Color Printers

Find the best color printer

The quality of your business documents speaks volumes about your company. In order to make the best first impression on a client, it helps to use the best printer out there. Now, do you really need a color printer? If you mostly print documents out in black and white, then the answer is no. However, if you print documents with a lot of graphics or put out a lot of promotional materials, then you’re better off going with color printers.

Before You Buy a Color Printer

Once you’ve decided to buy a color printer for your business, the next choice you’ll have to make is deciding between inkjet printers and laser printers. You can’t beat the quality and speed of a color laser printer or a laserjet color printer, but they can be expensive. Color inkjet printers you are priced more moderately, but still produce documents of high quality.

If speed matters to you, stay away from the lower-end inkjets. The midrange color inkjet printers will print roughly 14 to 17 pages per minute, but printing a full page of graphics can take several minutes. Should you require an optimal balance between speed and quality, you’re better off going with a color laser printer – many of them can shoot the first page out in 10 seconds and print subsequent pages at 26 pages per minute.

Color printer quality is another very important factor to consider. Both inkjet and laser color printers can produce professional quality photos. However, only high-end color inkjet printers are capable of approaching the same quality as laser color printers. Low-end and midrange color inkjet printers generally do not render images with very good sharpness or resolution.

The resolution is another factor to take into account. Find out how many dots per inch (dpi) the printer can handle. The standard resolution of 600 x 600 is enough for most printing jobs, except for photo-quality printing. If a printer offers a range of resolutions, that’s even better. You can save ink (and money) by choosing different resolutions for various printing jobs.

Don’t forget about maintenance costs, such as repairs and replacement cartridges and toners. Toner for a laser printer is much more expensive than it is for an inkjet printer, but printing with a color laser printer costs a lot less per page.

You Get What You Pay For

You should always test a color printer in the store before you buy it. Read the machine’s specifications and see how it measures up when you run it. Some of the lower-end color printers won’t last you very long, and some brands such as A3 color printers and HP color printers are more reliable than others.

It’s better to spend more on a color printer up front and get years of use out of it than it is to opt for a lower-end model that will save you money initially, but will end up costing you more in the long run.