What To Consider When Buying A New Office Printer

Ask any business owner where they think they could be saving money and the chances are that most of them will respond ‘printing’. Printing plays a vital part in the day-to-day operation of most businesses but it can also be infuriatingly costly and inefficient, with business owners tearing their hair out as that one employee who feels the need to have everything in a physical format prints out yet another document he could have just saved as a PDF.

However, it isn’t just print-happy employees who act as a drain on your printing budget; it could be your choice of printer too. They say that a bad workman blames his tools, but in the case of printing inefficiency, your printer should be the first thing you look at.

An inefficient office printer can take many forms; it could be that it can’t stand up to the amount of print jobs your employees send through to it, it can’t produce the quality you require for the types of prints you most frequently produce or it could just be that the cost of resupplying your printer is sending your business supplies budget through the roof.

Here are a few things to think about when considering the efficiency of your office printer; they can also act as a decent guide to what to look out for when buying a new printer too!

The Type of Prints You Most Commonly Produce

Although most businesses will rely on printing in some form, different offices can produce a radically different makeup of print job types. For example, a design agency will likely print a lot of images and photographs that need to be of an extremely high resolution, whereas a legal or financial company will mostly print out black and white text-only reports.

Different types of printers can carry out certain types of print job better than others. It’s widely accepted that inkjet printers print better quality images than laser printers, albeit at a slower rate. Laser printers, on the other hand, produce clean and crisp text at a consistently fast rate.

With that in mind, base your printer choice on the type of job you carry out the most. If you carry out a fairly even balance of image and text based print tasks then think about the level of quality you require; if high-quality is paramount, then opt for an inkjet. If speed and quantity is more important then a laser printer may fit your requirements better. You could also choose to buy one of each for specific tasks, although this may not be the most cost-effective option.

How Many Employees Will Be Using The Printer?

It goes without saying that a printer in an office of 100 people will get used a lot more often than a printer in an office of 30 people - or so you might think. In actuality, how much a printer gets used is determined by the kind of work those employees are carrying out rather than how many of them they are.

With that in mind, base your printer choice on how many people will actually be using the printer on a regular basis. It could be the case that a small office needs a high-end business inkjet simply because all of their employees are regularly printing high-quality photographs whereas a larger web-based business can fork out on a couple low-end but reliable laser printers for their admin department.

Making this consideration when buying a printer ensures that you aren’t spending too much on a printer that won’t get used often enough to justify the cost or too little on a printer that is unable to stand up to the kind of jobs you rely on it for.

The Cost of Resupplying

Even the most naive of consumers is well aware by now that a printer with a low initial cost isn’t necessarily going to represent the best value in the long run, which is why the cost of the supplies that power the printer should also be at the forefront of your mind when considering a purchase.

For businesses, this is even more important as there is probably a strict budget to adhere to for replacement ink and toner cartridges. Determining what represents the best value for your particular business depends on a number of factors; if you don’t print a lot but rely on high quality, then high-end OEM cartridges may be right up your street - although remanufactured toner cartridges would definitely cost you less and give you more cartridges for your money. For businesses more inclined to print a lot, then compatible or refillable cartridges would be the perfect option.

For more information on how Cartridge World can save your business money on printing supplies, visit our business direct page.