Buying a color photo laser printer is less of a financial ordeal than it was a few years ago. It is also a more appealing solution to some because the quality of the photos has improved as well. If you’ve been debating in your head about whether to spring for a laser printer for their speed and their lack of ink thirst compared to inkjet compact photo printers, now is as good a time as ever.
Let’s start out with what’s good about photo laser printers and what’s good about inkjet photo compact printers.
A photo laser printer is fast, approximately twice as fast as an inkjet printer. If you take large quantities of pictures for your own use or for your work then this is a consideration. Printing a lot of photos quickly can help you save time and money in the long run. And there is the very pleasant fact that a photo laser printer’s ink lasts far longer than ink jet printer ink.
While the toner cartridge for a photo laser printer is more expensive, you get significantly more prints from it than you do with inkjet cartridges, which always seem to run out at inconvenient times. On a cost per print basis, the photo laser printer is the better value.
Durability and quality
If you want to print out brochures or other graphic designs, photo laser printers are unbeatable for durability and quality. Not only do photos printed with a photo laser printer last longer, they don’t turn into an abstract expressionist watercolor when they get wet. When looking for a photo laser printer, determine if printing is all you want your machine to do, or if you want to be able to copy, print, fax, and scan things as well. Printers that can do all this will cost a little more, but the additional functions – particularly scanning – can co me in very handy.
When it comes to photos, reviewers give inkjet compact photo printers high marks for printing photos with higher quality. But it is entirely possible that a photo laser printer can do the job to your satisfaction as well, especially if you need to print out massive numbers of brochures or newsletters. Laser printers are much better suited to batch processing than inkjet compact photo printers.
Another option you might consider if you plan to use your inkjet printer for photos and don’t need color laser graphics is getting a monochrome laser printer for printing out text and grayscale graphics. These only cost around US$100 and have the advantages of better speed, text quality, and lower costs per page than your inkjet printer.
If you haven’t dealt with a color photo laser printer then you might be surprised by how big they are. They’re not the behemoths they used t o be, but with four toner cartridges, they take up a lot more space than either monochrome laser printers or inkjet printers. They’re also heavy, so make sure you have a sturdy place to put them that is also big enough to accommodate its larger footprint.
While Dell receives a lot of positive attention for its affordable line of photo laser printers for home use, Xerox and Canon also make excellent contenders in this category. One popular model, the Dell 2130cn only comes with Windows drivers, however, so beware if you’re a Mac user. Even the lower end photo laser printers today are capable of printing on glossy paper, and this clearly steps on the toes of a lot of inkjet compact photo printers, particularly since the prices for photo laser printers continue to fall.
The Xerox Phaser 6280N is noted for its outstanding text quality and its speed for the price. It has a 400-sheet pape r tray, and scores well for the quality of graphics and photos. They are PostScript compatible, easy to use, and include a duplexer, all for around $600. If it’s greater print speed that you’re after, and you’re not as picky about image quality, then the Xerox Phaser 6360DN is speedy enough for even high volume color printing, and they come with networking and many other capabilities.
The Konica Minolta Magicolor 2430DL prints on glossy paper and costs around $500. The HP Color LaserJet 2550L does the same for the same price. Compare this to the prices from 2004, when the only models that would print onto glossy paper cost US$6,800! These printers are great for brochures or presentation materials when you don’t need professional print shop quality.
One thing you should know is that while inkjet printers create photos on glossy paper that look better than the ones printed on regular paper, the same is not true of photo laser printers. You’ll get about the same quality from regular paper as glossy paper with the Minolta and the HP. And you can use two-sided glossy paper in them too.
Both models print photos with quality comparable to the higher quality settings on lower end inkjet printers. While the HP produces more natural skin tones in photos, the Minolta Magicolor has higher resolution and shows up facial features in sharper relief. The Minolta also has a PictBridge port on the front so you can simply plug in your compatible camera and print without going through a PC first.
A model you might consider if your budget is a little more generous is the Canon Color ImageClass MF8350Cdn. This printer is an all-in-one printer (fax, copy, scan, print) with great speed and output quality. It costs roughly $550 to $700. The performance of the MF8350Cdn makes it a great choice for small, or even medium sized offices. It’s also less ugly than other photo laser printers. It can work as a standalone fax and copier and comes with a 50-page automatic document feeder so you can scan single-sided multiple page documents at letter up to legal size.
Another reason the MF8350Cdn is so great for an office is that it has not only a 250-sheet paper drawer, but also a 50-sheet multipurpose tray that you can use for a second type of paper without having to change the paper in the drawer. It comes with a duplexer standard, and you can even add a second 250-sheet drawer, bringing total paper capacity to 550 sheets. The extra 250-sheet drawer is what accounts for the higher priced version of the MF8350Cdn.
Another Xerox model, the Xerox Phaser 7500/DN, retails for $3,300 and offers top quality paper handling and high output quality. It’s the first printer using Xerox’s natural language color control, and it prints at tabloid size and larger. It’s fast, produces superior text quality, as well as superior image quality. While this printer is going to be too expensive for most home users, if you have a business with a need for professional quality output of both text and graphics, this is a great choice.
Lexmark‘s X204n costs about $300. It’s multi-purpose printer that’s fast, but is reported to have somewhat lower than average print quality for a photo laser printer. The Brother MFC-8480DN retails for US$380 to US$460 and is fast, with better than average print quality and the standard suite of multi-purpose capabilities. Brother’s HL-5340HD retails for just US$200 and produces reasonably high quality text and graphics at a fast clip. Finally, the Konica Minolta Magicolor 1600W is in the same league as the Brother HL-5340-HD in both price and quality.