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Laser printing has had a tough time of it in recent years. The pace of innovation with this older printer technology (barring tweaks to toner formulations) has slowed to a crawl. Plus, high-speed business inkjet printers with low costs per page, such as those in HP's PageWide line, have been nibbling through laser printers' lunch—and are now eyeing their dinner.
Still, laser printers have remained relevant by focusing on their traditional strengths: fast print speeds and reasonable costs per page (especially for text output), as well as the extremely clean look of the finished product. On the downside, lasers often have a significantly higher upfront cost, and they're nowhere near as capable as inkjets at reproducing fine gradients in complex color output such as photos.
So, who would find a laser printer a more attractive proposition than an inkjet? In most cases, not the person seeking an occasional-use printer for motley tasks: at one moment to print a personal e-mail, the next to copy a color image out of a book, or to print photos. Lasers are better suited to bulk text output: contracts, long research papers, book drafts. If you print a lot of large jobs, and stick mostly to text and clean graphics instead of color photographs, a laser printer is the right match.
It's also a good one if high-quality text printing matters most. Indeed, certain types of businesses, such as medical offices, may mandate laser printing for archival tasks and record keeping.
You can break down lasers into four key types, defined by two questions: (1) Is the printer a mono-only laser, or can it do color, too? And, (2) is it only a printer, or an all-in-one (AIO) model that can print, scan, and copy (and perhaps handle faxes)? Laser models exist in all four combinations.
'Printer-only' models are well and good; they are all about sheer text or business-document output to the exclusion of all else. If all you need is stacks of relatively uncomplicated documents, they're perfectly fine for that. They fall into two rough classes: inexpensive units meant for homes or student use (usually monochrome), and larger models designed for a home office, a small office, or a workgroup (which come in mono-only and color varieties).
In contrast, the laser all-in-one (often shortened to 'AIO') is a more varied animal. You can find both monochrome and color laser AIOs, but when you're talking about a mono laser AIO, there is an inherent mismatch of functionality there. Mono laser AIOs obviously print only in black-and-white, but they can scan in color, as well as make monochrome copies of any kind of source material, like a standard photocopier can. In a sense, the mono laser AIO combines the cost efficiency of a mono laser (which requires just one color of toner, black) with the convenience factor that an AIO brings. You just need to know what you're getting into before you buy one of these.
Color laser AIOs, meanwhile, bring much of the functionality of an inkjet AIO and combine it with the clean text that lasers are known for, as well as smudge-proof color output. Just know, though, that color laser toner can be an investment come refill time, often exceeding the cost of the printer. It's something to think about if you'll use the color printing function only rarely, as the four cartridges (black, plus cyan, magenta, and yellow toners) can be dear.
Also know that as a rule, almost any inkjet's color photos will be superior in quality to color photos printed on any color laser. Laser-printed color photos tend to look flat. The strength of color laser output is in printing text, business graphics, charts, and the like. So a color laser—given the added cost of its color toner—makes sense to buy only if you are sure that you need that kind of color output.
Indeed, don't underestimate the power of a seemingly simple monochrome laser. A mono laser printer can provide the speed, durability, and paper handling to deal with the high printing volume of a busy office. And inexpensive monochrome lasers with modest paper handling can serve as personal desktop printers in any size office. Many current color lasers print photos that are fine for many business uses, such as client newsletters. In higher-quality lasers, the overall output quality for text, graphics, and photos is typically good enough for brochures and other marketing materials, allowing many companies to take such printing in-house.
While the vast majority of new inkjets (barring photo printers) are AIOs, with lasers you'll find an abundance of both single-function printers and AIOs as you shop. AIOs provide copying and scanning in addition to printing, and in some cases, fax capabilities, too. Models with fax functionality will have a phone-line interface.
Most laser printers or AIOs include an Ethernet jack, and some integrate Wi-Fi.Ethernet connections are essential for plugging into the office router or other wired network infrastructure. For a small or home office, this is often sufficient, too, but also look at the other connectivity options (usually a direct USB cable connection) if you just need to connect the printer to a single PC.
Also, when checking out the wireless aspects, be sure to check if the Wi-Fi interface comes standard, or is an option that you add via a module or card. Wi-Fi add-ons for laser AIOs tend to be extravagantly priced.
You might also see support for Wi-Fi Direct, or its equivalent, for establishing a direct peer-to-peer connection between computer and printer so you don't need to connect to a network. Another more frequent option is support for Near-Field Communications (NFC) touch-to-print, which lets you print from a mobile device by simply tapping it on a specific spot on the printer.
