Most of us have access to printers at our home or office. We tend to use them to get our printouts, but do we really know how do they work or how many types of printers are available? When you plan to go for a printer replacement, you will end up annoyed with a whole lot of information thrown before you – unless you have equipped yourself with enough knowledge.
So, let us go and check out the major printer types and how do they work.
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Types of Printers
To begin with, let us check out the basic printer types you can check out when opting for a new printer.
InkJet Printer
The InkJet printers come with a printhead that has several tinier holes all along. They would drop tiny droplets of ink on a paper to print the content on it. These printers generally use liquid ink. The liquid ink used here may be made of a colored dye or solid pigments suspended in a liquid.
The paper would pass perpendicular to the print head. The print head moves horizontally, and the tiny holes get activated as the paper passes. A tiny droplet of ink is dropped on the paper. This process takes place at a higher speed, and a number of ink droplets are placed on the paper. While the dots are placed in quick succession, but the naked eye visualizes it as a whole image or letter.
Laser Printer
Laser Printers use a similar concept of dropping the ink onto the paper for printing your files. However, the method used for dropping those ink droplets differs to a considerable extent.
The inkjet printer makes use of the droplets made of ink, while the laser printer deposits the ink using a toner. A toner, if you are confused, is a fine powder created from solid objects. The laser printers come with a complex mechanism. It uses multiple components like drum, toner and a light source like laser or LED. The drum is charged, and a laser light is passed through in the outline of the intended image. The toner is attracted to the drum as per the charge on it outlining the image of the drum.
The paper is passed through the drum, and series of thermal processes stick the toner drops onto the paper and stick it there
Snapshot Printers or Photo Printers
The name itself should clearly indicate that the photo printers are used specifically for the photo prints. These are the best ones for the families which have plenty of photos to share and of course, print.
Ideally speaking, a regular InkJet printer should be able to handle most of the tasks related to the printing of photos. However, if you are looking for an option solely for printing your photos, a photo printer can be an excellent choice. They are quite compact and can be used practically anywhere. In fact, the high-end portability is what should make them one of the preferred choices for your printing needs.
Check out this guide on Lookgadgets Recommends for photo printers
Yet another excellent option that makes photo printers a worthy choice is that they have all ports needed for photo printing. A typical photo printer comes with a complete set of ports and compatibility for your media sources. They provide you access to the cad slots for almost every media. They also have a PictBridge connectivity option for connecting your camera directly through a cable.
Color or Monochrome?
Which among the color and monochrome printers would you want to have? That would be something dependent upon what constitutes your work. If you are looking for anything more than a few letters, documents and spreadsheets – it may be best to go with a monochrome printer. A traditional office will normally have nothing to d with the graphics or color, and a monochrome printer would handle almost every task with ease here.
Anything more than the normal text and minimalistic graphics would ideally need a color printer. Invitations, brochures, and similar other elements would need you to opt for the color printers. Even from a business point of view, a color printer would help you get a better perspective on your business communication. You can perhaps improvise your reports with infographics and a few colored pie charts.
The Multi-function Printers – The King of them All
The Multifunction printers or the All- in – One printer as they are sometimes referred to as can perform a few more tasks than just printing your documents. A single machine will provide you access to a printer, a scanner, a copier, and a fax machine!
The All in One printer is available in multiple variants. That would mean you can have access to a Multifunction printer in the inkjet format or laser/LED format. In fact, even the monochrome printer.
Which Printer should you go with?
Well, the choice would be dependent upon the print volume. In fact, the print yield offered by the InkJet printer tends to be a little lower. The low-end printer comes with a tri-color ink cartridge which may ideally be a bad deal. Even if you deplete just one color, you need to replace the entire cartridge. How ever, if your print volume is considerably lower and you are looking for occasional printing needs, a low-end InkJet printer with tri ink cartridge would be the right and affordable option.
InkJet printers that offer separate ink cartridges for each of the colors can be an excellent option. These cartridges are normally referred to as the Ink Tanks. The printers that come with these specialized Ink cartridges or Ink tanks are also referred to as Ink Tank printers. The functionality of the InkJet printers and ink Tank printers remains almost the same except for the difference in the manner in which the ink is fed.
If you are looking for a printer for a business application with not many graphics, a monochrome laser printer would be an excellent option.
Well, that was what we thought you ought to know about the printers and their capabilities. The information offered here should be enough for initiating you into the world of printers and help you get the gist of what suits you the best.
