Inkjet Printer Buying Guide

Ink Jet Printers spray ink rapidly at high speed onto the paper to create the image. Heat or other means force tiny dots of ink from multiple nozzles horizontally across the paper. The paper is advanced by the printer and another row of ink is propelled onto it.

Thermal ink jets pulse heat through a chamber creates a bubble of pressure. This forces a drop of ink through a small hole. The physical properties of the ink moving through the hole pull more ink into the chamber. Multiple nozzles do this simultaneously to create high speed and resolution. Thermal ink jet printers are also known as bubble jet printers. Thermal printers are a different technology entirely than thermal ink jets.

Piezoelectric ink jets use a similar principle as thermal ink jets. Instead of heat, a special type of material is used to create a pressure pulse to force the ink drop through a small nozzle.

Continuous ink jets are the oldest of the technologies. A steady stream of ink is pressurized and pushed through a nozzle to create the printing.

Ink

Ink jets come as either black ink only, or colour printing. Ink jets are superior in the market when it comes to colour printing, especially photos. Depending on your needs, special inks may need to be used to maintain quality. High quality paper may be necessary so the ink doesnâ€™t diffuse, smear or run. Some printers use a wax based ink, while others use one that is aqueous (water soluble). These are most common. Water soluble inks will need to dry before being touched, as they tend to smear. Wax based inks resist being written on by pens after printing.

Ink cartridge composition is important to consider. Combined colour and black and white cartridges may be less expensive up front, but must be replaced when one runs out and the others don’t, making them more costly in the long run. Inkjets which take individual cartridges will be more economical over time.

Resolution

Resolution is how fine the words or images are printed. Lower resolution can cause fuzzy images, or letters and shapes with jagged edges that should be smooth. The higher the resolution, the clearer the picture and text quality will be. It is measured in dots per inch (dpi). Average printers will range between 300 and 600 dpi, though quality is improving with improved products. Ink jets set down a vertical row in a horizontal manner to increase speed. Thus vertical and horizontal resolutions may be different depending on the model. Vertical resolution is the clarity and smoothness of the lines printed up and down. Horizontal resolution is the clarity and smoothness of lines printed left to right.

Speed

Speed is measured in pages per minute. Speed will be affected by quality of the printer, and quality of the print job. A printer set on quick print will produce more pages per minute but with a less professional format. Sometimes draft settings use less ink, print less horizontal lines, or skip dot space to speed up printing. A general rule of thumb is the higher the quality of the print job, the slower the pages will be produced. Colour printing will be slower than black and white printing. Printing pictures will be slower than printing text.

Speed ranges will be 3 - 25 ppm. Be sure to check whether the speed rating is for BW (black and white) or colour.

Connection

Ink jet printers have multiple options for connection. They can be wireless, or cabled, a computer peripheral or network, dedicated or direct connect.

Wireless Wireless connections are Ethernet, blue tooth, infrared and wireless IEEE which is also known as Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi will have different connection options such as 802.11g, 802.11b etc. The first number denotes the working group that created the standards. The last digits refer to the specific standards used. The largest difference is which hertz band they transmit information on. Some of them can in theory interfere with other products that use the same wavelengths.
Cabled Cabled options hook the printer directly to the computer. They can be Fire Wire (IEEE), parallel, serial and USB. Parallel and serial are older technologies that are still in use. They are thicker cables with broad printer side connecters containing several pins. USB and Fire Wire are more compact and modern cables. Fire Wire is often used for images, especially from digital cameras. USB is a near universal port that is used for many computer peripherals. They are both slim and compact. USB has the option of 1.0 and 2.0. 2.0 and later are the updated connections, though 1.0 are still being used.
Network Printer A network printer is one that several computers can access. It is generally wireless and connected via a router into the same network as the source computers.
Computer Peripheral A computer peripheral is a device added later to the computer to perform a specific function, usually for input or output. In this case it is a printer that is connected to and communicates with one computer. It will only print hard copies from that pc.
Direct Connect An ink jet with direct connect can have a digital camera or flashcard hooked to the printer itself without having to go through the computer. The printer then prints the material from the device.
Dedicated A dedicated printer is one meant to print from a specific device and does not need a PC to print from that device. For example, a digital photo printer may be dedicated. The digital camera is placed on top at a port and photos are directly printed. The printer is not used to print from other devices, or text.

Printer Type

Ink jet printers can come in a variety of types:

Personal printers are those generally hooked up to a personal pc and are used for documents, flyers, homework etc.

Photo printers are capable of producing decent to high quality photos. They can be combined with other printing capabilities or dedicated to photo printing only. They can come as compact or large format printers in addition to regular size printing.

Network printers are printers shared by multiple computers on a network.

Work group printers are office ink jets that are designed to compete with laser printers in terms of efficiency and long term ink and paper costs. They are usually connected to a network.

POS printers are point of sales that print receipts. There are not very many ink jets of this type, as the POS receipt industry is dominated by an inkless printing technology.

Features

Paper capacity Printers come with varying paper capacity from 5 to 500 sheets. Higher end models or photo printers can also accommodate different paper sizes and stocks. Generally paper feeds are flat wide plastic guides. They often can fold over or slide into the printer for a compact look. Be warned that unfolded feeders and trays can make the footprint of the printer larger than non-compact models.
Memory
Some printers will come with built in memory capacity or a processor if handling large amounts of files. This will free up memory on the computer for other applications. It also allows for speed in direct connections and dedicated printing.

Some printers will come with memory card slots. The different options are compact flash, memory sticks, SD memory cards, USB flash drives and more. It is less important to understand each option, and more important to know what cards the devices you intend to print from carry. If your camera has a memory stick and the printer only takes SD memory cards, the extra slot won’t serve you well.

Finally consider noise level. A noisy printer may be fine for a small business factory office, but may drive your flat mate nuts if you are printing last minute assignments in the wee hours of the morning.

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