Nowadays, there is a computer in almost every home. And many PC owners sooner or later begin to wonder where to print a document sent by e-mail, or a recipe found on the Internet. Given the relatively low prices in the market for modern printing devices, it is much more profitable to have a printer or MFP at home than to constantly contact friends who have the opportunity to print the information you need, or look for a place where several sheets of text can be printed from your media.
After the PC user realizes this, he will begin to ask himself another question - how to choose a printer for home from the whole variety of these devices on the market? To begin with, let's figure out what to choose from, or rather, what types of these devices can be found on store shelves nowadays.
Not taking into account professional devices for printing houses and advertising agencies, the cost of which varies around several tens of thousands of dollars, all devices falling into the category of “printer for home” can be conditionally divided into several groups.
Inkjet printers. This category of printers can most often be found next to your home PC. “Inkjets” owe their name to the printing process that is used in all such devices. When printing, ink in inkjet printers gets onto the paper through special nozzles in small drops (trickles), the thickness of which does not exceed the thickness of the hair. Due to its low cost and ease of use, as well as the ability to print not only text, but also various graphic images and photographs, this category of printers is one of the most common on the market today. The most famous and popular models are HP PhotoSmart D7263, Canon PIXMA iP4600 and Epson Stylus Photo R390.
Laser printers. This type of device greatly benefits in print speed compared to its inkjet counterparts. But laser printers have one significant minus - monochrome (printing only in black) devices of this category often cost no less than a good inkjet, and a color laser printer will cost several times more than its inkjet counterpart. In addition, before choosing a printer, take into account that color laser printing devices are much more massive than inkjets and will take up more space. Recognized sales leaders at the moment are the HP Laserjet 1018, Lexmark Optra E120n and Optra E120, Canon Laser Shot LBP2900.
Photo Printers. What these devices are intended for, it becomes clear already from their name. Conventionally, they can be divided into two types - stationary and mobile. Images in them are applied by thermal sublimation (in other words, by evaporation of the paint at a high temperature), which allows to obtain a quality similar to the quality of photo laboratories. But before choosing a printer for your home from this category, it’s worth considering how often you will print photographs, and how ordinary text or images that do not require high quality, since the cost of printing with photo printers is quite high and, printing a sheet “black white and white text, in fact, you will pay almost the same as for a full photo. The most popular models are EPSON Stylus Photo P50 and EPSON Stylus Photo T50.
But how to choose a printer for home, which is suitable not only for printing from a computer, but also allows you to "make copies" using a scanner and perform a number of other tasks? You should not reinvent the wheel - if you need a solution not only for printing, but also for other purposes, it is best to get an MFP . A multifunctional device (this abbreviation is deciphered in exactly this way), as the name implies, was created in order to combine several devices at once. Typically, an MFP includes an inkjet or laser printer and scanner. Such a device performs the functions of both a scanner and a printer, and a copier (and, in some cases, a fax), taking up much less space than all this equipment separately. Sellers and users recommend paying attention to the Canon PIXMA MP520, HP Photosmart C6283 and Epson Stylus Photo RX610 models.
But before choosing a printer for your home from one of the above options, check with the seller how many supplies (ink, toner, ink) you will need to print a certain number of pages on the devices you like and at what price you will bypass these "Consumables." This is necessary because the price of consumables in some cases will result in the cost of a “simple” printer, and some sellers simply “forget” to inform customers about this.