Printer and Cartridge Terms You Need to Know
If you are thinking of buying a new printer or cartridges, it is handy to know the most common jargon associated with these products. There are a lot of acronyms and technical terms surrounding printers and printing consumables. Here is a handy guide of 10 of the most common printing and printer cartridge terms.
ADF
This term stands for “automatic document feeder” and refers to the device found on top of some all-in-one or multifunction printers which allows for documents to be fed into the machine instead of simply laying them across the flat-bed scanner/copier component when you are scanning, copying or faxing. This is helpful as the flat-bed is usually designed to accommodate documents of a certain size and it makes the process less time-consuming. Here below we can see that the ADF is positioned right on the top of the Samsung CLX 4195FW laser printer.
CMYK
This stands for “cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (or black)”. CMYK is a colour model in which all colours are described as a combination of these four process colours. This is the standard colour model used in offset printing for full-colour documents and the colour model which most laser and inkjet printers use.
In digital printing, the four CMYK colours are applied to the paper all at the same time. In offset printing, the four CMYK ink colours are applied to the paper one layer at a time. By overlapping these four ink colours in various concentrations, a large number of other colours can be created. As a result, the combined visual effects of these four CMYK colours produce what we commonly refer to as Full Colour Printing. Most colour printers fall into two different categories: 2 cartridge or multi-cartridge printers. This means that depending on the type of printer you own, your colour printer will either use four different toner or ink cartridges (one for each of the different CMYK colours) or one cartridge containing cyan, magenta and yellow and another cartridge containing just black ink.
Compatible ink cartridges
A compatible cartridge refers to an ink cartridge that is not manufactured by the original manufacturer of your printer. Compatible cartridges will function and work in the same way that an original ink cartridge would.
DPI
This means “dots per inch” and is a measurement of printer resolution. This term indicates how many ink dots the printer can fit in one square inch. The DPI impacts upon the quality of the images that your printer and cartridges can produce. The higher the DPI, the sharper and better the printed image will look.
Duplex
Duplex printing is a feature of some printers that allows for the printing of a sheet of paper on both sides (double-sided). It is a great feature to have if you want to print in a more eco-friendly way or save time and money.
Generic toner cartridges
Generic toner cartridges is another word for compatible toner cartridges. These are toner cartridges which have not been manufactured by the original manufacturer of your printer but will function in the same way. Our generic toner cartridges are guaranteed to provide the same page yields as original manufacturers’ toner cartridges. They offer a cost effective alternative for your business or home printer.
Page yield
When shopping for toner and ink cartridges in the Tonerink online store you may see the words “has a quote yield of…” in the cartridge description. Page yield refers to the estimated number of pages that can be printed with a particular printer cartridge.
Page yield is dependent upon how much you place on the page – this is particularly relevant with photos as they are far more ink-intensive than normal text documents.
PPI
This acronym stands for “pixels per inch” and is a term used to define the quality of the scan for those machines that have scanning capability. Again, the higher the number, the better the result.
PPM
This means “pages per minute” and refers to the speed at which the printer can churn out completed pages of print. Printers often have two PPM ratings, one for the speed of printing black and white only and another for the speed of printing full colour pages.
Wireless direct printing
You may notice when you are browsing the printers in our online store that some of them have the “wireless direct printing” or “wi-fi direct” feature. This feature allows your Wi-Fi capable devices (such as smart phones, tablets, or computers) to make a wireless network connection directly to your printer without using a wireless router or access point.
These are just a few of the terms you’ll encounter when shopping for printers or printing accessories. If you have any questions about these or other printing terms contact our customer service team at [email protected]