Whats is the right printer for our Small Business

Choosing the right printer for your company can be a difficult process, and many business owners make the mistake of overspending on features that they don’t need, or fail to buy a printer with the capacity to manage the everyday needs of their office. In this article, we look at the various factors you should take into consideration when deciding on the right printer model for your business.

Purpose

What you intend to use the printer for is the single most important factor to take into consideration when making a purchase. When thinking about purpose, it’s important to factor in considerations like the number of print jobs, page numbers, and what kinds of materials are being printed. As a general rule of thumb, unless you need to print colour on a regular basis, investing in a monochrome (black and white) laser printer is the way to go as these tend to be more reliable and better in terms of economy.  However, for companies in the visual design industry, a multifunction laser printer like the Lexmark MC3326ADWE is ideal as it can be used to print quality images, and has an impressive duty cycle of up to 30,000 pages per month.

Budget

Budget is a big consideration for small businesses but it’s important to factor in not just the upfront cost of the printer, but also it’s ink usage and maintenance needs. For example, although an inkjet printer might be a more cost effective option upfront, the ink cartridges they run on are very costly and tend to require more frequent changing that the toner in a laser printer.

Capacity

The amount of pages you print and the number of print jobs you send through on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis are the primary factors which determine the lifespan of your printer. When considering capacity, it pays to investigate the duty cycle of the printers you are looking at. The duty cycle is an estimate of the number of pages that a printer can produce per month before it breaks down or requires maintenance.

Users

This might not seem like an obvious point of consideration but the number of people who will be using the printer, and their technological capability can really affect the performance of your machinery. For a small business that has just one or two employees working at any one time, a standard home office sized printer like the Brother HL-5200DW double sided printer would be ideal.  However, if you have an office space with multiple employees who have vastly different levels of technical knowledge, then a larger, hardier printer with a higher duty cycle like the Kyocera ecosys m5526cdw colour laser multifunction would be a better fit for your business.

Tonerink stocks an extensive range of printers and accessories, and ink cartridges online. We have models suitable for businesses of all sizes. To learn more about our product range, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our friendly team by calling 1300 738 194.