Choosing a new printer for your home office? Whether it’s for school, office, or home-based ink work, a printer is a welcome convenience and at the same time, a necessity. Especially now when the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced students and office workers alike to stay at home, you’ll need your own printer at home to print documents.

Inkjets and Laser Printers

Which is the best printer for home use? Of course, not every printer is suited for being used at home. Of the most common printers sold on the market, only Laser printers and Inkjet printers fit the bill.

How they work:

Inkjet Printers

Inkjet Printers create images through precise spraying of ink droplets onto paper, much like how images on electronic devices are rendered through minute areas of illumination called pixels.

Laser Printers

Unlike Inkjet printers, Laser printers don’t use ink to print. They make use of microscopic ink particles in a powdered form known as toner. The toner, in the simplified description, is melted with a laser onto the paper to print instead of regular ink.

Which one should I consider for my home office?

The printers usually considered for home use are Inkjet printers, while laser printers are more frequently bought for businesses. That’s not to say that Laser Printers aren’t suitable for home offices or vice versa. It actually depends on how you plan to use it.

The Inkjet Printer is usually the more popular choice because of its lower prices, both the printer and its ink. It is suitable for printing in low volumes and frequent usage. The most common problem with inkjet printers, however, is if left idle for an amount of time, the ink dries up, so add into consideration how often you would be using your printer.

As for the Laser Printer, the toner it uses for printing has a much longer shelf life than liquid ink. The Laser Printer is also more suited to printing enormous amounts of documents on a daily basis and is faster than the Inkjet Printer, so if you plan on frequently printing high volumes then the Laser Printer is for you.

Picture Quality

Color Laser printers do a good job in printing images, but Inkjet Printers offer a higher resolution of images and are the more preferred choice when you want professional quality photo printing.

So which one should I buy?

It all comes down to how you plan on using your printer. Whether you require printing loads of documents daily or just an occasional print, then Laser Printers are the better choice. The latter reason being, that the toner being used can sit for a longer amount of time without drying up.

If you are particular about high-quality printed images or you just need a regular use printer, then Inkjet Printers are more suitable.

Color or Mono: Laser Printers

You’ve settled on buying a Laser Printer, but you see that there are two options available. Color and Mono. Color Laser, being able to produce documents or images in color. Mono or Monochrome Laser, only being able to print with black and white.

The latter is a good choice when you require faster printing at lower costs for large amounts of black and white documents.

Ink Tanks or Ink Cartridges: Inkjet Printers

Ink Tanks, or Continuous Ink Printers, have a built-in ink supply that can be refilled by way of ink bottles. While Ink Cartridges are Inkjet Printers that make use of detachable cartridges, which can either be replaced or refilled.

Other types of Printers

There are a variety of other printers available on the market today, here are a few to name,

• Solid Ink Printers.
• LED Printers.
• Multifunction Printers.
• Dot Matrix Printers.
• 3D Printers.