The Best Inkjet Printers

Whether you are buying a printer for your home or your office, having an all in one inkjet printer can be a time, space and money saving investment. Today with most all-in-one inkjet printers, you have Wi-Fi capabilities, memory card or USB flash drive input for direct printing, scan, and copier function. There are also some models with fax capability which is great for light office use. Most inkjet printers offer about a duty cycle of 1000 pages per month, but manufacturers usually recommend 200-300 prints per month for effective use.

Inkjet Printers vs. Laser Printers

Most people ask whether to buy a laser or an inkjet printer. Laser printers can cost upwards of $180 whereas inkjet printers typically cost about $100. The price to run and maintain them can also be significantly different. Inkjet printers offer multifunction at an affordable initial price and they do not force you to sacrifice quality, but the cartridges for the inkjets are not cheap at all. Today, companies that produce inkjet printers are constantly developing cost-cutting technologies which make inkjet printers very affordable for light home use.

Unless you are printing more than 200-300 pages per month, an inkjet printer will be a more economical option. Inkjet technology offers better color vibrancy and definition. They use a drop-on-demand (DOD) system which enables the printing process to take place at incredibly high speeds and results in fantastically sharp images.
Laser printers don’t actually use ink at all and instead rely on a roller and ink-based powder. Although the process used by laser printers is more cost effective the quality of images they produce is limited.

Inkjet Printer Features Explained

Here are the essential features you should consider before buying an inkjet printer.

Print Speed (PPM): You will want to print at least 8-10 pages per minute in color or 20 in black and white.
Quality: This is measured in resolution. You want a higher DPI to get the best print quality. Be careful, inkjet printers offers different DPIs for color and black and white prints.
Monthly Duty Cycle: This simply means your monthly printing capabilities. Most inkjet printers will print somewhere around 1000 pages monthly but manufacturers usually recommend lower print counts.
Copy speed: This is another important spec that you should consider if you will the copier function frequently.
Automatic Document Feeder (ADF): This is a feature for the machines with faxing. It allows faxing multiple documents you put the input tray automatically.

Here we try to compare all printers side by side.