If you do a lot of text-based printing, a single-function laser or a laser AIO will likely prove faster than an equivalent-priced inkjet AIO. There's only so much speed you can get out of squirting ink, and an inkjet's printhead mechanism running across the page in sweeps is an inherently mechanical, less efficient process. (That's with some exceptions, as always; HP's PageWide family of business inkjet printers, mentioned earlier, churns at laser-like speeds by making the inkjet printhead a non-moving element.)
You likely won't notice the difference on small jobs, where it's just a matter of shaving a few seconds off the time a comparable inkjet would take, but it adds up the more you print. If you plan to purchase a printer for regular large jobs, a laser will save you time spent waiting for your pages to print when you could be doing something else—including the next heavy print job.
Vendors will cite estimated printing speeds in pages per minute, but look at comparative reviews like ours for cross-model print-speed comparisons using real-world documents.
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Inkjets work by spraying ink in microscopic droplets onto paper. A side effect of that, though: Ink bleeds. There's a certain upside to this, as bleeding (when a computer's algorithms and the printer's resolution are up to snuff) can be harnessed to execute complex color combinations in photo reproduction. The downside is that bleeding can fuzz out fine lettering. It's seldom enough to notice at a casual glance, but inkjet-derived text can show artifacts (speckling, blobs, wisps), smudging, and filament breaks, especially at very large font sizes (say, in headlines) or very small font sizes (say, when printing several page images on one page).
Lasers typically don't have this problem, since a laser printer's dust-like toner particles are positioned precisely on the page with the help of a drawing beam and then fused in place. They're superior when you want to create a professional-looking document, say, on your office letterhead.
This applies double when you're duplexing pages—that is, printing to both sizes of a sheet. With inkjets, visual bleed-through to the other side of the paper, with resultant shadow artifacts, may occur, though less so with thicker paper. That's not an issue on a laser. You can grab a faxed document or produce a double-sided booklet without fears of seeing page 2 as you read page 3, unless you use very thin stock.
Also, because the toner is transferred electrostatically and then fused by heat to the page, laser output tends to handle dampness better, and it doesn't need to 'dry.' A laser can churn out pages atop one another without worrying about ink-saturated images transferring in part to adjacent pages that are still wet. This is an important factor for any business that needs cleanly printed color graphics, and fast.
Whether you use your inkjet regularly or leave it idle for weeks, you lose a bit of ink whenever you change cartridges or start up the printer and endure its cleaning cycle. The toner in laser cartridges isn't subject to drying and tends to last longer when left idle, and toner cartridges also tend to last for more pages than most inkjet ones. This should, at least in theory, appeal to both the small office that frequently uses its printer (it means less-frequent accessory purchases) and to the one that prints only intermittently (because of less loss of the consumables between uses).
Now, lasers typically have a higher upfront cost. Traditionally, they make up for it with greater cartridge efficiency—i.e., lower printing costs per page. But the rise of high-volume business inkjets has closed the page-cost gap, and depending upon the individual printers being compared, the advantage could now go either way.
We discuss cost per page (CPP) in our laser printer reviews, and factor in any other accessory costs that might apply to an individual unit, such as drums, fusers, transfer rollers, and pick rollers. In some lasers, these 'maintenance' parts require periodic replacement, especially in higher-end models. For a heavy-printing office, these numbers are key considerations.
You'll want to assess the paper trays in any laser model (AIO or single-function) that you are looking at: Will the tray volume meet the needs of your office, or will I constantly need to load paper?
Paper-tray capacities tend to scale up or down with the duty cycle of the printer (more on which, next). The key things to look for: adequate capacity, the ability to add an extra tray or trays (in models that support this, you oftentimes stack them below the printer's body), and a 'bypass' slot for a limited amount of extra media (such as letterhead or envelopes). The output tray, meanwhile, should be large enough for the biggest document you'll commonly print on the machine.
'Duty cycle' is a specification issued by the printer maker that suggests the page-count limit you should heed on a given printer in a month to avoid overtaxing it. Duty cycle is often expressed as a 'maximum duty cycle' (a hard limit to avoid surpassing) and as a 'recommended duty cycle.' This spec, compared across printers (especially those within a given family), gives you an idea of how the maker perceives the relative ruggedness of a given printer. It also ties in to how big the paper trays ought to be; a 1,500-page monthly recommended duty cycle likely doesn't merit paper trays that can hold 1,000 pages.
PCL and PostScript: Support for these two key page-description languages (PDLs) is mostly of interest to those who will use a laser printer or laser AIO for pre-proofing commercial print jobs in concert with desktop-publishing applications. Generally speaking, you'll know that you need one or more of these PDLs if this is your business.
