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1Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines
Print Speed
Advantage: Laser
Rated speeds suggest otherwise, but lasers generally have a tremendous speed advantage over inkjets. The simple truth is that the ratings for the two technologies are not comparable. You can count on a 30 ppm (page-per-minute) laser to print text pages at close to 30 ppm at the printer-
2Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Print Speed:Overlap’
Despite the speed advantage for lasers in general, you can find a few inkjets that are faster than the slowest lasers. Hewlett-Packard, in particular, sells some standard business inkjets that are actually faster than its least-expensive color lasers for real-world throughput. In addition to the standard inkjets that blur the line between inkjet and laser speeds, there are a few inkjet printers that threaten to erase the line entirely. HP-
3Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘ Text Quality — Advantage: Laser’
Inkjet manufacturers like to claim laser-quality text based on high resolutions. But ink tends to bleed into the paper, turning edges ragged, filling in loops (as in a lower case “e”) and generally losing the sharp edges that make text from lasers easier to read and gives it a more professional look.
4Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Text Quality: Overlap’
6Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Line Graphics Quality — Advantage: Laser’
Line graphics–meaning graphics consisting primarily of lines–have all the same requirements for quality as text, with crisp, clean edges determining the level of quality. That gives lasers the same advantage as they have for text on plain paper, with inkjets offering the same overlap in their highest-quality modes and on special paper.
7Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Graphics Quality on Plain Paper: Advantage: Color Laser’
8Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Graphics Quality on Special-Purpose Paper: Advantage: Inkjet’
9Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘True Photo Quality: Advantage: Inkjet’
10Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Photo Quality on Plain Paper: Advantage: Color Laser’
11Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Water Resistance for Output: Advantage: Laser’
12Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Paper Curl with Plain Paper: Advantage: Laser’
Some printers have a tendency to add a curl to plain paper, making it difficult to shuffle through a stack of pages. Only a few lasers have this problem, and, even then, the curl is relatively mild. With inkjets, however, the problem is fairly common when printing full-page or nearly full-page graphics or photos on plain paper, often turning pages into virtual cylinders.
13Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Size and Weight: Advantage: Inkjet’
14Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Paper Handling: General — Advantage: Laser’
15Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Paper Handling: Tabloid Size — Advantage: Inkjet’
The one clear paper-handling advantage for inkjets–or, more precisely, the one cost advantage for paper handling–is for printing on tabloid (11-by-17-inch) and super-tabloid (up to 13-by-19-inch) paper. Most tabloid-size lasers cost well into the four figures. Inkjet tabloid-size printers sell for as little as $300 or less.
16Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Saving on Outsourcing — Advantage: Color Laser’
17Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Cost Per Page: General — Advantage: Laser’
18Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Cost Per Page: Overlap’
19Laser vs. Inkjet Printers: The Blurring Lines – ‘Total Cost of Ownership — Advantage: It Depends’
Whether an inkjet printer will have a total cost of ownership higher or lower than a laser will often depend on how much you print. An inkjet printer that costs $300 less than a laser, but costs 2 cents more per page to run, will have a lower TCO than the laser only if you print fewer than 15,000 pages over the printer-