Inkjet printers are more common for home use, as they are typically smaller, cheaper and can print both color and black and white. They also often come with networking facilities to connect directly to the computer network. Their input trays can hold as many as 3800 sheets of paper, compared to a typical inkjet printer, which can hold 150 sheets. Laser printers sometimes come with other office features built in, such as scanning and faxing. Inkjet printing can be used on a wider range of papers, including high gloss photo paper, vinyls and self adhesive papers, as well as super heavy paper. Modern inkjet printers can use up to 9 color cartridges to create accurate photographic images. Color laser printers exist, but they are bulky and expensive, and not usually suitable for use at home or in a small office. The most common laser printers only print in black and white. Inkjets provide superior color printing with subtle color gradation, while laser printers can lead to color banding. However, lasers are better at printing smaller fonts. Most budget inkjet printers print 6 pages per minute.įor normal print sizes, black and white print quality is similar for both laser and inkjet printers. Laser printing is undoubtedly the fastest option for black and white printing, with budget, low-end laser printers able to produce 20 pages per minute. More expensive laser printers have a lower cost per page, but may have additional costs when compared to inkjets, such as the need for a new fuser cartridge. The cost per page for a laser printer is 6c for black and white printing. The cost-per-page of printing using an inkjet printer is 20c for color pages, or 4-5c for black and white.
Inkjet printers spray liquid ink onto paper through microscopic nozzles, while laser printers use fine powder, called toner, and a heated fuser.īudget inkjet printers cost around $130, while budget laser printers, which are only capable of printing in black and white, cost around $60. A range of production laser printers produced by Xerox also offer Highlight Color, which provide the ability to print black and one other color. Color laser printers are also available, but they are significantly more expensive. They are available as small, personal printers, as office printers (which are larger and print faster), as workgroup printers (which are designed to be free-standing printers that are shared by many computers on a network), and production printers, which are designed to run continuously and can print 75,000 sheets a day. Most laser printers only print in black and white. Piezoelectric DOD is more expensive, but can print at higher speeds. Most consumer printers use either thermal DOD, in which the ink is heated in the cartridge, or piezoelectric DOD, which uses pressure. CIJ is used for commercial purposes, such as marking packaging. There are two types of inkjet printing: continuous (CIJ) and drop-on demand (DOD).