Printer Buying guide India – for home office, DIY and school projects
In this printer buying guide for home use in India, we will discuss Which type of printer should I buy?
We are not going to discuss the exact printer models for your home office, but we will rather decide what type of printer you should get.
This printer buying guide in India will help you do that easily.
TLDR: Ideally, you should look for the best printer with the lowest cost per page – this saves money in the long run. And like most things in our life, there is no perfect printer.
Shopping tips before purchasing a printer? – Printer buying guide India
Buying a printer is not as easy as it seems. There are a lot of things to consider before making the purchase.
The printer you buy will depend on your budget and what type of printing you want to do most often. You should also consider the size of your office and how much space you have available for the printer because size does matter when it comes to printers.
When buying a printer, there are a few things to keep in mind that will help guarantee a smooth process from start to finish.
To get the cheapest printer price, you should look for deals.
Factors to consider before buying a printer
Printing Resolution
Printing resolution determines the quality and detail of the images output by the printer. Lower resolutions mean less detail in images, but they take less time to print. Higher resolutions mean greater detail in output, but may take longer to print.
– Resolution is usually measured in dots per inch (dpi). – Increasing the resolution will increase the quality and detail of images. – Decreasing the resolution will increase printing speed. Good quality prints will depend on the resolution and on the paper quality as well. Printing Speed of printer
– Increasing the resolution will increase the quality and detail of images.
– Decreasing the resolution will increase printing speed.
Good quality prints will depend on the resolution and on the paper quality as well.
Printing speeds
At home office usages or for school projects, you will not need high pages per minute (PPM). But still you will need some speed. But the higher resolution printing you are doing, the slower it will get. If you are printing images, then the print process will be slower. Otherwise, any ink jet printer should have a decent printer speed with decent printer costs.
WIFI and USB Connectivity
In this color laser printer buying guide for home usages, I would suggest that you get WIFI and USB connectivity. And fortunately, all new models of printers come with both.
Some printers will have a Wi-Fi capability, which is a useful tool for connecting to a network. The printer will be able to connect to the WIFI network and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. At least, anyone from your home can use it without any wire connectivity.
This will allow for printing from any location. The USB connectivity is also a very useful feature. This will allow the computer to be connected directly to the printer without needing an extra cable.
Wi-Fi Printing Capability is a great feature to have, but wireless color printers are costly.
Networking and Internet
This feature is related to the connectivity feature and having a LAN port, USB port and WIFI will help you to connect to the printer from anywhere with internet. For this printer buying guide for home use in India, I would focus more on having a wifi so your workspace and home looks less cluttered. If your budget permits, wireless color printers are future-proof.
Paper Capacity
If you are buying the printer as a student or for some minor office work (More on this below) than you might not need thousands of pages. Thus, the normal paper tray of any printer would work for you. If you have special needs, then you have to check all the details provided by the printer manufacturer to see what fits for you.
Spare Parts, Color costs
The ink will dry up, the printer may face some functional issues as well too. Thus, when buying a printer you might want to buy popular companies like HP, Epson and Canon models. They have all the parts available for most of the time. And the costs are average as well.
WIFI printers are costly, and those have higher priced spare parts as well.
Cost of Printing
Laser printers are more expensive to use because they use toner instead of ink. The toner replacement is costly as well, but the toner will print more pages than the cartage. You will see many printers claiming 50 paise per print, but that is mostly for black and white prints and not color.
Ideally for home office usages you should not need laser printers, ink jet printers should be more than enough. For photo printing, you might need laser printers.
Scanner resolution
The scanner resolution is the number of dots per inch (DPI) that a scanner can output at.
The higher the DPI, the better quality the image will be.
An all-in-one printer usually has a low resolution because it would cost more for them to add this feature, so they choose to sacrifice it for being more affordable. But there are good all in one printer if you search any all in one printer price list online.
This printer doesn’t have a good scanning capability because its resolution is only 100×100 DPI.
Card Reader
The new card reader feature of the printer has opened up new possibilities for digital printing.
It is a small device that is attached to the printer and can allow the user to print without a need for a computer or any kind of connection between the two.
This feature has been beneficial for many industries like fast food restaurants, retailers, banks, and universities where there are many point of sale transactions happening during each day.
At home, this is beneficial if you do not have wifi/network connectivity via LAN port. In this way, you can move printable files from one computer to another and print.
Duplex Printing
Duplex printing is a feature that allows the printer to print both side of the paper.
This is a great feature for those who are looking to save time and money by not having to buy two different rolls of paper.
This feature might be costly for typical home usages and even for home office usages as well.
Printer memory
For printing a file faster, you will need a good printer buffer memory. Although not as important as other factors, this feature helps with printing larger files quickly.
Graphics & Photos
If you are going to use the printer for photography, then you have to spend some more and get a printer which is capable of it. Regular printers that you see online and in regular offices are not a great fit for high resolution graphics and photo printing.
Support and Warranty
Usually you will get 1-year warranty on all printers especially by HP, Epson etc. Some brands may offer extended warranty or longer warranty as well.
Which Printer Parts and Accessories Do You Need?
