Printer Buying Guide
Home printers provide convenience and control for your next print job, and choosing one should depend on performance, size and features.
Overview
When buying a home printer, it’s important to know what to look for so you can easily compare products. Here are some considerations to keep in mind:
What should I look for when buying a home printer?
A home printer is a convenient solution when you need to print jobs quickly, or it can be a reliable resource for high-quality photo printing. How you plan to use your home printer will determine how to find the best home printer for you.
Printing high quality photos requires a printer that is dedicated to darker colors and higher resolution modes. In addition to this, users should emphasize how the photos are uploaded to the machine – the easier the upload, the better. If your printer is primarily used for photos, check out the different ports available on your new printer. Connecting directly to the printer from SD cards, memory sticks and cloud-based photo storage means easier access to your photos. Uploading directly helps maintain image quality and prevents the resolution degradation that can occur when photos are extracted from email attachments or other compressed files.
Printer with succulent placed on top of it
What features make the best printers?
When buying a printer, you’ll find basic descriptors including PPM (pages per minute), paper tray capacity, features, inkjet or laser, and monochrome or full color. You’ll also see basic physical measurements that give a good indication of the amount of space the printer will take up on your desktop.
The speed of the printer is measured by its PPM. With home printers, you don’t usually need the high speed of an office, but if you do need faster print speeds, look for printers that can print 30+ PPM. On average, you’ll find printers that can print color pages at 10-20 PPM and black and white pages at 20-30 PPM.
Paper capacity simply gives you more time between reloads so you don’t have to stand in front of the printer every few minutes to reload the paper. This has little impact on printer performance, but helps determine the overall size of the printer. The average paper capacity of a home printer is 150-250 sheets. Small printers have a capacity of 25-50.
Is a home printer worth it?
Home printers are not only for students, writers or photographers – these machines make it easy to complete simple to-do lists. While most forms are moving to a digital platform, there will always be a need for physical printouts, especially when it comes to printing mailing labels, signing documents that require handwritten signatures, printing insurance cards, and more. When these smaller tasks are needed, a trip to the print store just for a piece of paper can feel like a hassle. Home printers can easily handle a variety of projects and are a convenient tool for handling one-time print jobs.
For people who haven’t needed to print anything in the last five years, you can usually get by without a home printer. But because home printers are affordable, their benefits and convenience usually outweigh their financial cost.
Are there alternatives to home printers?
You can live without a home printer …… They only make your home office tasks more convenient. Without a home printer, you must find the nearest print store, upload your print files to that print store’s computer and print them out in the store. In an era when limiting your exposure inside public places is critical, a home printer can eliminate this step altogether and give you complete control over your print jobs. Plus, when it’s time for a last minute print job, you’ll rest easy knowing your printer is available 24/7, even if you’re still in your pajamas.
Frequently Asked Questions
So how do you choose the right home printer for you? These are the questions consumers will ask when purchasing a home printer:
Which is better: an inkjet or a laser printer?
Inkjet printers are great for photo printing due to their tonal diversity and depth, and are a good choice for people who want to print high-depth photos, color charts and create image-based presentations. On the other hand, because of their speed, laser printers are a popular choice for college students, business professionals, report producers, and anyone who relies on a printer for text-intensive printing jobs rather than stock photo printing.
What is the average lifespan of a home printer?
Inkjet printers and laser printers have different lifespans due to the way each type operates. Inkjet printers can be expected to last 2-3 years, depending on the maintenance of the print head. Laser printers can last 5 years or more, especially considering their durability in unmaintained conditions.
What is an all-in-one printer?
All-in-one printers are usually able to scan, copy and fax from the same system, making it easy to complete all tasks in a short period of time. While all-in-one printers can cover all bases, your home office will need more space to use a more powerful model.
