The market is flooded with ink jet printers at the moment, varying in price from a few tens of pounds to several hundred. Thanks to this baffling array making the right choice is not as straight forward as you might first think. Not all ink jet printers are the same.
At first sight specifications and options may appear similar, but printing quality, speed, resolution and ease of use can vary wildly from machine to machine.
A good rule of thumb is to buy the best you can afford at the time and choose a well respected brand. However for those of us on a limited budget try to look for the features below and search for reviews by other people who have bought the product before you.
Ink System
Three color printers that mix cyan, magenta, and yellow inks to create offer poor value for money. It is a much better idea to buy a printer that holds both color and black ink cartridges and will save the expensive coloured inks for when needed.
Resolution
Even if you are not printing out high board room level documents there should be no need to scrimp on resolution. Resolution in printers is measured in dots per inch (dpi) and is the principle way of improving print quality. Low level printers can not print color at a resolution higher than 300 dots per inch. Higher resolution allows for sharper text, the capacity to use smaller font’s sizes and all round more polished look to documents. You should also look out for factors like ink dot size and shape which can effect the final look of your print outs
Photo Quality
Printing photos is when you will really see the biggest difference between printers. If your printer can reproduce good photos, it should be able to handle anything else you throw at it.
If in doubt you should ask for print samples and see how well colours are reproduced, if the tones look natural. Check details like patterns on clothes, faces and smaller sections that may look blurred if the quality is not there.
Speed
All busy people need more time, so having to wait for a printer to slowly chug out that vital document for your presentation is time you shouldn’t be wasting. A good printer will knock out 12 pages per minute but you can get more than this. Just make sure when checking specifications as manufacturers will generally always show the speeds for black and white documents rather than colour.
Features
These will most probably come down to a question of your needs and personal preferences. Multi-function printers have come a long way in recent years offering scanning, photocopying and faxing. Be warned however that these jack of all trade printers do not always excel at every aspect. Sometimes it is a better idea to simply buy a separate device.
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