Next time, ditch the inkjet and go with a laser printer

I hear it over and over again. A client tells me that her inkjet printer isn’t printing right any more. In some cases, it doesn’t print at all. But there’s no error message on the printer. No indication from the outside that anything is wrong.

Nine times out of ten (I’m almost willing to say ten out of ten) the problem is the ink cartridges. They are dried up or clogged from not using the printer for a few weeks. Sadly, it’s almost never worth the effort and cost to try and fix the problem and in many cases the average person wouldn’t know how to fix the problem anyway.

So out to the office supply store my client goes to buy brand new inkjet cartridges. Once installed, all is fine again—until the next time they go a few weeks without printing.

In the end, those cheap little $15 ink cartridges end up costing a lot of money, especially when you have to replace them before they’ve been used up (see above).

Laser cost of ownership is cheaper

Next time, do yourself a favor and get a laser printer. They’re not nearly as expensive as you may think. Case in point, the Brother HL-L2340DW which I have purchased for several of my clients and, if you catch at the right time, you can get on Amazon.com for around $90 (see CamelCamelCamel price chart below for price fluctuation).

Yes, the toner cartridges for laser printers are way more expensive than ink cartridges. In fact, it’s not uncommon to pay $50-$80 for a replacement toner cartridge. But consider the number of pages you can print on one toner cartridge. With a high yield toner cartridge on the Brother HL-L2340DW, you can print an average of 2,600 pages. You won’t even get a fraction of that with an inkjet printer.

So it comes down to cost-per-page. And the laser printer wins by a landslide. Add on top of that, the fact that toner cartridges don’t dry up from non-use like inkjet cartridges do and it’s almost a no-brainer.

Black printing only

I say almost because the economics only work when you stick to black printing. Throw in color and the odds go back in favor of the inkjet printer. Yes, you can get color laser printers but they are still pretty expensive and you have to get multiple toner cartridges for each primary color like you do with an inkjet printer.

But before you go back to praising your inkjet printer, ask yourself how many times you really, really need to print in color? Most people I work with get a color printer because color printing looks better. Yes, of course, a color printout looks better but do you really need it in color?

And if you’re wondering about color photos, it is far more economical to print your photos at your local Sam’s Club, Walgreens or CVS than it is to print them at home.

Why the Brother HL-L2340DW?

Back to the Brother HL-L2340DW. It’s inexpensive to buy (again, look for the $90 price point) and it’s packed with great features like double-sided (duplex) printing, built-in wireless connection and AirPrint (for printing from your iPhone or iPad). Oh, and did I mention how fast it is? The Brother HL-L2340DW prints roughly 27 pages per minute (ppm).

Check out the Brother HL-L2340DW for yourself on Amazon.com.