Like a futuristic Orwellian pronouncement that went astray, we all know that the paperless office never happened. General office and printed color pages have been consistently increasing and businesses are spending more to print office documents and marketing collateral. And while people think they are selectively printing less and viewing more (e.g. internet pages), there is so much more information available to print that total pages printed in the office are increasing. Taking it one step further, office color is growing for both ink and laser printers.
If you’ve ever had to make a printer purchase for business use, you’ve likely asked the question—should I get an inkjet or laser printer? Both technologies can, in general, print in ways that look great to the naked eye. However, there has traditionally been what is often termed, a “laser bias” within the business printing market. Business customers have used laser as the “gold standard” for printing--the Mercedes "S Class" of printing. The question becomes whether this “bias” has a basis in current reality or if this is a legacy from the past.
Historically, HP LaserJet printing has made its mark in the office through providing leadership through innovation and printing solutions that crank out pages day in and day out ("It Just Works" video). Today, this is manifested in end-to-end solutions that include a full portfolio of color laser printers and multi-function devices (MFPs)--that deliver exceptional print quality and color accuracy, leveraging color management and controls. Building on this with solutions like our In-House Marketing solution and online resources, while consistently delivering leading performance and reliability (with higher duty cycles) all add to this leadership position.
HP Inkjet devices have also made advancements in the office, including offering complete solutions in terms of printers and MFPs (we’ve recently announced the new Edgeline series). While inkjet printing has looked professional for some time, strides have been made in printing permanence through water and fade resistance. Speeds have gone up and cost of ownership (as measured by cost per page (CPP)) has come way down and is now significantly lower than laser.
In fact, the HP Officejet Pro delivers the lowest CPP at print speeds (up to 10 ppm color/ 12 ppm mono) that exceed speeds on current entry level color laser. While HP Color LaserJets deliver the best print quality on plain paper and the highest durability on all media--the photo output on inkjet devices using photo media and HP Vivera inks is unsurpassed. HP Officejet Pro inkjets also have the lowest purchase price at $199 for general office printing and $399 for a version that prints tabloid (A3) size.
If this is starting to seem like splitting hairs, you might appreciate the more dramatic comparison between printing in-house versus printing externally. For instance, printing a two-sided four-color brochure would cost you approximately 60 cents per page on a Color LaserJet 2600n using HP Color Laser Brochure paper. At a retail print provider, this same brochure would cost over $2.00 per page. In other words, it would cost over 200% more to print this externally. The comparative costs are very similar for printing internally on an inkjet, rather than sending printing out.
While we could get more technical about the differences between ink and laser, it’s more important to focus on what visually appeals to you, the type of documents you’re printing, what kind of environment you’re printing in, and your budget constraints. The optimal printing environment would actually have a number of options that include both ink and laser in a balanced deployment model.
If you have to choose one printer for your printing needs, you might consider an MFP, based on either technology, depending on the amount of printing you plan to do. Laserjets tend to have higher duty-cycles if you intend to print more documents internally or are planning to print marketing materials in-house.
We have no ax to grind about the technologies as we sell both ink and laser printers. There is no magic formula that can be applied to determine the best printer with 100% accuracy. The great thing about this, from a customer perspective, is the unprecedented choice that is available to customers at attractive prices points – choose ink or laser based on your specific printing needs.
Anyone with laser and/or inkjet printers may want to comment with their thoughts or experiences . . .
Posted
01-11-2007 10:24 AM
by
Anonymous