Ink & Toner

Holiday Photo Printer Shopping Tips

Being that this is a Holiday Shopping season warm up and our expertise is printer ink and therefore printers; we’ve got a few very important things you should look for when purchasing a photo printer either for yourself or as a present. Finding out what type of photo printer will be best for your specific printing needs will definitely allow you to take full advantage of it.

 



Tip 1 – Decide what type of printer you need: Inkjet or Laser

It is clear is that inkjets are far from matching the laser printers text quality and speed, but they certainly make it up when it comes to photo quality. Almost all of them print photos that are at least as good as what you can get from your local drugstore, and laser printers have to admit that they haven't gotten there...yet, but they are getting pretty darn close.

New laser color printers are closing the gap on photo prints; it all depends on what photos you want to print and for what purposes. If you are looking for what some call business-quality photos, either for marketing materials, one page handouts, brochures or postcard mailers with photos, laser printers can deliver adding speed to the task with true photo quality if you don't look too closely. It all comes down to the lack of gloss even if you use glossy paper.

The answer to the question then is the following:

* If you want color business documents or web pages, go with a color laser.
* If you want good quality long lasting photos the choice is an inkjet printer.

Tip 2 - DPI (Dot-per-inch) the higher the better

When purchasing a photo printer it is important to consider what DPI support is provided. Printer DPI support is how printers label dots on a measure of inches or centimeters on the paper. Depending on the type of images you are looking for the higher the DPI a printer has, the clearer the images is and it will be very hard to see the actual dots in the printed result.

Tip 3 – Cost of Consumables

A very important fact when choosing a photo printer is to know the cost of the ink cartridges or toner cartridges. Most photo printers use more than one cartridge the black and the color cartridges. Take into consideration the printing flow you are going to have. Make sure you know if the color cartridges are independent or one tri-color cartridge. Photo paper should also be considered in the equation.

One more thing to do before purchasing a new photo printer is read our article