Conversely, if you don't need them, you might be able to find an identical or similar laser AIO model in a given manufacturer's laser line that's cheaper, just minus the support. Don't pay extra for it if you don't and won't need it.
Many higher-end lasers include a touch-screen interface, secure (password-protected) printing, a built-in hard drive, and/or the ability to perform a range of functions over a network. Most have an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper, and many AIO models will have both a flatbed for scanning and an automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning, copying, or faxing multipage documents. If scanning or copying stacks of documents is on your docket, an ADF is key.
Many higher-end AIOs now offer ADFs that can automatically scan two-sided pages. The feature will be either a reversing ADF (RADF), which scans one side of the page, flips the page over, and scans the other side, or a duplex scanner, which is an ADF that scans both sides of the page in one pass, making use of scanning sensors above and below the page. Duplex scanners are thus considerably faster, and they reduce mechanical complexity. They also add to the price, because of the additional scanning element. Note that some higher-end models let you add an RADF as an added-cost option, via an external mechanism that you install or snap on.
Finally, note that some laser printer and laser AIO models support office-centric security functions that may be handy—or overkill—for your specific printing situation. These are mostly an issue if you're installing the printer in an open office environment and often print sensitive information that needs to be kept private. With an appropriately outfitted printer, you can have the printer generate a PIN that you'll need to enter on the printer's control panel to 'release' the for-your-eyes-only print into your hands. Also in this category are print-volume tracking and access controls that might, for example, enable you to limit who in a workgroup is allowed to print in color (with the aim being to save toner).
LED printers—which use light-emitting diodes instead of lasers as a light source—share many of the characteristics of laser printers, and are considered 'laser-class' devices. They tend to be somewhat smaller than laser printers that share the same capabilities, so they're particularly suitable for smaller offices where space may be at a premium.
That said, for the purposes of comparison, LED printers are essentially laser printers in terms of their output quality, general features, and outward appearance, and can be compared as such. Key printer players that offer LED-based models (as well as laser ones) include Brother, OKI, and Xerox.
Laser printers have much to offer businesses of all sizes, from sole proprietorships to large corporations, and are worth considering, under the right conditions, for home use as well. Take a look below at the 10 best lasers we've tested, which span a wide range of prices and capabilities. We update this list often, but also check out our Printer Product Guide for the very latest reviews. For more printer buying advice and reviews, check out our top printer picks overall, the best inkjet printers, and the best printers for Macs.
Pros: Excellent print quality overall. Fast print speeds. Competitively low running costs. Highly expandable paper capacity. High-yield toner cartridges. Latest security features.
Cons: Slightly below average photo quality.
Bottom Line: The very well rounded HL-L8360CDW is a fast color laser printer with good output quality, low running costs, and flexible expandability for its class.
Read ReviewPros: Low price. Great text and good graphics quality. Good speed. Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, Ethernet, and USB connectivity.
Cons: Slightly below-par photo quality.
Bottom Line: The Brother HL-L2370DW offers above-par text and graphics, good speed and paper handling, a wide-range of connectivity choices, and competitive running costs in a low-priced mono laser for micro-office use.
Read ReviewPros: Solid speed. Built for massive print volumes. Ample standard and optional paper capacity. USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Direct connectivity. 80-sheet ADF supports two-sided scanning. High rated scan speed. Reasonably low cost per page.
Cons: Graphics could be better.
Bottom Line: The Brother MFC-L6800DW offers a winning combination of terrific speed, an ample feature set, a good set of connection choices, and the capacity for high-volume printing.
Read ReviewPros: Tiny footprint. Low purchase price. Robust smartphone integration. Good overall print quality.
Cons: High running costs. No Ethernet port.
Bottom Line: The HP LaserJet Pro M15w is an excellent, inexpensive, and tiny monochrome laser printer that's as easy to use on the road as it is to tuck away in a small office.
Read ReviewPros: Fast. Excellent print quality. High maximum and recommended volume ratings. Highly expandable.
Cons: Somewhat expensive to use. No Wi-Fi Direct or NFC.
Bottom Line: The Lexmark MC2535adwe is a fast color laser all-in-one printer that offers many valuable productivity and security features that small and midsize offices will love.
Read ReviewPros: Good price. Compact. Excellent print quality. Fast print speed.
Cons: Running costs could be better. Lacks automatic document feeder (ADF). No auto-duplex printing.
Bottom Line: It may lack an ADF and automatic two-sided printing, but Canon's imageClass MF232w all-in-one (AIO) prints well and at a highly respectable speed for the price.
Read ReviewPros: Good output quality. Reasonably fast. Small and light. Strong mobile connectivity. Low price.
