Should I buy a Laser or Inkjet printer?

July 13, 2009 porkchop 1 comment

This will depend on what you are printing and what your needs are. The nice thing about Laser printers are that they are now very affordable, they use to cost a lot and only large office’s had them. The nicest thing about Laser printers is the Ink lasts a long time, and it’s great for printing text, materials such as lots of Microsoft Office, Excel, and web pages. It does it quickly and does a good job. The nice thing about laser printers is that the ink does not smudge after coming out of the printer, even if its wet, so it’s great for school. I bought a Brother black and white Laser printer for school, since I had to print out a lot of reports and black and white text files, with no need of any color or intensive graphics. I bought it for a fairly good price around $60 and its still printing today, I have not had to replace any ink cartilages and now I rarely use it and its ready for anytime I need any printing.

I’ve owned several printers in the past, all of them inkjet printers, and the most annoying them with the inkjet printers, even though they were very cheap, was the ink cartilage. The ink cartilage was good for a short while, or when printing lots of pages periodically, but if you let it sit to long, it would dry it up, with a laser printer the ink does not dry. If you are into printing nice color pictures and photographs I would suggest still getting an inkjet, inkjets produce the best picture quality and are still very cheap. When an Ink cartilage in a Inject printer went, I took it to my local mall, which had ink cartilage jet refill service, I used them twice, and noticed that the ink’s they use is not good, and it drys quickly, they were half the cost of a new cartiliage, but were not good. What would happen, which was annoying, when you ran out of a printer cartilage and needed a new one for the inkjet, the cost of the inkjet cartilage is just as much and even more than the printer (if you add color) so I use to end up just buying a new inject printer over the years when the ink would run out.

There are some cons to a laser printer. First of all the laser printer does take awhile to start up, not that long, but longer than a inkjet but does print faster than a injet printer. The laser printer draws a lot of power, for example I’ve blown the breaker a few times, when its starting up, and it dims lights. Laser printer ink is expensive as well as inkjet but outlasts it in the sense that it does not dry up. The drum on laser printers go after awhile and are expensive to replace, usually when the drum go’s its best to buy a new laser printer, unless the laser printer you bought is more expensive than the drum. Laser printers can also emit potentially hazardous indoor pollution – http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291737,00.html

If you want to know the science and how a laser printer works, here is a good article http://computer.howstuffworks.com/laser-printer.htm

I’m very happy with my laser printer, if you use it for school or for printing a lot of text the laser printer is the best choice and money saver. If you are going to print pictures in high detail color from digital cameras go with a inkjet printer.