Buyers Guide: Printers

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Modern printers are one of the most complex pieces of electromechanical engineering you'll ever attach to your PC. Mass production has brought the purchase costs of the hardware down to incredibly low levels, but running costs over time will usually be more than the initial purchase price.

Manufacturers operate on the 'razor blade' model, where the big profits are made on the consumables. However, it's easy to forget that the quality of prints from even the cheapest models is something that would have cost a fortune a few years ago.

Stating the obvious
Before you even start, think about the basics. Printers come in all shapes and sizes, and a sleek-looking model in the shop can transform into a space hogging monster when you unfold all the paper trays and sheet feeders.

Quoted sizes don't always give you an idea of the maximum footprint of the unit, so wherever possible get your hands on a sample and see how big it really is in its working mode. Most computer stores have lots of models on display, so do some legwork before you make your final decision.

What do you print?
The best way to buy a printer is to first create a shopping list of the things you want it to be able to do. Let's look in detail at each item that should be on your list.

Do you need colour?
If you don't need colour, a monochrome laser or LED printer might be suitable, depending on your other requirements. LED printers use LEDs for the light source rather than a laser, but are otherwise identical.

For example, if you print hundreds of pages a week then a laser is the best option as they're cheaper and more reliable for high-volume printing. But if you only print a few pages a month, a cheap colour inkjet is just as good unless you need high text quality.

If you want to print lots of high-quality colour photos, a fast (but costly) business-oriented inkjet might be worth considering, but if you just want coloured text or graphics, a colour laser will be more cost effective.

How many pages a month do you want to print?
Expecting a £30 inkjet to print 5,000 pages a month is not realistic. Most cheap inkjets won't last more than a few thousand pages before they're scrapped. If you print large amounts, a laser or a high-end inkjet designed for high-volume use is required.

Look for the manufacturer's quoted 'duty cycle' which tells you how many pages a month the machine can reliably handle. Choose a duty cycle three or four times larger than your expected average usage and you should get years of use out of it. Also check the printer's 'engine life' or 'total print volume'. After this expires, the printer will be living on borrowed time and will be uneconomical to repair.

How big is your average print job?
Quoted printer speeds can be very misleading. They usually refer to the speed the printer can push a blank sheet of paper through the mechanism. And when quoted for documents, they tend not to refer to the highest quality settings. For real-life speeds, read PCW's reviews. We test using real documents and photos to give you a better idea of actual printing times.

Also check out the size of the paper feed trays. Cheap inkjets can take maybe 50-100 sheets, while more expensive models and laser printers usually have 500-sheet or larger trays, plus optional extra trays.

If you need to print regularly on both sides of the paper, choose a model with a built-in (or optional) duplex unit. If you want to print envelopes, labels or other unusual formats, check whether your printer can handle them. Laser printers intended for business use generally have a much wider range of paper handling options than inkjets, although budget lasers are more limited. Colour lasers can be either single-pass or four-pass: single pass allows colour prints to be printed at the same speed as monochrome output.

What type of content do you want to print?
Inkjets need decent quality paper to get good text results, and expensive coated papers for the best photo reproduction. Lasers give excellent text output on cheap copier paper, but photo reproduction isn't brilliant even on high-end models.

Colour lasers are great for printing large quantities of flyers, newsletters, business cards and so on where spot colour is needed but high quality photo reproduction isn't so important. Solid ink models are a fast alternative to lasers, but the waxy ink can create problems with photocopiers.

For serious inkjet photo printing, you should consider higher-end models that use six, seven or even eight colour cartridges. Normal inkjets use three colours (cyan, yellow and magenta) plus black, while specialised photo printers add extra shades such as light cyan or light magenta in order to improve colour fidelity. Lower priced models often combine three colours in a single cartridge, which is not as economical as using separate cartridges for each colour.

If you print large complex documents, be aware that you might be limited by printer memory. Cheap inkjets are usually GDI models which use Windows to do the print processing and can stumble over large jobs if your PC is under-powered.

Laser printers (except some budget models) contain the print processor and memory (and even a hard disk), but enabling all the advanced capabilities of the printer may require optional upgrades.

Other issues
Apart from the type of output, your choice may be dictated by other features. Inkjets designed specifically for photo printing often provide memory card slots, LCD preview screens or PC-less printing so you can print directly from a digital camera.

Laser models intended for business use will often have a large number of optional paper-handling options, staplers, collaters and so on. They're usually modular so you can add features as required.

They will also have a wider range of interface options. Budget printers now almost exclusively have a USB interface, so if you want to share them directly on a network (rather than via a networked PC) you'll need to buy a separate print server with a USB interface. USB2 is now the most common interface, but USB1.1 is still used.

You'll often find a lot of extra bundled software with a printer, particularly photo models. The quality of this software varies, but there can be some useful programs.

The quality and usability of the driver software can make or break a printer, but it's difficult to assess until you've bought a printer. Check out PCW's reviews, group tests and online forums to get an idea of any known problems.

It's also worth looking through the manufacturer's technical support site before buying to see if there are any FAQs relating to known problems with your planned purchase.

Consumables
Controversy has surrounded the merits of using third-party or refurbished consumables, especially in inkjets. In our experience, these sometimes work fine, but in some models they can cause a lot of problems with quality and reliability. Try them out if you wish (some, like Epson, include an electronic chip which can recognise non-Epson refills), but be aware that the manufacturer's warranty may not cover the use of non-approved consumables.

When buying laser printers, remember that there are usually a lot more consumables to purchase than the toner. Some models incorporate the imaging drum into the toner cartridge, making the cartridges more expensive, but at least you do get a new drum with each cartridge. With separate drums, check the price and life span before buying as you could get an expensive shock. Other often pricey laser consumables include the corona charger, fuser, fuser oil, fuser roll, transfer belts and waste toner collector. Online stores are good places to check what your chosen model needs.

Similarly, some inkjet printers separate the print head from the ink reservoirs, which is another part to be replaced. Most, however, incorporate the print heads in the cartridges.

Although everyone's needs are different, if you take time to analyse your own requirements using the guidelines above you're much more likely to find your perfect print partner.

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