With a plethora of options available across various printers including inkjet, laser, and all-in-one, it becomes a little hectic picking the best printer for your needs.
There is a good chance with the limited amount of information you have that you might be upsold on a printer you had no need for.
Hence, it is vital to check a few things and decide on your needs before buying a new printer.
We’ve taken the effort to create the 5 things that you must check before deciding on a device to buy.
1. Print Quality
Print quality is important when it comes to choosing your ideal printer.
Laser offer the best print quality and are better than inkjet printers. However, the higher upfront cost and higher volume use case might want you to rethink your purchase decision.
If you’re looking for the best printer for home use, then inkjet printers are better than laser printers. This is because you will not be printing out a huge number of pages and will not be paying a higher upfront cost, as you would with laser printers.
Inkjet devices are sufficient for home use. But note that the print quality varies for different inkjet printers from different brands.
Be sure to read reviews about the printer’s quality and look for the printer’s DPI (dots per inch) which indicates how accurately a device can replicate text and images on paper. Higher the DPI, the better the print quality. Visit Leibinger Group for their inkjet and coding services which help solve machine issues.
2. Cost
When it comes to buying a printer, don’t let the upfront cost of the device deceive you. You might end up paying a lot more for replacement ink cartridges from the manufacturer.
While it is important that the upfront cost of the printer remains reasonable, you have to check the prices of ink cartridges that you would buy later when you run out of printer ink.
Even though there are remanufactured ink cartridges in the aftermarket, they are always not available for all models.
It is interesting to see how brands compete in price wars only to regain their profit margins with replacement ink cartridges that are costly and that customers buy grudgingly.
Sometimes, it makes sense to go with a slightly higher priced printer to later save on ink cost by using compatible remanufactured ink cartridges instead of name brand cartridges. Read the best remanufactured ink cartridges review article on Techyboss to understand the best alternatives available in the aftermarket.
Remember, you must factor in the upfront device cost plus replacement ink cartridges cost when you’re buying a new printer.
3. Connectivity
All can connect to computers via a USB port. However, you might want to add in more connectivity options to increase your convenience of printing.
Wireless connectivity using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have enabled device to connect with smart devices without wires to enable printing documents and photos.
Bluetooth connectivity works great if you wish to print from a local smart device. However, if you’re looking for remote printing options then connecting your device to the web gives you the option to print using Google Cloud Print and Apple AirPrint. For these, you do not have to be locally available to print documents. You can be anywhere in the world and remotely print using your printer.
Near Field Communication (NFC) is available on some printer models and lets you print from your smartphone or tablet. All you have to do is touch a specified area on your printer with your device to print.
4. Brand
The brand you buy matters.
While there might be new brands giving steep discounts on their printers, you must know that they do not have an established reputation with their products.
Also, a huge upfront discount does not take care of the ink replacement costs that might arise when you run out of ink.
To mitigate these risks, it is always better to go with a name brand line of printers. Some of the popular name brands in printers are Canon, Epson, HP, and Brother.
These brands have an established reputation with a line of including inkjet printers, laser, and all-in-one printers.
In addition to the trust component that comes with buying these name brand printers, there are other benefits including warranty, easy parts replacement, support community, and more that clearly outweigh any cost discount advantage of a non-branded counterpart.
5. Additional Features
Do you want to only print documents?
How about scanning and copying, and may be even faxing?
While it might be true that you might use your device to only print from your computer and other devices, you cannot ignore the benefits of having scanning and copying capabilities with your printer.
Printers that can print, copy, scan and fax documents are called all-in-one printers because of their multifunctional use case.
The convenience of having such a multipurpose device cannot be overstated.
More often than not, when you are dealing with official documents you would be at a point where you would want to scan documents to load into your computer or into the cloud. Here is where a built-in scanner will benefit you immensely.
At other times, you might have to make copies of a document in which case the copier functionality makes it easier to do the job.
All of these additional features that come with an all-in-one will not break your bank. In fact, all-in-one printers are only slightly more expensive than inkjet printers. But they are worth every penny.
Customcornholeboards.com uses Epson as their main printer of choice.
Conclusion
We hope you now have an idea of the things that you need to check and choose your preference before buying a new printer.
Everyone has different preferences and you do not need to follow another person’s preference to choose your printer.
Weigh your options for buying an ideal device with the above-mentioned checks to arrive at the best device for you.
Remember to check reviews of the device you have shortlisted before going ahead with your buy.
We hope with this article we have shed some light on the process of buying the best printer for your needs.
