When in the market for a new printer, there’s always the question: Inkjet or Laser? As many are unaware of the differences, we’ve included the main pros and cons of each, allowing you to make an educated decision for your next printer purchase.
Inkjet printer
Inkjet are usually the most common choice for those simply looking to print basic documents, such as sheets from Word, Excel or an email.
The Pros of an Inkjet:
- Small Size – most Inkjet printers are relatively small and can fit in tight spaces. They may get to be a bit larger if you go with an “All-in-One Inkjet printer,” but they’re still smaller on a relative scale.
- Low Cost – Inkjet printers tend to be rather affordable, more so than your average laser printer.
- Cheaper Ink cartridges – the price of ink cartridges are much cheaper, usually about half the price, of a laser toner cartridge.
- Excellent photo quality – If you purchase an inkjet printer that’s geared towards photo printing, you can come out with some amazing results; vivid colors, high contrast and virtually no pixelation.
The Cons of an Inkjet:
- Less efficient ink use – Inkjet printers tend to be rather inefficient in their ink usage. Because of this, they tend to have a higher cost per page.
- Slower printing – They can take quite a bit longer to print than laser printers. This may not cause many problems if you’re only printing small documents. However, it can become quite frustrating for larger print jobs.
- Messy to clean – Inkjet cartridges have been known to leak which can create quite the mess and frustration.
Laser Printers
Laser printers are most often used in an office setting or anytime there are frequently large quantities of documents being printed.
The pros of a Laser printer:
- More efficient use of toner – a laser printer much more efficient on toner use than an inkjet. “A laser printers cost per page can be considerably less, which means a total lower cost of ownership over the life of the printer” according to computerhope.com.
- Faster print speeds – a laser printer can print documents with ease and quickness
- Excellent print quality – the quality, regardless of which type of document, is most often very high with the use of laser printers.
The cons of Laser printers:
- Higher toner cartridge cost – the toner cartridges are significantly higher for laser printers. However, they also last much longer than Inkjet cartridges, making it nearly even in the long run.
- Larger physical size – larger and more difficult to find space
- Can be noisy – They can be a bit disrupting as they’re known to be quite loud. If you’re easily distracted or need to have an environment with complete silence, you could find trouble with laser printers
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