When you finally start looking for printers for home or office use, you will usually see two types of machine available on the market.

The most predominant on the market is the inkjet printer. These printers are more common in the home and use liquid ink together with tiny nozzles that spray onto paper, creating your images and text. They are much more expensive to maintain and each page you print costs more than the alternative, the laser printer. In this article you’ll learn how to choose the best laser printer for your needs.

Strangely enough, the technology used in laser printers is older than that used in inkjets. A laser printer works almost like a copy machine in that it uses a toner cartridge full of black powder, and electrically charged rollers pull the oppositely-charged powder particles along the paper. Then a heat roller fuses, or melts the toner in place so it cannot smudge or be removed. Choosing the best laser printer really depends on what you will be printing with it.

With laser printers able to print over 8,000 pages on a single toner, whereas inkjet can only print out 170 pages on a single cartridge. You can see that the best laser printer is the one that’s going to end up in your office. If you are printing reports, printing school work or literature, then this is the best laser printer for you. The downside is that a laser printer can cost $400, while you can pick up an inkjet printer for around $50. Even the replaceable are more expensive: an inkjet cartridge costs $35 while a toner cartridge costs $115. This brings up the topic of why exactly a black and white laser printer would be better than a color inkjet.

Monochrome laser printer basics: PRICE: $150, TONER CARTRIDGE: $115, TOTAL COST: $265, PAGES THAT CAN BE PRINTED: 8,000

Inkjet, full color printer basics: PRICE: $50, COLOR AND BLACK INK: $35, TOTAL COST: $85PAGES THAT CAN BE PRINTED: 170

So you can see the reason why some companies stick to monochrome lasers for the bulk of their printing demands, and use a couple color inkjets for their smaller color printing tasks. To be able to print over 8,000 pages with an inkjet you would need 47 refill cartridges for a total of $1,647.00.

It is possible to find color laser printers, but they are harder to find and can cost quite a bit more than their monochrome counterparts. They require four toners, and each one together can be as expensive as a monochrome toner. And because there is less black toner in a four-color setup, you won’t get the same amount of print outs as a monochrome laser. The color laser printer option is not at it best yet, though it is getting there. So while monochrome models are the best laser printers, color models are not quite there yet.

There are a ton of printer choices out there for whatever your needs are. Determine which is the best laser printer for your needs.