How To Find The Right Printer

Are you unsure which printer is the right one? Your device produces streaky prints and high printing costs? We help with the device selection and give tips for smooth operation.

The paperless age is still a long way off: despite smartphones, tablets and eBook readers, a printer is a standard feature of most households. The office or department printer should not be missing in the office. Nevertheless, the printer is the device in the IT park that few people think about. Only when the color cartridges are constantly empty or the printer stops working when the boarding pass for the vacation flight is to be printed out does the annoyance grow.

In the following we will help you choose the right printer and give you tips on how to solve common problems.

Criteria for the printer purchase

There is no such thing as the ideal printer that is suitable for all conceivable applications. Therefore, before buying a printer, you should consider where your personal priorities are and where compromises are possible. The following questions can help:

Should the device only print or also copy, scan and fax?

What should be printed? Do you only need text or color graphics, brochures or photos?

What quality should be printed? Is it just about getting the daily mail down on paper or also a cover letter? Are simple photo prints enough or do colors have to be accurate and with high contrast on good photo paper?

How often and how much is printed? Does the printer come into use every week or does it just sit in the corner for months? Are there only a few pages per print job or are there hundreds of sheets of bulk orders?

What can a printout cost? Here you should not only keep an eye on the - usually expensive - ink or toner, but also the costs of energy and consumables such as waste ink containers or photo drums.

Should the printer only work on one PC or should it accept jobs from several PCs, tablets and smartphones via the network? Do vapors that arise during printing disturb with a questionable influence on health?

Single printer or multifunctional device?

At least in the case of devices for private users and small offices, the large manufacturers have an extensive selection of multifunctional models with and without fax, but only one or two pure printers. For special cases such as special photo printers with eight to twelve individual inks, on the other hand, combination devices with a built-in scanner are unusual.

Even if you do not need a fax function, a device with fax can be worthwhile, as these models have a feed scanner for single sheets in addition to the flatbed scanner. Letters, invoices or single sheet collections can be digitized in one go and if the supplied software contains text recognition archived as a searchable PDF.

Better office devices also have a duplex function here, for example scan both sides of a sheet in one pass or turn the sheet automatically and then scan the reverse side.

When it comes to saving money, the scanners of the multifunctional devices have an enormous advantage: Instead of copying a document, they save it on an attached USB stick or send it to a smartphone, read more.

Documents can be put in your pocket and read using a viewer app. This is why the multifunction printer can also be worthwhile if you already have a good scanner in your closet if you don't even print, you save the most.

Ink or toner?

Ink devices also have many advantages over laser printers in the high-performance area:

Unlike laser devices, inkjet printers do not need heating, so they only need a tenth of the energy on average for printing.

Many laser printer consumables such as the photo drum, transfer ribbon and fuser unit are no longer required with inkjet printers.

The ink costs per standard page are almost always lower than the toner costs for laser printing.

Ink devices have no significant emissions of ultra fine particles. These fumes mainly arise in the heated fixing unit of laser devices.

When printing graphics and photos, ink printers screen visibly finer than laser devices and produce better mixed colors depending on the ink.

Ink printing is more forgery-proof than laser printing. The certificates for document authenticity only apply to light resistance. Modern pigment inks are hardly inferior to toner in this discipline. However, toner only sticks to the paper surface and can be scraped off almost without leaving any residue. The liquid components of pigment inks, on the other hand, penetrate the paper fibers scraping the solid pigments off the surface is of little use.