Be sure to look at the following items:
- Resolution or DPI
- The number of dots per inch is very important on a printer when looking at Black & White pages.
For color on the other hand, there is no magic formula for quality. DPI has a lot to do with it,
but printer manufactures have come up with new technologies that affect color quality more than
DPI.
- Laser vs. Ink
- Laser printers typically cost more, and have better quality. Until recently there were no laser printers
that could print color at anything that your everyday user could afford. Now color laser printers are still many
times the price of color ink printers.
- Quality
- In general color ink printers work quite well and provide excellent color
prints that usually look photorealistic. Color laser printers also provide excellent color but they provide
the added benefit of smear free pictures. Basically water doesn't hurt them.
-
The best way to measure quality is to print out the test pages that print out of the printer and print out some pages
from something you normally use like the internet. Usually photos off the Internet look great on the screen, but as
far as the printer is concerned they are low quality. Compare pages from different printers to determine which is the
best quality.
- Speed
- Look at the number of pages per minute. On most printers they will give to different specs. Black and white pages per
minute and color pages per minute. The higher the better.
- Consumables
- Look at the consumables that the printer uses. How much do they cost? How many pages can they do before they have to be
replaced? A laser printer typically has lots of different consumables that have to be replaced regularly, not just the
toner cartridge. Ink printers on the other hand usually only have ink cartridges that need to be replaced regularly.
This can make ink printers much more affordable in the long run.
- Guarantee / Warranty / Support
- This can be very important in a printer as it is in other products. But in a printer you don't usually have spare printers
laying around, and most people don't know how to fix them themselves, so find out what the manufacture
guarantees their printer for
and find out how good they treat their customers.
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