Laser printer buying guide

Posted on 14 Dec 2009 at 15:00

Find out all you need to know about choosing the right laser printer.

Recommended minimum specifications

Resolution: 600x600dpi

Memory: 8MB

Speed: 16ppm

Interfaces: USB

Pages per month: 5,000

Paper trays: 150-sheet A4

Follow the steps to choose your ideal specs

Prices for A4 laser printers with specifications such as those above start at around £55. These models are fine for users who print less than one ream (500 pages) of paper a month. Look for good print quality, flexible drivers and running costs of below 2p per page. Ideally, it should store paper clean and flat in a horizontal tray and allow manual feeding of headed paper and envelopes with no creasing.

You'll have to spend more for a printer with the build quality and speed to cope with a heavy workload. Heavy users or small workgroups need up to 25 pages per minute (ppm), and whole departments need more. Bulk printing demands costs of 1p per page or less.

Four-pass colour lasers are available for around £130. They are cheaper, but much slower to print colour than a single-pass model. Fortunately even some of the most economical printers are now single pass.

Support for a printer language such as Printer Control Language (PCL) 6 or PostScript 3 means you can use the printer with any computer and even some PDAs.

Not all lasers print graphics well, but a 1,200dpi resolution helps. Colour lasers can often print high-quality graphics, but should have at least 32MB of memory.

A network adaptor allows you to connect a printer to an Ethernet network, so all the network users can print to it directly. Smaller groups can use a PC to host and share any printer using Windows' File and Print Sharing Wizard.

Duplex printing is an increasingly affordable option and lets you print on both sides of a sheet of paper automatically. A scanner/fax unit turns your printer into a multifunction peripheral. Large groups should get multiple paper trays to deal with headed paper and other stationery.