Printers might seem like a complicated device to maintain, but in reality, they don’t need much maintenance. What you need to do is make sure that you have the right printer parts to use.
The printer parts and accessories that you need are:
– Ink cartridges- Maintenance kit- Printer paper- Printer ink (if required)
If you are using a laser printer, then you will need toners.
There are some other printer parts and accessories that you might need if your printer is not working properly, for example:
– Voltage converter (if outside of North America)
– USB cable – Paper tray – Power cord
How Can You Get the Best Price on a Printer?
Wait for offers on 15th August, New year and local holidays. All the online stores give away 10-20% offers on price/offers on debit/credit cards etc.
This is the best time to buy a printer for your home office and personal usages.
Some Ideas to get the Printers based on Your Need
Hobby User
Any basic ink-jet printer would do good for you. Usual color prints, PDF prints of books would do well. For the basic model you will not be able to scan pages though.
Student
You might need a scanner inbuilt. From my student years, I was always xeroxing/copying notes and books, so an all-in-one printer at home will solve all of your issues.
Digital Photographer
You will need the best laser printer out there. And being a photographer, you would know the standards of the best for printing.
Home Office/ Small business
You will need all in one printer with good yield. Meaning, the cost per page print should be on the lower side if you are printing a lot. For only black and white text prints, you can go old school and get drum printers too. But in general, in the long run, ink-jet printers are useful.
Types of Printers
There are mainly two types of printers. Impact and non impact. Impact printers are generally slower than non impact printers, and in general these are used in old offices and in ticket counters.
And in the places where you do not need color prints, you do not need good stable prints.
The non-impact printers like ink-jet is more popular for home and office usages. And for graphics/photo printing, laser printers are more preferable.
Non-impact printers
1. Ink-jet printers
A type of printer that ejects ink from a series of tiny nozzles onto special paper. These are the most common color printing capable multipurpose printers for home office and projects usages.
2. Laser Printers
A type of printer that uses a laser to create the image on the paper. These are great for high quality graphics printing, but are costly options than ink-jet printers.
Comparison between Laser and Inkjet printers
Impact printers
These are generally not used for homes, and you will find them in old government offices and in places like ticket counters.
Daisy-wheel printers
Daisy-wheel printers were the first printers that could print easily readable text. They allowed users to input text on a scrolling paper tape.
The daisy wheel printer is an early computer printer mechanism that was used with teletypes. It prints in uppercase letters, numbers and punctuation in a single font. It can be programmed to print many typefaces by adjusting the number of teeth or petals on each wheel.
Line printers
A Line printer is a device which can print out information on paper in rows, or lines. This makes them perfect for printing out the pages of books, magazines and other long documents.
Drum printer
Drum printers are monochrome, slow, and expensive. They were manufactured as a lower-cost alternative to laser printers.
It was created in the 1980s by Xerox Corporation.
Drum printers have a cylindrical drum that is coated with the toner and has a developing roller that also transfers the toner to paper. Drum printers are monochrome, slow, and expensive. This type of printer was created as an inexpensive alternative to inkjet and laser printers for small businesses with low printing needs.
Dot matrix printers
A dot matrix printer is a type of computer printer which uses a print head that moves back and forth, or in an up and down pattern, along the length of the page, to put ink onto the paper, creating characters from a variety of typefaces.
The computer sends data to the printer using lines known as “commands”. These commands specify such things as how many times to repeat printing one line (i.e.: how many copies) and at what point to move the print head from one line on the paper to another.
LED Printers
LED printers are the fastest growing segment of the market for digital printing. They are highly praised for their low-cost production, short-run capabilities, and their ability to print on a wide variety of substrates.
An LED printer works by using LED light instead of ink, which is why it can be used for printing on various media types and can be so precise.
The main advantage that an LED printer has over an inkjet printer is that the inkjet needs to dry before it is put through the printing process again, meaning that there needs to be a break in production time. An LED printer doesn’t need to wait for anything because there is no ink to dry off or any other liquid involved in the process.
This is clearly too high-tech for office and school/collage project work!
Multifunction Printers
Multifunction printers are the most common type of printer for small business. They offer a range of functions that include photocopying, scanning, faxing and printing. It is worth mentioning that they are also referred to as all-in-one printers.
The multifunction printer has brought a revolution in the printing industry, because they provide features and benefits that were before only possible with different pieces of equipment.
I like the copier/scan features of these all in one printer, and if you have growing kids in your house, then you should get them. Copying lots of notes, copying books,
3D Printers
3D printers are printing machines that create objects from 3D models by layering material.
A 3D printer is a computer-controlled machine that builds up an object layer by layer, starting with the bottom of the object. The printer starts at the bottom because the layers are not visible on each other if they are built up from the top down. With these printers, you can create any kind of object that you like and print it in as little time as overnight!
3d printers are an interesting new innovation in manufacturing technology. These printers have been around for about 30 years, but they were very expensive and complicated to use, so they didn’t reach mainstream popularity until more recently. Nowadays, there are a lot of different types of 3d printers varying in price and function which makes them a valuable
There are few other old printer style as well, but you don’t to need them at all!
Ref: History of Printing
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