An article discusses the pitfalls of cheaper printers.
Darien Graham-Smith suggested that “you get what you pay for” and that with some printers costing as little as £50 (€55/$61) there is now wonder they are not always reliable and that OEM cartridges can be very expensive and in the long run makes the printer very costly. Graham-Smith advises avoiding cheaper printers and weighing up what functions are important to the buyer.
The article notes that single function printers are now rare and that MFPs are more popular with the options of scanning and copying although it is advisable to check the speeds and quality for a good resolution. An automatic document feeder is worth having if the user wants to “digitise multi page prints” as there is no need to manually load each page and to print double sided pages the printer requires a duplex ADF.
Colour laser printers can be more cost effective than inkjet ones although some inkjets are faster and cheaper to run but Graham-Smith said that its “better to focus on practical factors” like “speed and print quality” and to remember that laser printers generally “can’t be loaded with glossy paper” so for photos an inkjet will give “more versatility”.
Connection these days is usually Wi-Fi which allows the printer to be used anywhere in the home and “accessed from any device” although Ethernet and USB can be used. Cloud allows printing directly from an IPad or phone depending on the service used, they are not automatically available but most printers support Cloud so checking compatibility is a must.
LCD and Touchscreen are available with most printers and are easy to use and configure scan settings etc. but make sure you try them out before buying as some are more complex than others.
For those with heavy print loads a paper tray that holds 100-250 sheets means that the user will not have to continually reload the paper and a manual tray allows loading a single sheet “of special stock” or “labels or envelopes” but check the output tray for size as well as some will overflow after only 25 pages.
Research the how much ink is going to cost so that you can assess the total cost of ownership, some “high capacity cartridges may appear expensive” but could be better value than the cheaper ones.
In conclusion the article said that “armed with this information” the user should be able to choose the right printer and avoid common costly mistakes.