HOW TO CHOOSE THE PERFECT PRINTER
Want a great printer for your home or small office? Here’s what to look for
This month we’ve focused on the kind of printers and multifunction printers (MFPs) that the discerning user might buy for a small office, or for creative or office use at home. There’s quite a spread, ranging from an £80 inkjet up to a ruthlessly quick £480 mono laser MFP, and each offers something different. We’ve assaulted each of them with a battery of tests, and picked four that stand out.
What not to buy
If you walk into a big supermarket, you’ll be hit with a number of too-good-to-be-true specifications for a too-good-to-be-true price. The reason, of course, is that this is all too good to be true. You may have low upfront costs, but chances are that you’ll be restricted to low-capacity cartridges and the running costs will quickly ramp up. Our one-word advice? Avoid.
So how do you find your perfect printer or MFP? The first step is deciding between the two. Even if fax technology increasingly looks like something we made up to tease millennials, it’s a rare person indeed who will never want to scan or copy. These days a smartphone can help with both, but the results are usually better from an MFP – you should strongly consider one if you don’t already have a standalone scanner.
Colourful question
Nine of the 12 devices reviewed here can print and copy in colour, but three
“Make sure you challenge your preconceptions: laser printers aren’t always cheaper to run than an inkjet, for example”
are based on mono laser printers. For some people, the lack of colour printing is a deal-breaker, but if you can live without it, mono lasers offer highly reliable, consistent and fast text. They’re the ideal choice if you’re printing lots of correspondence. If space and budget permit, you could even supplement a fast mono laser with a secondary inkjet, but it’s unlikely to be the best value approach (and adds the administrative burden of needing to keep two sets of toner and ink in stock).
When deciding on which type of device to buy, the final question is: laser or inkjet? Much will depend on what you’ll use it for, and personal preference, but make sure you challenge your preconceptions: laser printers aren’t automatically cheaper to run than an inkjet, for example, and they’re not always faster.
Case in point: the HP PageWide technology, on show here in the PageWide Pro 477dw ( see p81). This hit almost 35 pages per minute (ppm) in mono, compared to the 19.5pmm of the Kyocera Ecosys P5021cdw laser printer.
Find your features
Once you’ve decided on a type of device, think about how its features compare and which ones you actually need. A wired Ethernet connection is best if you want to share a device with the maximum speed and reliability, but in many cases a wireless connection will be fine (and means you can place the printer out of sight).
Think, too, about mundane things such as paper handling. Most of the devices here can automatically print on both sides of a sheet of paper, which can reduce waste and produce more professional looking results, but only HP’s PageWide Pro 477dw has a paper tray big enough to accept an entire ream. It’s also got long-lasting supplies, which should reduce the time you spend loading it up, ordering new ink and generally not being able to print. If you’re looking at MFPs, an automatic document feeder (ADF) can be invaluable for multipage scans, copies or faxes, but it’s a waste of money if you’re mostly interested in carefully scanning your old photos.
Finally, consider whether you need features such as a front panel memory card slot or USB port. Direct printing and scanning can be useful, particularly if you want to keep work confidential from colleagues, but home and small office inkjets can usually only print image files, not PDFs or other office documents.
Speed and costs
Speed isn’t everything, but it can be helpful if you’re sharing a device between several users. Manufacturer speed claims are usually taken from idealised conditions – our table ( see p78) and reviews tell you how fast prints, scans and copies really were.
The cost of owning a printer is often quite different to the cost of buying it in the first place. Running costs can make a cheap printer expensive, and turn a pricey one into a bargain, but working out the true costs can be tricky. Our table also compares the cost of keeping each device in ink and toner. Where longer-lasting supplies such as fusers, belts or drums make a significant difference, we mention it in reviews.
Look at the figures and you’ll see that it’s impossible to generalise about whether lasers or inkjets are cheapest. Epson’s Expression Home XP-5100 and WorkForce WF-2860DWF share the highest page costs, whereas another inkjet – HP’s PageWide Pro 477dw – has the lowest. It’s worth pointing out that laser and inkjet yields are calculated to different standards, and may both be sensitive to factors such as the number of pages in a typical job, and how long printers are left idle before jobs. For this reason, it’s best to treat running cost calculations as highly indicative, rather than exact.