Purchasing A Laser Printer - HP, Brother, Konica, Xerox

The quality of output for a laser printer is measured in dots per inch or better known as DPI. Unlike its inkjet brothers, the DPI of a laser printer is a precise measurement of its actual dots per inch. Inkjet manufacturers market their printers using a technique to approximate how many dots per inch their machines appear to output. It can take some time to pour through the specifications of their real output.

But when a laser printer says 1200 dpi, it means 1200 dpi. For reference purposes, 300 dpi is considered to be the minimum standard for professional print quality. For a little over a hundred dollars, you can get a black and white laser printer with 600 dpi, capable of printing 12 pages per minute. Contrast this with ten years ago, when you would need at least $500 to buy a 300dpi laser printer that only printed 3 or 4 pages per minute. But offerings from today’s top laser printer manufacturers – Konica-Minolta, Hewlett-Packard, Brother, and Xerox – have made these great products affordable, even for those on small budgets. With most new laser printers being network ready, it is very cost effective to have a laser printer with many users – even in small home networks.

A laser printer’s output speed can be important if you plan on printing large quantities of material – handouts, worksheets, presentations. Most of today’s printers print from 12ppm to 35ppm for black and white, and between 5ppm and 18ppm for color documents. Most modern day laser printers can print 3,000 to 6,000 pages between ink changes.

For the ultimate convenience, consider a laser printer which can hold at least a ream of paper (500 pages for 20 to 24lb paper) to save you from loading the paper more often. When it runs out, you can just open a fresh pack of paper and load the entire pack. No more partially opened stacks of paper falling all over the desk.

One other thing that is important before deciding to buy a laser printer is to determine what paper sizes it can handle. Unlike inkjets, laser printers don’t usually handle as many unique sizes of paper. You may find that you wish to print labels, postcards, card stock, or different types of envelopes. Some laser printers have more flexibility than others in this area, while others require you to manually load less popular paper sizes and print to them a few at a time. If you need a certain paper size frequently, make sure your printer will support it before you buy.

Lastly, there is the printer’s maximum duty cycle. This is the manufacturer’s recommended maximum, usually given in pages per month. For businesses, you’ll want to realistically anticipate how much use you will demand of your new laser printer and then add about thirty percent to that number. Once employees begin to see how easy it is to print to the new printer, printing always goes up, so be sure to account for that. Home users will rarely come up against this number, but it doesn’t hurt to look at it and think ahead to be sure you’re covered.