of memory for monochrome printers and a 500MHz processor and 64MB to 128MB of memory for color laser printers.” While the processor speed is a constant, one can find printers where the memory is expandable.
Color or monochrome?
The answer to this lies in how much and what you intend to print. If your business only needs to churn out pages and pages of text, then a monochrome laser is likely all you need. If you need to or think you will want the ability to print color graphs, charts, logos, etc., then a color printer is your best bet. The decision is made somewhat easier by technology advancing and driving the price of a color laser down. However, just as you have individual ink cartridges to replace with inkjets, you are now dealing with four toner cartridges instead of one. The cost per page is significantly lower than an inkjet though.
Network or not?
In some ways, going with a personal laser printer, unless you are the only one that will use it, defeats part of the purpose of going with a laser printer to begin with. Not in terms of printer capabilities, but cost. Many larger companies now are trying to lower the number of printers they have, so we would think the same would hold true for smaller companies. Recent technology has made wireless printing more readily available than it used to be. With most laser printers meant for business, you should at least count on an Ethernet connection.
For more advanced users, there may be network-wide options which are controllable like color printing. It may benefit your business economically to restrict the use of color to certain periods or users. Also, PrinterComparison.com cautions against purchasing a printer with a Gigabit connection. A standard 10/100 Ethernet connection will more than suffice, so that money could be put elsewhere.
Additional features
If your business is taking the time to consider switching to a laser, it may also appropriate to consider a multifunction laser. Chances are that if you are already using an inkjet for your SMB, it’s a MFP. If you decide to go with a single function laser, then can you afford to give up those other features like scanning, copying, and potentially faxing. That said though, if your company does send faxes frequently, perhaps a separate fax machine is in order so as to not hog your printer.
Two other features which warrant consideration are automatic duplexing and an automatic document feeder. The duplexing can help by reducing the amount of paper your company uses and save money. The automatic document feeder will allow you to spend less time standing at your multifunction device copying or scanning long reports page by page. It would be reasonable to expect a good multifunction laser to have an ADF which can handle at least 30 pages at a time.
The above guidelines should at least get you started in choosing whether a laser printer is where you business needs to go. For information about specific printers, you can read our reviews.
