Print Quality Versus Pages Per Minute

Within an individual printer, it is possible to speed up the page per minute printing out by selecting a lower quality such as “draft printing” in Microsoft Word from the print menu. Often, these lower quality, speedier prints offer the additional advantage of saving ink or toner as well. But when buying a printer, or choosing between printers, how do you know which model to choose to get the best speed and quality? Do you always have to sacrifice one or the other?

In inkjet and laser printers, pages per minute is often abbreviate ppm, and is usually estimated for both color and black and white output (if the printer offers color at all.) Black and white is usually a little bit faster; on average, small, modern printers that print both color and black and white print around 29 pages per minute. This amount is measured using the “economy” mode of the printer, text only, so consider when buying a printer that usually, it will print even more slowly than the 2 seconds per page you might have been expecting. If a printer model is intended for photo printing, a photo printing speed will often be provided, and you will see that in this case, a great deal of speed is sacrificed.

In short, while you may be able to shell out a few (or a few hundred) extra bucks to acquire a high-quality output printer that prints relatively fast as well, you can’t ignore the quality versus speed war yet.

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