How to Buy a Printer

In tests of inkjet printers conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology on behalf ofPC World, the cost per text page ranged from 2.1 to 7.7 cents per page. The cost per color graphics page ranged from 7.7 to 15.8 cents per page. For full-size photo printers, the total cost (including paper) per 4-by-6-inch photo ranged from 46 to 97 cents. For compact snapshot printers, the range was 23 to 81 cents.

Many vendors offer higher-capacity cartridges; though more expensive, they contain more ink, so they cost less per page. Most vendors also sell printers with individual cartridges for each color instead of one cartridge for all three colors. These are worth a look, because in our experience printers using multi-ink cartridges have a higher cost per page on average.

From home offices to businesses, monochrome laser printers offer the best balance among price, print quality, and speed. They're almost ubiquitous in the business world, as any office with a PC almost always has a monochrome laser printer as well. Home users might choose a laser printer over an inkjet model if they print a lot of text documents. Prices for monochrome lasers have dropped to a low of around $150 for a personal printer, making them a viable alternative to inkjets: For almost the same price as an inkjet, some monochrome laser printers are faster, produce much better text quality, and are less expensive to maintain because laser toner cartridges are much less costly than inkjet cartridges. For a ranked list of all recent monochrome laser printers PC World has tested and reviewed, seePC World's Printer Info Center .

Important: text print speed. This is the speed at which the printer can output full pages of text, which is the primary use for monochrome laser printers. Corporate lasers can print text at nearly twice the speed of home models. InPC World's most recent monochrome laser printer tests , vendor-rated text speeds ranged from 12 to 30 pages per minute (ppm)--but in our tests, actual text speeds ranged from 11 to just 21.6 ppm.

Worthy of consideration: print quality. Most monochrome and color lasers print razor-sharp text, grayscale graphics, and line art.

Worthy of consideration: maximum print resolution. Resolution refers to the number of dots in a square inch that the printer can output. More dots provide a finer level of detail, which is especially important with graphics. Monochrome lasers usually have a maximum resolution of either 1200 by 1200 or 600 by 600 dpi. Even these fairly modest resolutions for lasers suffice for printing sharp text and simple grayscale graphics.

Worthy of consideration: memory. Printers queue documents in memory and store TrueType fonts locally to produce the best output. More memory lets you print more documents more quickly, or upload more fonts for higher-quality text. Most high-end lasers include at least 64MB of RAM, with expansion options permitting a few hundred megabytes of memory for queuing multiple print jobs at once (for a busy office, equip your laser with at least 64MB to 128MB).

Minor consideration: connections. A USB or parallel port is all that home users need to connect a printer to a single PC. Business users or those with home networks will want an ethernet port so more than one user can share the printer. Some high-end business models have an infrared (IrDA) port option, which allows notebook or PDA users to print by pointing their infrared ports at the printer.

Minor consideration: paper tray capacity. Corporate lasers, designed for large offices where many employees share the printer, have two to three times the paper capacity of home models. As a group, Monochrome generally lasers hold from 150 to 900 sheets, with corporate models frequently holding around 500 sheets as standard.

Designed for offices where color brochures, photographs, or graphics are paramount, color laser printers are rapidly dropping in price. If you need color, you'll probably want an inkjet printer, but color laser printers are becoming increasingly more affordable. Even though color lasers use toner cartridges bearing a higher initial investment cost, you'll get striking color prints on plain paper at less cost per page. Some new color lasers are also capable of printing glossy photos, though their results usually can't match the quality of an inkjet in this area. Again, for more information, seePC World's color laser printers chart in the Printer Info Center .

Important: color print speed. This is why you might spend the extra money: High-end color laser printers not only print higher-quality graphics, but they also output the pages more rapidly than less-expensive models. If you print a lot of color graphics, this will be the most important factor in your decision. InPC World's most recent color laser tests , vendors claimed graphics speeds ranging from 5 to 24 ppm, while our tested speeds ranged from 1.6 to 5.5 ppm.

Important: text print speed. In general, color laser printers can print all documents--color or monochrome--faster than monochrome lasers can. Again, inPC World's most recent color laser tests , vendor-rated text (monochrome) speeds ranged from 12 to 31 pages per minute (ppm)--but our results had the actual text speeds ranging from just 8.9 to 19.5 ppm.