Choosing the best printer for your business can be a daunting task. There are a number of factors that influence your decision – technology and function level; how much you can afford to spend; what you print; how much you print; and whether you need the ability to add extra features or need room to grow.

No one wants to spend more money than they need to on office supplies, but sometimes buying a cheaper printer can work out more expensive long term. If you print in high volumes, it is likely that cost of the printer’s consumables may cancel out savings on the initial machine expenditure. Here’s some things that you should consider before selecting a printer for your office or place of work to make sure you not only get the right printer for the job, but also get the right printer for your budget.

What are you printing?

Inkjet printers produce superb quality prints and detailed colour images. Laser printers, on the other hand, are very good at mass producing simple black and white documents.

If your normal print output is reserved to plain text documents such as text-letters, spreadsheets or simple documentation then a monochrome laser or LED printer is as technical as you need to go.

The printer you chose should accommodate for your current paper-handling capabilities but should also provide room to accommodate growth of your business and your requirements. For example, if you believe you may print on multiple media types, having a dedicated tray for each type will save you time and hassle.

Many modern printers can handle printing on envelopes, labels, index cars and more, and many have automatic duplexing as a built in feature. This can half your paper usage and lessen time manually duplex printing. If you think that you’ll need to print duplex more often than not, make sure your printer has this feature.

How often are you printing?

If you’re printing a few sheets a day, then a personal inkjet or laser printer will be sufficient. Alternatively, if you intend to print hundreds of pages per day then it might be more beneficial in the long run to upgrade to a higher specification model.

Many entry-level business printers have a standard input capacity of 150 pages, which may suit a small office that do not wish to refill the paper tray two or three times in the same day. If you intend on printing larger quantities, opt for a printer with a higher minimum capacity or multiple paper trays.

How many people will be using the printer?

For a printer that multiple people can use, Ethernet networkability or wireless networkability is essential for easy printing and sharing. If a large number of jobs are expected of large sizes, it could be more cost effective for your business in the long term to have one wireless printer for the whole office over personal inkjet printers for each employee.

However, if your office is very busy a single machine may not be able to cope with the demand of all employees printing, copying and scanning. This could overwhelm your printer and also frustrate the people trying to use it! It is important to strike the right balance between cost and practicality.

Single-function or Multifunction?

If you only print your own documents, then it is highly likely that you will not need a multi-function printer.

However if you’d like to embrace a paperless office or share your work with other people, multifunction printers give you that wider ability to produce photocopies, create electronic versions of documents and send these via-email or save them on your server. While these may be higher in initial cost, this reduces the need to supply multiple machines in the office.

Multifunction printers also help you to save space within the office, and reduce the number of cables and wires trailing across your office.

Overall, it is important that you consider exactly what you need from your printer and the most effective way of achieving this within your business constraints. Here at Copymark, we’re passionate about printing and ensure that any devices purchased fit the client’s needs exactly.

To find out more about how we can help you, contact a member of our team today for more information.