Choosing a business printer is as hard or easy as you make it be. There are many printers that include a wide series of features on the market. The important thing in making a decision is establishing exactly what you need out of such a device. For example, some offices may be very interested in cost cutting, specially during the recession. Purchasing a printer that may cost more upfront (most likely a laser) but has very low maintenance costs might be a very good idea. Some printers out there have a very low initial price tag and attract you instantly.




But when you start using them you discover that they chug ink like a train and the ink also costs a lot to replace. Printers with individual color cartridges are also a good deal since you won’t have to replace all of them at the same time.

A good office printer should be a multifunction one. Color lasers generally offer better text quality and most of the times they are faster. For any office that mainly needs to print out documents with the occasional image thrown in, laser is the best choice. Offices who need to print out images more often however, and who might need good photo quality as well are better off with an inkjet all-in-one.
Other features you might be interested based on what environment you need a printer for include:

-Versatility of connectivity – it’s great to have wireless and Ethernet on top of the standard USB cable connection. If a lot of users rely on the same printer for print jobs throughout every single day, it’s important that the printer works fast and well in a workgroup. A PictBridge slot is extremely useful for people who need to print straight from a digital camera. While this feature might be more important for the home user or amateur photographer, there are plenty of offices (real-estate, media, etc) who might need this kind of functionality as well. A media card reader is also a bonus, and some offices might want to be able to print straight from a flash memory stick (while it’s not needed most of the times, it does come in handy on the odd occasion).

The speed of printing is obviously another very important aspect. Some time ago lasers were renowned for their printing speeds. Now inkjets have almost caught up in terms of speed, sometimes even surpassing lasers. Speed might not be an issue for some offices, but for the ones who care a lot about this particular detail, it’s important to also take the printer’s warm up time into account.

Low printing volume means you’ll catch the printer warm up on every single print job, further adding to the wait time. Two extra features that come in handy would be the duplexer, that allows printing on both sides of paper (which translates into saving time, paper and costs) and the auto document feeder which allows you to scan multiple pages without having to manually insert each single page.

As a conclusion, regardless of what an office needs, there’s a business printer out there that can offer exactly that. A list of important features to use when going through options is really helpful and time saving.

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