New York, NY – We have posted before about ways to find the right printer for your needs. We have talked extensively about the advantages of MFPs, but how do you know what to buy? M. David Stone of PC Magazine has the answer. He has put together some tips and tricks for finding a printer that fits your needs. We have outlined and excerpted them below:
The first step in determining which multifunction printer to buy is looking at its primary purpose, that is, will it be used for your home or your office, or for both. Most likely if you are going to use it in the home, then a primary concern of yours is photo quality. If that is the case, your best bet is to go with an inkjet printer.
Depending on the make and model, inkjet printers will likely present one or more of the following choices for printing photos: via memory card without your PC, with your camera connected to your PC and using software (either from the printer or the camera maker), USB drives, and more.
If you need an MFP for your office, then chances are that quality text is your primary concern. In this case, you will want to look at laser printers or other similar models such as solid ink or LED printers. In addition, you will likely want a machine with the ability to fax, duplex pages, and have an automatic document feeder to handle multi-page documents.
For those of you who need some of both, your needs will likely be best satisfied with an inkjet which has most of the same features as a MFP laser with an ADF, automatic duplexing, and fax machine. The major printer manufacturers all produce such models, so if you are particular to a brand, you are still fine.
In this next section, we present some key questions to ask yourself before buying the printer.
Color printing - There is no reason to spend money on a color printer unless you know you will need it. Though, as Stone points out, if you ever need to print any marketing materials, your own laser printer will do the job more cheaply than a local print shop or office supply store.
Printer size - Because MFPs do more things, they will take up more room on your desk. If you currently use a laser printer, perhaps the size difference is somewhat negligible.
Connection - The standard connection is via USB, though there are an increasing number of printers, especially those intended for offices that provide the ability to be networked and shared. Even home printers can be found these days offering both Ethernet and Wi-Fi connections. An important thing to note is if you have a wireless access point on your network, print jobs can be sent wirelessly to any printer on the network regardless of whether it is also wireless.
Output quality – This is likely more of an issue for offices or home offices than it is for home users, but important nonetheless. In our research, we have found that print quality is somewhat proportional to the price of the printer, but not as much as it used to be. If you want to print photos, you may also want to look at the scan quality.
Print speed - Once again, this may be more of a concern for offices than homes, but still warrants consideration. Printing speeds may vary somewhat with the price, but may not be as important if you are not consistently printing a lot of longer documents. Also keep in mind that print speeds quoted by manufacturers are not usually the same as the actual speed you can get.
Print quantity - If you know that you will be printing a lot of pages, the printer’s recommended and maximum duty cycles need to be examined. This may also warrant finding a printer with the ability to duplex pages or that has a higher input capacity or even the option of adding additional trays.
Total cost - This goes beyond simply the price of the printer. The total cost of the printer includes the cost of the consumables like paper and ink and in the case of laser printers also the drum and anything else that needs to be replaced on a periodic basis.
