Laser Printers

Laser printers are ideal for small businesses, large industry or even home users. Laser printers offer high-speed printing with clear images and good quality visual copy on printed pages. Laser printers also offer the ease of changing toner cartridges and the large number of copies per cartridge that often makes them much less expensive to operate per year than an initially less expensive inkjet printer.

Originally, all laser printers were monochromatic, or printed only in one color. Historically, laser printers were black ink but now there are laser printers that print in color, as well as photo-quality laser printers. Many people choose to stay with the monochromatic laser printers simply because they are about a quarter as expensive as the color laser printers. A good quality monochromatic laser printer will usually cost between two to four hundred dollars while a color laser printer is usually priced starting at around a thousand dollars.

What to look for in a laser printer

Depending on the type of office or small business you operate, the following options may be important when choosing a laser printer:

• Graphics and photo quality – some lasers do not have the same graphics capacity and photo-quality print as others. If you know that you will require this capacity, be sure to check the manufacturer's specifications to get high quality graphic and photo printing.
• Speed of printing – most monochromatic or one-pass color laser printers will complete at least eight pages per minute (ppm). This rate is sufficient for most small business or home users, but commercial users may need a higher ppm rate of 22 or more. Color or monochromatic printers have many different printing speeds and this is a major consideration.
• Size of paper – some of the laser printers will only handle standard letter-size paper, however most newer models will handle letter and legal sizes. Oversized paper is usually only used in very specialized models of laser printers.
• Paper capacity – this is the total number of sheets of paper that the paper tray will hold. If you plan to do large projects consider a laser printer that holds more than the standard 100 to 150 pages.
• Networking – some of the less expensive laser printers will connect to a single computer using a USB cable. More expensive printers come with built in networking capabilities that allow printing from several different computers.
• Price per page – most laser printers now list the estimated cost per page for printing. This averages out over the life of the laser printer. The more expensive models often have a lower price per copy, but this is not always true. Monochromatic laser printers are less expensive per copy than colored, largely due to the cost of replacing toner.

Read various product reviews and check out the manufacturers' websites before deciding on the right laser printer for your business, office or home.