What are the advantages of a laser printer to a home user?

Answer 1

Basically anything, other then printing pictures, a laser printer will almost always be better, especially in the long run.

Text is normally much higher quality.

Pages with lots of colors print faster.

The cost for each printed pages is much much lower.

You can print between 800 and 2000 pages before you have to change toner cartridge's.

You don't have to wait for the ink to dry on a page with lots of color in it, like pie charts, graphs, etc, or have the curling from the wet ink.

You can come back weeks or months later and it will still print, you don't have to clean the print head or worry about the ink drying up.

Answer 2

Whether one considers laser printers better depends on his purposes, needs, and situation. For example, in my business, I have both color and monochrome laser printers and divide the work as appropriate between them. I use lasers because they are faster (the slowest nowadays printing about 16 pages a minute with most being in the 25-page per minute range and the fastest being 40+ pages per minute), have greatly reduced per-page costs for printing (a 5000-page toner cartridge costs about $50 whereas an inkjet cartridge that produces only about 400 pages costs about $36: one cent per page is much better than 9 cents per page), and can easily print on both sides of the paper without risk of bleeding through to the other side. Of course, lasers also have the drawbacks of using more energy, producing more heat, and being more expensive to purchase (let alone to repair or replace when such a time comes).

Some will say that inkjets produce better images than lasers and if one is talking about photo paper, then I cannot argue the fact since laser printers do not use photo paper: the emulsion which the wet ink of the inkjet penetrates would melt under the 350-degree heat of the fusing assembly of the laser printer and foul the heat roller of said assembly.

Laser printers also tend to take up more room on the desk than inkjet printers as well as the inkjets being significantly lighter. There are more components required for the operation of a laser printer as it is a much more sophisticated technology with various sensors to insure proper operation, tracking of the paper throughout the print process, protection from overheat conditions, and more. An inkjet printer, by comparison, is much more simplistic: it has sensors to detect only that a sheet has been drawn in and whether it is advancing through the output assembly when expected. Due to the number of extra sensors and components of the laser printer, the footprint is larger and the desk or other surface on which the printer is placed must be stronger and more stable.

When purchasing a laser printer, one is making an investment in a device that should last for several years with some printers (such as a Hewlett Packard Laserjet 4M Plus I previously owned) lasting for decades. (My 4M Plus was in service for over 20 years and needed no maintenance other than the pickup rollers--an easy maintenance job--in all that time.) The initial expense is higher but you also are buying more than just the printer: you are buying a machine built with the assumption that it will be in service for the long haul and therefore has parts that are replaceable, many of which can be replaced by the end-user without much trouble. Inkjet printers are not designed in this fashion. In fact, most manufacturers design them as "throw-away" items. What this means is that when it breaks down (typically in two to three years, sometimes as much as five to seven years), there is no repairing it. The owner just tosses it away and goes out to buy a new printer. Because of this, they are made much more inexpensively and are not considered worth the time to build for even a simple field replacement of pickup rollers.

Another consideration is the environment in which you will be printing. While the noisy "clack-clack-clack" of dot matrix printers is now a thing of the past for the most part, printers can still be noisy things. Inkjets tend to make the most noise as they rattle, shimmy, and shake as the paper slowly advances through the machine and the printhead assembly moves from side to side to paint the printout across the page. Laser printers tend to be quieter but still are far from silent as they energize their high-voltage power supplies for the lasers that they use to create the images and for the fusing assembly that melts the toner to bond it to the paper, not to mention the whirring of the motors that make everything move appropriately in time with everything else. Laser printers tend to have half the decibel rating of inkjet printers (30dB vs 60dB), so they are better for quieter or more serene environments such as libraries, hospitals, etc.

All in all, what is the better printer for you is really a toss-up until you consider a number of factors. I have touched on only a few such considerations here so as to get the original poster of the question and you, the reader of this answer, to start thinking about what your needs and environmental situation are so that you can make the right choice.

I hope this helps. If you have any other questions, feel free to drop me a line. If you happen to be in the northeast Kansas area, let me know and I will be glad to offer professional services through my company in addition to the free friendly advice.