The differences between a laser printer and an inkjet printer are really based upon how you plan on using the printer. Unless you are planning to do quite a bit of quality color photo printing both the inkjet printer and the laser printer will work fine. There are, however, a few thoughts to consider as you go about making your decision on what your printing needs really are.

How quickly do you need it?

Pages per minute are one of the leading sales tools of the printer manufacturers. If you need a large print job now a laser printer is likely the printer for you. The laser printer needs a minute to warm up for the first page but once it does get warmed up it can crank out the pages quickly. Then again, think about how quickly you need the print job in a smaller document setting, say several times in a half hour. Do you want to wait that minute three times a half hour, with a client standing at the reception desk? Perhaps the quality can take half a step down in favor of moving that person along.

Spend now or later

Whether it is hp, Cannon or Epson you can often get an inkjet printer for a song up front. You will, of course, pay as you go in printer ink costs. If you don't print that much who cares, an inkjet will do. If you print a bunch then possibly a laser is a better long term buy. The benefit here is that you also get better monochrome printing capabilities. Generally, if you're talking monochrome printing you'll find a $0.02 cost per page for a laser printer and $0.15 for an inkjet printer. The difference is that you pay the cost differential upfront with the laser and as you go with the inkjet.

Color

The discussion above was primarily directed at monochrome printing decisions. What if color comes into the equation? Lasers will give nice crisp images but what about their color truthfulness. When it comes to printing pictures inkjets are really the way to go. Laser devotees can chime in all they want but inkjet printers just get the job done better with their individual mixing tanks. They are also more convenient as you are replacing individual cartridges as you go and not one size fits all. If cyan runs out all you need to do is replace cyan and not the entire cartridge. When it come right down to it, if you want it all buy both and a network card.

Individual color cartridges are available only on more expensive inkjet printers.  The ink is expensive and comes in limited sizes.  My inkjet starts running out of colors within 24 hours of replacing the color cartridge.  I rarely use it anymore because of that.

It's cheaper to get color prints at Walmart than from your own printer.  And the colors are usually better too.

webrabbit - good points! over the years at home I've been through HP Inkjet, Samsung Color Laser, and now Lexmark Inkjet. The Lexmark cartridges are separate for each color, and the printhead is separate, so prices are better than for the older HP. BUT, we do our photo printing at our local Target or Walmart - prices are excellent, and the quality is first class. The Lexmark 605S all-in-one is awesome - even prints double-sided.

Fred Wagner

  

Quote (webrabbit):

Individual color cartridges are available only on more expensive inkjet printers.

I've got an Epson Stylus NX215 Three-in-One that purchased new last year for $70 CDN that has individual colour cartridges.  I do an average amount of printing/copying and I'm only now about to replace the original colour ink cartridges.  I'm on my third black cartridge though.  My previous Epson printer was $59 CDN and I had it for 3 years before giving it to a friend who is still using it.  I only gave it away because there were no drivers available for my then new W7 64-bit computer.

I agree with webrabbit and FredWagner though that photo printing is cheaper at Walmart.

Hope this helps.

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Small cartridge injet are for home use. There are printers (a1+ size) that take bottle inks. Easy to change on the fly.

With Epson the only company I found that give FULL cartridges when you buy the printer, BUT a lot is used to charge the print heads.  Vegetable inks available for printing on ricepaper  to put images on cakes.

For 4x6 photo take it to a store ( that use Fuji or Kodak processors) for 10 cents cheaper than the paper.

For prepress use laser. quality almost as good as offset printing.

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