A Printer for Home and Office: Laser or Inkjet, Ink Tanks and CISS, and What a Page Really Costs

When choosing a printer, most people look at the price of the device itself — and often get it wrong. An inexpensive inkjet can cost many times more per page, and one that's rarely used can dry up within a couple of months. A powerful laser printer, on the other hand, will sit idle at home if you print a boarding pass once a month. Let's look at how laser and inkjet printers differ, how to work out the real cost of printing and how to choose a printer for your needs.

How an inkjet printer works

An inkjet printer sprays microscopic droplets of liquid ink onto paper through a print head. It prints colour documents and photos well, and is itself inexpensive and compact. But classic cartridge inkjets have a high cost per page: cartridges are expensive and run out quickly. The main problem is drying out: if the printer sits unused for weeks, the ink in the head's nozzles dries, streaks and gaps appear, and cleaning cycles use up lots of ink.

Ink tank printers

The modern alternative is inkjets with built-in ink tanks that are refilled from bottles. The printer costs more, but a set of ink lasts thousands of pages, and the cost per page becomes very low — even in colour. It's a good choice for a family with school-age children and for printing colour material and photos. Factory tanks are more reliable than home-made continuous ink supply systems (CISS), which often leak and ruin the print head. But even this kind of printer needs to print something regularly.

How a laser printer works

A laser printer transfers a dry powder — toner — onto the paper and fuses it with heat. Toner doesn't dry out: the printer can sit for months and then immediately print a clean page. Text comes out very sharp and doesn't smudge with damp or a highlighter. Speed is high, the cost per mono page is low and a cartridge lasts thousands of pages. The downsides are that colour lasers are expensive and bulky, and photos look worse on them than on inkjets.

Comparison by task

• You print rarely, mostly documents — a mono laser printer: it won't dry up and won't let you down when you need it.
• Lots of black-and-white documents, an office, accounting — a laser printer or MFP with a high-yield cartridge.
• Colour material, school projects, photos — an ink tank inkjet.
• High-quality photos — a dedicated photo printer with several ink colours.
• Large volumes of colour documents and presentations in an office — a colour laser or a business-class office inkjet.

How to work out the cost per page

Divide the price of a cartridge or ink set by its stated yield in pages. Yield is measured at a standard page coverage of about 5% — an ordinary text document. If you print lots of images, shaded tables or photos, real consumption will be several times higher. Compare the cost per page, not the price of the printer: over a couple of years the consumables often cost more than the device itself.

Compatible cartridges and refills

Non-original cartridges and refills are noticeably cheaper, but quality varies widely. Poor toner or ink can give faded prints and streaks, and at worst damage the print head or fuser. Some manufacturers block non-original cartridges with firmware updates. If you choose compatible consumables, go for proven makers and reliable refill services.

Connection

Most modern printers can print over Wi-Fi: from computers, laptops and phones without any cables. In an office, a printer is better connected to the network by cable — that way it's more reliably available to everyone. Common problems are the printer "disappearing" from the network after the router restarts, jobs getting stuck in the queue and phones not seeing the printer. These are usually solved by setting up the network and drivers correctly.

What our technician does

1. Helps you choose a printer based on your print volumes and the real cost per page.
2. Connects the printer to computers, laptops and phones over USB, Wi-Fi or the network.
3. Installs drivers and sets up printing and scanning.
4. Fixes print queue problems, the printer dropping off the network and errors.
5. Sets up shared printer access in the office and printing from phones.

A real example

A family in Didube bought an inexpensive inkjet to print their children's school assignments. They printed once every two or three weeks, and almost every time the printer produced streaks, while the cartridge set needed replacing monthly. Our technician did the maths: each page cost more than printing at a copy shop. On his advice the family switched to an ink tank printer; we connected it over Wi-Fi to their laptops and phones and set up an automatic weekly test page so the head wouldn't dry out. Their printing costs fell several times over.

Think about scanning too. If you need to scan documents, passports and contracts, it's more convenient to get a multifunction device from the start: a printer, scanner and copier in one unit take up less space than separate devices, and scanning with a phone is noticeably worse in quality than a proper scanner.

Call a technician

If you need a printer chosen, connected or set up, we'll come to any district of Tbilisi around the clock. Learn more on our computer setup, driver installation and local network setup pages.