Five Simple Steps to Find the Perfect Printer for You
Ink is where the battle is won or lost, so focus there first. In almost every case, the amount you will spend on ink over the life of the printer will dwarf the cost of the printer itself. Consumers have been very slow to come to grips with this fact, so the manufacturers take advantage of this circumstance by continuing to drive down the cost of the printer and adding new features (particularly those that will chew up more ink, like printing photographs).
It is an accepted fact in the printer industry that many low-end printers (particularly inkjet) are sold at no margin or even negative margin. This is becoming true even in what used to be profitable categories like color laser printers. When you see a color laser printer selling for less than $500, that is probably not a profitable transaction for the manufacturer.
So BEWARE. When a deal seems to good to be true, be very careful. The manufacturers are going to make their money somewhere - and printer companies make very good margins.
So how does the consumer avoid getting taken?
1. ESTIMATE HOW MUCH PRINTING YOU WILL BE DOING AND WHAT TYPES OF PRINTING:
- How many prints will you produce on average each month ? A ream of paper is 500 sheets, so how often do you break open a new one? It is important to know that, as a general rule, the more expensive the printer the lower the ink cost per page. So, if you buy a printer suited for lower volume printing than what you will experience, it's going to cost you money.
- What % of all of the prints you produce are:
Black and white documents like letters or spreadsheets? Peg these at 5% to 10% coverage, depending on how complex they are. The printer industry benchmarks printers at 5% coverage for monochrome prints because that is approximately how much ink is on a simple page of pure text.
Color documents like web pages or Powerpoint presentations? Peg these at 5% to 10% per color. The industry benchmarks printers at 20% coverage (5% per color) for color prints, which represents business documents with modest amounts of spot color, like newsletters. On the other end of the spectrum are full page, full-coverage photographic prints that may have as much as 100% coverage (25% of each color) or more. It's a challenge, but try to figure out how many color documents of each type you produce and average it out. Here's an example:
5 web pages per day x 20 business days per month x 20% coverage = 100 pages @ 20%10 Powerpoint presentations x 20 pages per pres x 40% coverage = 200 pages @ 40%50 snapshots per month x 100% coverage = 15 pages @100%Average monthly usage = the equivalent of 525 pages at 20% coverage Here's the math: 100 + 200x2 + 15/3x5(a 4"x6" snapshot is roughly equivalent to 1/3 of an 8"x10" photo)2. USE OUR AUTOMATED "PRINTER SELECTOR" BELOW TO DETERMINE THE BEST CATEGORY
OF PRINTER FOR YOU:
3. GO TO THE MENU AND CLICK ON THE APPROPRIATE CATEGORY PAGE
- Examine the Chart and the Data spreadsheet on that page in order to compare printer costs and specifications and narrow down the field to a few choices.
4. REFER TO INDUSTRY REVIEWS FOR YOUR FINAL CHOICES
- Our focus at Printerdb.com is to steer your toward the most cost-effective printers and away from the money-wasters. There are other sources that focus on product performance. Among the more respected ones are:
5. FIND THE BEST DEAL YOU CAN ON THE PRINTER YOU'VE CHOSEN.
- See Getting A Deal for tips.
