HP, Brother, and Canon all offer similar plans (HP Instant Ink, Brother Refresh EZ Print, Canon Pixma Print Plan). When choosing between tank and cartridge printers, you'll want to compare total cost of ownership for the competing choices to see which is really more expensive.Īn alternative way to save on ink is an ink subscription program. For the lower ink cost to save money in the long run, you have to print enough to make up for the extra cost of the printer. Tank printers cost significantly more to buy than fully equivalent traditional-cartridge based printers. Brother's tank inkjets use high-capacity cartridges that serve only to hold ink.ĭon't get too focused on low ink costs. Epson, Canon, and HP all offer tank-based printers with ink in bottles, ready to pour into reservoirs in the printer. The savings come both from buying in bulk-the proverbial large "economy size"-and from eliminating expensive cartridges. The most significant potential savings is with tank printers, most of which let you buy ink in large bottles and pour it into tanks in the printer. However, in the last few years, manufacturers have offered a choice of ways to pay less for ink. Ink costs for cartridge-based inkjets have been long been a sore spot for both business and personal inkjet users.
But because they're designed as portables, they're of potential interest to anyone who wants a small printer they can bring with them, to print from their laptop, say, or who doesn't need to print much and doesn't have a lot of free desktop space for a printer. They are primarily for business use, letting a salesperson print a proposal for your new roof while sitting at your kitchen table, for example.
Most are meant for printing a handful of pages per day. Desktop photo printers can handle standard paper sizes as large as 13 by 19 inches, while floor-standing models can print at still larger sizes.įinally, a few inkjets are designed for mobile printing, complete with rechargeable batteries. They differ from the dedicated home printers both in the maximum size of the output and in their ability to print top-quality text and graphics as well as photos.
These "near-dedicated" photo printers are widely used by professional photographers and artists looking to sell their work, by graphic artists, and by photo enthusiasts. A small subset of office inkjets offers monochrome printing only, in direct competition with mono lasers.Ī few top-end photo models, aimed at imaging pros, excel at producing gallery-worthy prints. Many of these are just as suitable for micro offices or as personal printers in larger offices. And because almost any inkjet today can do a credible job with photos, there's also a subset of office printers for dual use in a home and a home office.
They're also more durable, designed to print more pages per month and more over their lifetimes.
They tend to offer better text quality, though, along with good graphics quality, plus faster printing, higher paper capacities, and lower ink costs. These printers often print photos well, too, but some don't offer the same photo quality as home printers. A subset of home printers is the dedicated photo printer, designed to print photos in one or more small formats, from wallet-size to 5-by-7-inch snapshots, at a quality level as good as anything you can get from your local drugstore or equivalent online photo service.Ī second category is aimed at offices. They usually offer good quality for photos and graphics, but they may or may not handle text well. Some inkjets are meant for family and home use, which means they focus on photos and often come with apps, firmware, or connections to cloud services that include photo albums and options to print output of particular interest to home users (from greeting cards to graph paper for a homework assignment). It's important to be clear about what you need to do with the printer before you start shopping. Here, we'll explore the different types of inkjets, and highlight some key features to look for when shopping for one. Is your preferred choice for your next printer an inkjet? You can find the technology in a huge variety of single-function printers and all-in-ones (AIOs) designed to fill a wide variety of roles at home or at the office.
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