Cons: No automatic document feeder. No automatic two-sided printing. High cost per page.
Bottom Line: The HP LaserJet Pro MFP M180nw is an entry-level color laser AIO that prints well and at a reasonable clip, but large-volume offices should note its high cost of consumables.
Read ReviewPros: Large color touch-screen display. PCL and PostScript drivers. Document management and OCR software included.
Cons: Lacks standard Wi-Fi (although it's available as an option). Reversing automatic document feeder (ADF) is slower than models that can scan both sides of a page at once.
Bottom Line: The OKI MC573dn is a capable color laser-class all-in-one printer with a good feature set and solid speed and output quality.
Read ReviewPros: Excellent print quality. Reasonably fast. High-yield toner cartridges available. Strong set of security features. Single-pass auto-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF). Lots of mobile connectivity features including NFC.
Cons: Somewhat expensive. High running costs. Big and heavy. Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct are extra.
Bottom Line: A behemoth of a color laser all-in-one, the Xerox VersaLink C405/DN prints well, is respectably fast, and comes with a ton of features, but lower running costs would make it a better value.
Read ReviewPros: Excellent text quality. Slightly above-par graphics. ADF supports single-pass, two-sided scanning. Includes Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct connectivity options.
Cons: Similar printers deliver better graphics and photo quality. Limited optional paper capacity for its price.
Bottom Line: The Xerox WorkCentre 6515/DNI provides above-par output quality, solid speed, and a thorough feature set for an all-in-one color laser-class printer.
Read ReviewA decade or so ago, few printers offered compatibility with Apple computers, but now we live in a happier age. Most new printers and all-in-one printers (AIOs) ship with macOS drivers, and many that don't provide them on disc allow you to download Mac drivers during the installation process. Mac-connected printers support most of the printing and AIO features you can access on a Windows machine. (Any features not usable with Macs are usually detailed on the printer manufacturer's website.)
We perform our printer testing on a Windows 10 testbed rather than a Mac, but in ad-hoc testing we have found that printing to the same printer from similarly configured Mac and Windows computers tends to yield very similar print speeds. Nearly all printer manufacturers today provide support for Mac users. Thus, a list of the best models for Macs largely mirrors an overall list of the best printers out there.
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One item worth mentioning is the Bonjour protocol, Apple's implementation of zero-configuration networking, which is built into macOS Mojave, all OS X versions going back to 10.2, and iOS (and can be installed on Windows, Linux, and BSD systems as well). Bonjour allows users to quickly discover devices, including printers, on their networks. (It is also what lets AirPrint identify compatible printers on a LAN.) You can set up a printer without Bonjour, but its presence simplifies the task. Nearly all new network printers are Bonjour compatible, though very old routers may not support it.
Macs are widely used by publishing professionals and graphic artists who rely on Adobe programs, such as Illustrator, to ensure the best output quality. Illustrator, as well as Photoshop and Acrobat, are optimized for Adobe's own PostScript printing language. You can print graphical material with text made in these programs from non-PostScript printers, but at a potential loss of quality, including occasional dropped elements and formatting. For any business that prints a lot of graphics, a printer with a PostScript driver (or at least PostScript emulation) is a big plus. PostScript has been a staple of the graphic arts since its inclusion with the Apple LaserWriter printer launched the desktop publishing revolution in the mid-1980s.
Many specialty printers are Windows-only. This is especially true of label printers (those that are able to connect to a computer at all). A few good exceptions are the Brother P-touch Cube+ and the Brother QL-820NWB, both Editors' Choice models. Some recent 3D printers, such as the Dremel DigiLab 3D45 3D Printer, work with Macs as well as Windows machines; check the manufacturer's specs for Mac support when shopping for a 3D printer.
With iPads now commonplace in many homes and offices, there are several solutions to print from your tablet. The one most users will rely on is Apple's own AirPrint utility. which is built into all iOS versions since 4.2. This allows a Wi-Fi-connected iPad to communicate with a compatible printer on the same network. If your printer doesn't support AirPrint, there are several third-party utilities, including Printopia and Presto, you can download to your desktop. These effectively make your printer AirPrint compatible. Another alternative is to use a printing app, such as Samsung Mobile Print or Epson iPrint. When using these apps, your iPad and printer will need to be on the same network. Other solutions include cloud printing (sending your documents to a cloud server which then sends them to your printer) and email printing, which assigns an email address to your printer which you in turn use to print from your iPad by sending an email to your printer.
