Printing on both sides of a page ultimately saves you money on paper.

Two sides are better than one: Printers that offer duplexing can print on both sides of the page-a useful feature for users who want to maximize speed and efficiency. The spare replacements take up more space in your office’s storeroom or home storage closet, too. Maintenance issues: Color printers are more complicated to maintain because they have four toner colors and four drums (one for each color) to replace, as opposed to a monochrome laser’s single drum. Our recent analysis indicates that the price of a color laser printer is inversely related to its speed: the lower the printer price, the longer you will wait for prints. Many come with longer warranties than typical inkjet printers. They’re also a bigger investment than standard inkjet or monochrome laser printers and require more room to operate. Most of the machines we’ve tested can print perfectly pleasing pie charts, logos, color bars, and simple graphics, but they struggle photographic images.Ĭonsider the cost: Most good-quality color laser printers run in the range of $300 and up and are generally larger and heavier than most typical inkjet printers. Color lasers can print photos of course, but the image quality is distinctly inferior in most cases to inkjet output. Many good ones on the market, with excellent image quality. If you want a color printer for printing photographs, buy an inkjet printer. If you want to print text or graphics on plain paper, you need to print a lot, and you need to print quickly, a color laser is the way to go. What you are printing: The decision of whether to invest in a color laser printer depends largely on what you intend to print.

Laser printer color test