laser vs inkjet printer

[sample text]

I want to buy a printer,because it's too expensive to print thousands of PDF files.It's cheaper if I buy printer and print as much as I want.Just the printing services in the bookstores are too expensive.1,000 pages = 50+ euros,and I have few PDF files with thousands of pages, so that I prefer to spend money on buying a printer.What's the difference between the laser and inkjet printers?I know that the inkjet printers need ink,but is there any difference in the quality of printing?I need only to print PDF files,but maybe my brother will want to print some photos,because he is good painter,and my intuition is telling me that the inkjet printers are better for photo.Can you tell me something about that?In the end,I will only need to buy paper for the laser printer,but for the inkjet ones I will need paper and ink only,right?

[thisforumsucksassdeletemya]

A good laser printer maybe costs slightly more than a good inkjet, but instead of 50 pages out of a cartridge you get like 500+. They should both be fine for quality. You definitely don't want a laser color printer for photos you care about the quality of though.

[mmk]

You will also need to buy 'ink' for the laser printer once the starter cartridges run out.  I used to use inkjet but because I do not constantly print stuff, the ink was always drying out so I finally switched to a colour laser printer because the 'ink' for the lasers is usually a powder and does not dry out.

 

Only thing that I miss is that the inkjet types did print better quality photos but the laser still does a decent job especially if you use a photo type paper for printing.

 

Another thing is that the laser cartridges will be much more expensive that the inkjet cartridges, but I found they print a lot more sheets of paper before running out.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Both still have a consumable item. Inkjet printers have them in the form of an ink cartridge as you know. Laser printers use toner cartridges. Which is better really comes down to long term economics.

 

While I can't really say what the quality difference is between an inkjet and laser printer of the same price point ( as long as a bar code scanner can read a printed bar code, I'm happy), it really depends on the use case, the cost and potential pages you can get out of the consumables, and how long is the time between print sessions.

 

For someone like me, who prints once in a blue moon, laser printers make the most sense. In my experience, ink cartridges dry out before I've had a chance to use most of it, and so I end up spending the cost of the printer itself in ink cartridges long before I feel like I got any useful service out of printer. Toner cartridges don't "dry" out, because toner is a basically a fine powder that gets baked into the paper by the laser.

 

But if you're printing out a ton of things often and the quality is acceptable, then you should focus more on the cost of the consumables.

[thisforumsucksassdeletemya]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Both still have a consumable item. Inkjet printers have them in the form of an ink cartridge as you know. Laser printers use toner cartridges. Which is better really comes down to long term economics.

 

While I can't really say what the quality difference is between an inkjet and laser printer of the same price point ( as long as a bar code scanner can read a printed bar code, I'm happy), it really depends on the use case, the cost and potential pages you can get out of the consumables, and how long is the time between print sessions.

 

For someone like me, who prints once in a blue moon, laser printers make the most sense. In my experience, ink cartridges dry out before I've had a chance to use most of it, and so I end up spending the cost of the printer itself in ink cartridges long before I feel like I got any useful service out of printer. Toner cartridges don't "dry" out, because toner is a basically a fine powder that gets baked into the paper by the laser.

 

But if you're printing out a ton of things often and the quality is acceptable, then you should focus more on the cost of the consumables.

Also, ink dries out in like... weeks to a month or two max. And the cartridge is often ruined. Toner does not do that.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

My experience with printers supports (mine and ones at work, back when I still worked for a living) that laser printers are far more cost effective, despite the higher upfront costs, than inkjets (inkjest?) and are far more reliable. Laser printers cost more upfront but have fewer maintenance issues. The toner cartridges also cost more than inkjet cartridges but you get far more pages from a toner cartridge. including the upfront costs, you will still pay less per printed page with a laser jet than you will with an inkjet.

 

You couldn't give me an inkjet unless it was for target practice. Unless you use the really expensive stuff, inkjet ink will run when it gets wet and may smear when handled fresh out of the printer. The cost per printed page, at best, is more for inkjet printers, assuming you use them pretty much everyday. If you them only every few days, the ink nozzles tend to clog and the only way to unclog them is to force ink through them at high pressure, wasting ink in the process. The only advantage of an inkjet printer is you can get better photo prints from them than from a laser printer but that is practical only if you are printing photo prints pretty much everyday. Otherwise, it is more economical to farm out photos to photo processers, such as at some drug stores or Wally World (if they still even do that anymore).