Buying a Business Printer: A Money Saving Guide

A quality printer is a functional and material asset to any business, but how do you choose one which caters for all your organisational needs within a tight budget?

This guide to the features and specifications you should look for will help you find a high-performance, cost-efficient printer for your business:

Laser vs. Inkjet

There are basically two types of printer: the laser and the inkjet. Each has their merits but for businesses which have a high volume output and need print accuracy, quality and speed, a laser printer is the best option.

The outlay for a laser is generally more costly than an inkjet, but in the long-term, laser printers produce more pages per cartridge than inkjets, have a higher print speed and produce crisp, superior quality texts and images for professional looking documents, consistently.

Single Print vs. Multi-Function

When buying a printer, it’s crucial that you consider what you really need it for. For simple, black and white text documents or excel spreadsheets, a standard monochrome laser printer will suffice.

If however, your business needs flexibility from a machine that can print coloured logos or images, or be able to fax, scan or copy anything directly to or from a network, then a multi-function printer is ideal.

Multi-function printers offer a variety of print services in one piece of equipment, meaning that you reduce the footprint and energy costs used by operating several pieces of kit. This saves valuable office space, reduces energy bills and contributes to employee efficiency.

Features

Modern printers offer businesses a variety of features that can really add value and reduce costs. Look for:

– Auto-duplexing: This automatically produces double-sided prints which cut your paper costs by up to 50%.

– Draft Copy Setting: This reduces toner consumption by printing documents without all of their formatting or graphics which is ideal for non-essential documents.

– Print Management: There are a two main ways that the printer can be managed to reduce costs:

Touch-screen pin code access can be set to grant permission to print for only those employees who really need it, and can be used to monitor and control their usage.

A Managed Print Solution (MPS) service is offered by some suppliers who can remotely monitor your print practice and generate reports with recommendations for cutting costs.

MPS can also track the use of your consumables and any maintenance issues, and dispatch the appropriate solution as necessary, saving you time, office space and wastage.

Operating Costs

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, you need to consider the operating costs of your printer, namely its use of energy and consumables.

Operating costs are often overlooked when looking for a budget-friendly machine, but over the lifetime of your printer, the cost of power and replacement toners will exceed the cost of your equipment several times over.

The best options on the market are any of the award winning Kyocera ECOSYS printer range. Specifically designed for efficiency, these machines have the lowest operating costs of any multi-function printer available.

For further advice or the chance to trial a printer before making a commitment to purchasing one, contact the friendly, expert staff at CopyLogic.com who can talk you through your business needs and help you find a quality, cost-efficient printer to match them.