Below are our top-rated Mac-friendly printer picks. This roundup includes a generous selection of PostScript printers, as well as some non-PostScript models capable of high-quality graphics and/or photo output. But because many Mac users use their computers for tasks unrelated to graphic arts, we also present some top-notch general-purpose printers here. By and large, the qualities that make a Mac-compatible printer great are the same things that let any printer stand out from the crowd: a winning combination of features, speed, and print quality at a competitive price. For more, check out our top overall printer picks, as well as our top inkjet printers and best-reviewed laser printers.
Pros: Generous paper capacity. Low price for its capabilities. Above-par output quality across the board. Competitive running costs.
Cons: Tiny, non-touch display.
Bottom Line: The Canon Maxify iB4120 Wireless Small Office Inkjet Printer is inexpensive, but provides generous paper capacity, competitive running costs, solid speed, and excellent output quality.
Read ReviewPros: Small footprint. Competitive running costs. Good-looking output. Auto-duplexing ADF. Versatile connectivity options, including mobile.
Cons: Lacks flash memory drive support. Antiquated control panel.
Bottom Line: The Canon imageClass MF269dw is an entry-level monochrome laser AIO printer with just the right feature set, speed, and output quality to make it an excellent value for small and home-based offices.
Read ReviewPros: Low price. Great text and good graphics quality. Good speed. Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, Ethernet, and USB connectivity.
Cons: Slightly below-par photo quality.
Bottom Line: The Brother HL-L2370DW offers above-par text and graphics, good speed and paper handling, a wide-range of connectivity choices, and competitive running costs in a low-priced mono laser for micro-office use.
Read ReviewPros: Lightweight and compact. Two additional ink cartridges for higher-quality photos. Two paper input trays. SD card, Ethernet, and Bluetooth 4.0 support. Excellent print quality. Fast snapshot printing.
Cons: No automatic document feeder. Lacks NFC and Wi-Fi Direct. Slow document printing.
Bottom Line: Though it lacks an automatic document feeder, the six-ink Canon Pixma TS9120 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One printer produces exceptional text, graphics, and photos.
Read ReviewPros: Very low running costs. 6,000-page ink bottle included in box. Good print quality. Fast first page out. Single-pass auto-duplexing ADF. Smart home voice-activation. Two-year warranty with registration.
Cons: Pricey. A little slower than laser counterparts. Monthly print volume ratings are low.
Bottom Line: The Epson ET-M3170 all-in-one monochrome inkjet prints and copies well, at exceptionally low running costs, making it an excellent choice for busy small offices.
Read ReviewPros: Excellent print quality overall. Auto-duplexing ADF. Competitively low running costs. Supports Wi-Fi Direct and NFC. Fast for its class.
Cons: No multipurpose tray. Small output tray. Slightly expensive.
Bottom Line: The WF-4740 prints well and fast, and it supports just about every midrange business-centric inkjet feature available, including Wi-Fi Direct, NFC, and two-sided scanning.
Read ReviewPros: Excellent print quality. Prints super-tabloid pages. Supports Wi-Fi Direct and NFC. Emulates PostScript and PCL printers. Supports massive high-volume ink cartridges. High duty cycle. Competitive price.
Cons: Expansion accessories costly. No multipurpose tray or slot. Meager out-of-box paper capacity. Borderless photos and pages unsupported.
Bottom Line: The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C8690 is a high-volume wide-format inkjet all-in-one that prints quickly and accurately for medium- to large-size offices and workgroups.
Read ReviewPros: Fast. Good print quality overall. Competitive running costs. Borderless printing. 35-sheet auto-duplexing ADF. Attractive, compact build.
Cons: Only one paper input source.
Bottom Line: HP's OfficeJet Pro 9015 All-in-One Printer churns out quality output at a low cost per page, making it a good value for small offices with light- to medium-duty copy and print volume requirements.
Read ReviewPros: Small and spiffy. Voice control with supported smart home UIs. IFTTT scripting for extending smart capabilities. Impressive print quality. Competitive ink costs with Instant Ink, plus free snapshot printing from your smartphone.
Cons: Borderless prints limited to 5-by-7-inch. Single, small paper input. 'Scans' and 'copies' only via smartphone.
Bottom Line: HP's Tango X 'smart printer,' the first we've tested with voice activation and smart home features, is all about printing from mobile devices. It's not perfect, but given its unique free-snapshot printing angle, it will be a tough act for future models to follow.
Read ReviewPros: Excellent text quality. Slightly above-par graphics. ADF supports single-pass, two-sided scanning. Includes Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct connectivity options.
Cons: Similar printers deliver better graphics and photo quality. Limited optional paper capacity for its price.
Bottom Line: The Xerox WorkCentre 6515/DNI provides above-par output quality, solid speed, and a thorough feature set for an all-in-one color laser-class printer.
Read Review