Cheap Monochrome Laser Printers
Low Cost Mono Lasers
For professional-looking text, a laser printer is the best. If you're thinking about getting a printer for home use, consider a low cost monochrome laser printer. Monochrome printer may seem boring, but let's be clear: if you want the kind of crisp, well formed text that gives your letters and documents a professional look, lasers printers are the way to go, and monochrome lasers are the affordable choice.
For your new college grad, printing his or her resumes on a laser rather than an ink jet may make the difference between the resume getting read or getting tossed. For Dad, having a laser can give him the option of working at home to print a report or proposal with a fully professional look. And even if you don't care all that much about text quality, monochrome lasers have a significant speed advantage compared to ink jets.
To fully appreciate lasers, you need to realize that resolution doesn't tell you everything you need to know about quality. The typical ink jet today has a maximum resolution well beyond the 600 by 600 or 600 by 1200 dots per inch (dpi) of the typical sub-$150 laser. But toner doesn't bleed into paper the way ink does, which gives laser output crisper, cleaner edges for lines and translates into much more readable text, as well as crisper looking line graphics (but without color of course.)
The speed advantage for lasers is also a lot more than you would expect from claims for ink jets. Ink jet page per minute (ppm) claims are usually based on draft modes you wouldn't want to use, and don't include the time it takes to load and eject paper. Lasers, on the other hand, really offer the speeds they claim, at least for text files, which need little to no processing time. The bottom line is that a laser that claims 8 ppm is a match for an ink jet that claims 30 ppm or more.
All low cost monochrome lasers are essentially variations on a theme, but there are some important differences between them. All of these printers are light weight; small enough to take up no more space on your desk than an ink jet; and easier to set up than a typical ink jet, with only one toner cartridge to install.
Paper capacity for most is 150 sheets, but you can also find some that hold 250 sheets, which is a nice convenience. Adding paper is like changing light bulbs: it's only a small chore, but the less often you have to do it, the better. And, as you might expect in this price range, most of these printers connect by USB cable only. But if you have a home network you want to connect to, the Lexmark E120n and Brother HL-2070N include built-in network connectors and fully automated network setup routines.
As with any printers, the two issues you'll want to pay closest attention to are output quality and speed. Most of the printers now are rated at about 20 ppm. When it comes to quality, any of the printers can handle any text you want to print, but there are still differences between one printer and another. More important, consider the graphics and photo quality as well. You may want to print graphics for a report or schoolwork, and you may even need to print photos for things like Web pages or an end of year family newsletter.
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