What to look for when buying a colour printer

When selecting a colour printer for your business it is clearly important to select the right printer ' both from the point of view of cost and function. But with both ink and laser printers available in wide range of products, how do you make sure you are choosing the right solution? Here are some key factors which should influence your choices.

The most useful first step is to think about the potential quantity of pages likely to be printed daily. Additionally, a good question to ask what you want to use the printer for and also what is most important to you in terms of speed and presentation. Once these needs have been established, it becomes easier to mover to the next step of choosing the right technology.

The technology choices boil down to two major types. Do you go with laser printing or with inkjet? Although laser has traditionally been thought of as the de facto choice for business, advances in inkjet technology have made inkjets a common sight in offices. These days, both are suitable for the business environment and both have their advantages and disadvantages. Laser devices are excellent for higher volume output of typically over 100 prints a day. They are also good for creating larger volumes of marketing material or documents for customers, where colour impact adds an important dimension. Meantime, colour laser printing also gives excellent text quality and long-lasting prints on any type of paper. A major consideration is that document creation is not just about printing. It is also about scanning, storage and retrieval as well as copying. Thus a budget might include the functionality of Colour multifunctional devices offering print, copy, fax and scan features. All-in-One of this type will improve flexibility and reduce capital cost expenditure on several different machines.

If the print output volume is to be less than 100 pages a day, and cost per page is a driving factor (it should be) then business inkjet technology can offer the most cost-effective colour printing solution. Using high capacity cartridges such as for example in the HP Officejet Pro range, it is possible to create professional quality pages for up to half the cost per page than colour lasers of similar specification

Moreover, if the need is for high quality colour prints on photo paper, then inkjet printing is a vital. Ink technology, when combined with premium grade photo paper, produces prints with finer colour gradations, richer colour saturation, and better colour solids than laser printing can produce.

Finally, there may be a need to print posters, spreadsheets and other larger format documents ' and this need is met by considering A3 or larger wide format printers using the selected technology.