Are laser printers dead?
Inkjet printers costing about $400 now claim to be nearly as fast as laser printers that cost anywhere from $400 to $800. Inkjets not only print text documents just as nicely, they can print in color. But lasers still have the edge when it comes to cost per page.
Lasers crank out their monochrome pages for only two or three cents each, where inkjet pages–because of more expensive ink and the requirement for higher-quality paper for decent results–cost several times that much.
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Lasers are also built to print more pages without breaking down.
This is called the “duty cycle,” and can range from 2,500 to 15,000 or more pages per month. Inkjets are better aimed at 50 to 1,000 pages per month.
And, although official page-per-minute speeds of the best inkjets match the typical six or eight pages a minute of inexpensive lasers, in practice the lasers are still somewhat faster.
So if you’re printing digital photos, illustrated homework book reports, club banners or color charts for a work presentation, an inkjet printer is best. But if you’re planning to print 100-page manuscripts on any kind of regular basis, you’ll save time and money by having a laser. (Put “LED” printers in the same category, and just call them “lasers” to keep it simple. They use a slightly different technology, but overall work the same way on the same kinds of jobs.)
If you need a laser, what should you look for?
First, think compatibility. Most laser printers work with–that is, provide software and plug-in ports for–personal computers running Windows. Some work with Macs and a few work with both Windows and Macs.
Then think about speed, but not too much. All printers in the $400-$800 class run at six pages per minute, except for NEC’s SuperScript 860, which checks in at an eight ppm. Those are the official times, at least. In practice, the printers rarely reach those peaks. And in practice they differ a little more, with the Minolta PageWorks 6e and Okidata Okipage 6e running as slow as two ppm on complex desktop publishing pages, and the NEC SuperScript nearing seven ppm on simple word processor documents.
If you can afford more, $1,500 will buy you an Apple LaserWriter 12/640PS, which runs at 12 ppm, or $2,000 will cover an HP LaserJet 4V, which claims a 16 ppm speed.
Those are reasonable prices if you have a network of computers that can share that high production rate. The extra price also gets PostScript support for professional graphics work.
Don’t worry about the memory inside affordable lasers–those priced under $800. This is contrary to many people’s printer experience, where more megabytes inside the printer meant the possibility of printing more complex graphics and desktop-publishing pages, and the probability of printing all of those pages faster. These printers might start with 4 MB and be upgradeable to 16 MB or more. Such printers also have their own processor chips, essentially their own built-in computers, to calculate where to put the dots on the page. Inexpensive lasers do without the processor–depending instead on the computer’s own processor to handle the calculations–and minimize memory, too, with as little as one-half or 1 MB.
Because most of the work is done inside the computer, the chips in the printer don’t matter as much. The NEC SuperScript is an exception here, with its own potent processor, which is probably why it is rated at eight ppm instead of the typical six ppm.
Do think about the connection, which will affect the speed and ease of operation. All connect to a PC’s parallel port. Nearly all offer the option of working with a bi-directional parallel port, the so-called Extended Capabilities Port or Enhanced Parallel Port.
This can feed information back to the computer about printer operation. To get the benefit of this, you’ll need a computer with an EPP or ECP port and an ECP/EPP parallel cable, also known as an IEEE 1284 cable.
How about price? There’s not much difference here, either, with most of the affordable lasers you might consider for home or small office running $350 to $400. There’s bad news for Mac users, though, who won’t find new laser printers in this category.
They need to stick with high-speed inkjet printers unless they can afford $800 to $900.
Next on my buying-factor list comes support. Most have a one-year warranty, although NEC’s is two years, and toll-free tech support. HP’s support isn’t toll-free, which pushes them down my list. Minolta and Okidata have 24-hour daily support, which pushes them up.
Duty cycle is related to support. It measures how many pages the printer can produce each month without suffering excessive wear and tear. But getting a high duty cycle is expensive, so look for a printer with duty cycle no greater than what you need. Duty cycle ratings range quite a bit, from the mere 2,000 to 2,500 of Panasonic and NEC printers to the 10,000 pages per month of the Lexmark Optra and the 15,000 pages of the Minolta PageWorks. These numbers aren’t precise, just suggestions, really, but you can use them for comparison.
Keep in mind all those pages are going to cost you–buying a new toner cartridge, which holds the laser-printer equivalent of ink, for every 2,000 to 5,000 pages. Cartridges run from $30 for the Brother, Okidata and Panasonic printers to $60 for the HP, Lexmark, Minolta and Apple printers to $130 for the NEC.
Because the toner capacity of these cartridges varies, look at per-page cost to determine which is most economical. If cost of cartridges irritates you, it’s possible to save by using remanufactured or refilled cartridges.
HP and NEC combine their toner cartridge with the drum, the mechanism that senses the laser light for creating the image. With all the other brands, you’ll also need to change drums periodically.
That’ll cost you another $70 to $150 for every 20,000 pages.
The “consumables” result–not counting paper, which is the same for all the printers–ranges from about 2 cents per page for the Brother and Okidata to about 2.5 cents per page for the HP, NEC and Panasonic. Not a big difference, though perhaps worth considering if you will print tens of thousands of pages per year. I’d lean toward the simplicity of the HP and NEC, which don’t require separate replacement of the drum. After those cost concerns, turn your thoughts to print quality, though the printers don’t differ that much. They all print at roughly 600 dots per inch, abbreviated as dpi.
Some claim special “enhancement” technologies that fake higher resolution, with HP’s LaserJet 6Lse getting the best results from its special tech. The best bet: Trust your eyes. Try to see sample prints at a retail computer store.
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Paper handling is worth some attention. After all, you’re buying this thing with plans to push out thousands of pages. You’ll want a large input tray capacity, such as the 200 sheets in the Brother HL-730 Plus or the NEC SuperScript 860. Less important, though nice, is a large output tray, which the Brother has and the NEC oddly does not, and an optional extra paper tray, which Lexmark and Minolta offer. All will print on envelopes or card stock and on legal-size paper or transparencies. The Brother has the straightest paper path and so should print on the thickest paper.
With all of those factors in mind, my favorite affordable laser for PCs is the NEC SuperScript 860 (800-532-4636, www.nec.com, $390). The long warranty, high speed, good quality, big paper tray, simple combined cartridge and drum all outweigh the expensive drum/cartridge and middling support hours. I do wish it had an infrared port, so I could hook up to it without a cable to my infrared-equipped laptop computer.
For pushing the largest number of pages at the lowest cost, without worrying quite as much about quality or speed, I’d go with the $300 Okidata Okipage 6e (800-654-8326, www.okidata.com), the significantly slower Okipage 4w ($200), or the Brother HL-720 (800-276-7746, www.brother.com, $270), which isn’t quite as inexpensive per page but can print on thicker stock.
My favorite Mac laser is the HP LaserJet 6MP (800-752-0900, www.hp.com, $900), which works with a PC or Mac. It offers 600 dpi and eight ppm speed, the same as the less-expensive machines, but prints PostScript graphics, something I sometimes need for professional graphics work, and has an infrared port. I’ve got one hooked up to both my Macs and PCs at the same time, and it automatically switches between them.