Business printers are an important investment, and deciding between an ink or toner-based printer for your office can be a tough choice. While both systems are used widely and offer various benefits for businesses, it’s important to consider the differences to help you make the best choice for your workflow needs.
Image source Epson.
How It Works
Inkjet printing uses ink that comes in a liquid form inside cartridges, packs, or bottles and sprays the ink through nozzles to print. The process is commonly used for printing on a wide range of substrates, including paper, canvas, and fabric, and can produce a variety of products, including photographs, fine art prints, blueprints, maps, and promotional materials.
Laser printing uses powder-based toner that fuses to the paper as it passes over a metal drum in the printer. This process is also used for printing on a variety of substrates, including paper, plastic, and metal.
Inkjet Benefits
In the past couple of years, inkjet printing technology has advanced and improved significantly, making it a compelling proposition for businesses. While laser printers are historically known for fast speeds, today’s inkjet printers offer comparable performance, and the capabilities for both overlap more.
Inkjet printing is uniquely positioned to help businesses maximize productivity and ROI. Following are features to consider and why inkjet can be an ideal solution to meeting CAD needs.
Impressive Quality and Versatility
Laser printers are great for text-heavy documents, offering clean and sharp black text. Inkjet printers, in addition to crisp text, are also capable of delivering vibrant and brilliant graphics and images.
Advanced inkjet printhead technology delivers outstanding line and color accuracy and consistency on a wide variety of media, ideal for CAD businesses looking for the flexibility to create colorful materials including posters, maps and line drawings in addition to typical black and white documents. There are also models capable of printing on rigid posterboard and other specialty media, providing versatile solutions for various applications. Inkjet printers with larger ink color sets beyond CMYK allow businesses to increase color gamut and more faithfully reproduce colors, the perfect foundation for creative use of media, signage and renderings.
In addition, while laser printers are known for smudge-free print quality, inkjet printers can offer comparable results. Many pigment inks today are designed to be smudge, fade and water resistant, which is helpful for technical documents used in the field.
Improved Efficiency and Costs
Laser printers require heat to fuse toner to media to enable printing. While most of the energy that’s expended by business printers is consumed during active printing, they can also use a significant amount during warmup and standby mode.
There are inkjet printers today with innovative printhead technology that does not require heat to eject ink onto paper, so there’s no warm-up time needed for printing. Inkjet printers have also improved over time, so many models today are equipped with fast speeds to easily keep pace with the constantly changing demands and requirements of a business.
There are inkjet and laser options with cost-effective prices to fit any budget. While some models are more expensive to purchase upfront, cost per page and total cost of ownership will depend on how your business uses the printer. While some toner-based printers offer lower costs, there are also many inkjet solutions that offer a lower total cost of ownership in the long run. For example, there are high-capacity, cartridge-free models that come with easy-to-fill, refillable ink tanks. These printers can help eliminate time spent purchasing and changing ink cartridges.
Lower Maintenance
Advanced inkjet printers today have fewer moving parts, requiring less attention and a lower number of consumables needed to print. This is made possible because they leverage durable components and high-yield ink cartridges and bottles. There are also models that can help check the health of nozzles and ensure that inkjet printheads operate clog-free. Lowering user intervention is especially important for businesses with several users printing on the same unit.
For busy organizations, the ability to produce thousands of prints and copies in-house, with few interruptions, makes inkjet an especially valuable solution.
Key Takeaways
What you print, how much you print, and how much you’re willing to spend are a few factors to consider when deciding whether your business should go with an inkjet or laser printer. While both inkjet and laser offer reliable and cost-effective options, it’s important to consider the unique requirements of your business.
Investing in inkjet can allow busy CAD professionals to quickly and easily print everything they need in high quality, allowing them to save valuable time and focus on what’s most important — running their business.
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Viewpoint articles are tech-focused editorial written by experts from the CAD industry. This article was written by Jacob Hardin from Epson.
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