Choose the Right Printer - Great Printers for the Price

Saving money is a good thing. If you need a new printer and you're on a tight budget, it's surely one of the key issues that you care about. The trick is in knowing how to save money while still getting a reasonably capable printer. Choosing a proper printer can have a far reaching impact on a business' bottom line.

"Start by assessing printing needs," Orr said. "How much are you printing? Do you need color? Don't just look at just the up-front cost—cost-per-page can affect your bottom line. A lot of the sub-$500 laser printers and consumer-oriented inkjets have really high cost-per-page that adds up over time."

When you move into higher-end workgroup printers, starting at $1,000, you can get the color price down from 20 cents and up with consumer-oriented inkjets to around 10 cents, and monochrome down from 3 to 4 cents to 1 to 2 cents per page, Orr said. Consolidating to fewer, larger devices also means more paper and memory capacity, and possibly better print quality, according to Orr.

Inkjet printers suitable for personal, SOHO (small office/home office) and occasional printing start at under $50, and all-in-one print/copy/scan devices below, and inkjets for heavier use and multiple users, are still under $250, Cavacetti said. Laser printers can start below $100. Workgroup-class machines, says Cavacetti, include networking capabilities, higher paper capacities, and the ability to expand by adding more drawers, trays, and other features and options.

Great Printers for the Price

This roundup gathers an assortment of printers—including both stand-alone and all-in one (AIO) choices as well as both ink jets and lasers. They don't all qualify as inexpensive in absolute terms. (The Canon Pix ma Pro9000, for example, sells for $499.99 direct.) Nor is each one necessarily the best in its category (even though the Pro9000, at least, is good enough to have earned an Editors' Choice for low-cost pro sumer photo printer). But each is cheap for its category and delivers enough bang for the buck to qualify as a bargain.

Low prices almost always go hand in hand with cutting some corners. The difference between a printer that's disappointing and one that's impressive for its price lies in which corners the manufacturer chose to cut. With the Canon Pix ma iP1800, for example, Canon kept prices down in part by leaving out the automatic alignment feature you'll find in most ink jet printers and opting for manual alignment instead. This is a bit of a pain, since you have to realign the head every time you change a cartridge. But it's a lot better choice than compromising on speed or output quality.

Similarly, the Dell Color Laser Printer 1320c offers limited paper handling, with a default 250-sheet paper tray and no options. That won't be a problem in most cases, however, because 250 sheets is enough capacity for a typical personal printer or for a small office with light-duty printing needs.

Source: eweek.com