Consider whether you need heavier-duty scanning (including scans for copying and faxing) than an AIO can handle. In a lot of scenarios, it makes good sense to pick a single-function laser printer rather than spend more money to get what is sometimes the same printer with a scanner added. Either type can be a mono-only printer, or can print in color also. What Kind of Laser Do You Need: Print Only, or AIO?Īs with any printer technology, lasers can be either single-function or multifunction printers (MFPs), aka all-in-ones (AIOs), which is to say they can be limited to printing only, or they can add scanning at a minimum, usually copying, and often faxing as well.

Aside from the added convenience, eliminating the cost of wasted ink on nozzle-cleaning routines might save you more than a laser printer's extra cost compared with a less expensive inkjet. Even if you leave a laser printer idle for months, it will print without problems when you turn it on again. Indeed laser printers have no nozzles to clog. Unlike ink in inkjets, laser-printer toner doesn't dry out or clog nozzles. But if you don't print photos, there's a strong argument for considering a laser for light-duty home use, as well, particularly if you leave your printer off for long stretches. Conventional wisdom says that inkjets are the best choice for home use. Innovations in laser printing in recent years include the refillable toner on the HP Neverstop Laser line.Īlso consider how often you print. It can also be cheaper to print marketing materials with photos, including tri-fold brochures or one-page handouts, using a color laser that offers business-quality photo output than to pay for small print jobs at a print shop. If you need to print at 4 or 6 points, lasers are still the way to go. And although inkjet text output is often close to laser quality at point sizes of 10 or 12 points, most lasers produce much more readable text at small sizes than almost any inkjet. Indeed, certain types of businesses, such as medical and law offices, may mandate laser printing for archival tasks and record keeping.

Lasers are also a good choice if high-quality, stable text printing matters most. If you print a lot of large jobs, stick mostly to text and graphics, and don't need high quality for photos, a laser printer is likely the best match. And for printing boardroom-quality reports on plain paper, they do much better than inkjets at producing crisp, professional looking text and eye-catching color business graphics.

But lasers are a good fit for text and graphic output, particularly in bulk: long research papers, book drafts, contracts in law offices, monthly invoices, and the like. So, who would find a laser printer preferable to an inkjet? Definitely not a home user looking to print photos, much less a photo enthusiast or professional photographer, and not someone looking for a portable printer.

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