Choosing a printer
Choosing a printer
As technology moves ever onward at lightning speeds, it is easy to get carried away with the latest gadgetry even when you don’t really need it. We find it hard to resist the temptation to buy a TV that’s a few inches bigger than the last one or a laptop that’s a couple of grams lighter and has a slightly improved operating system. But keeping up with all these changes it not practical and it’s definitely not affordable in the long term.
Choosing a printer also poses a risk to your bank balance. The newest and flashest come with a scarily high price tag but you find it hard to avoid the temptation of running through the special features such as in-built photocopier and scanner, wireless technology, high speed print outs and James Bond style, pin-protected printing. You don’t really need any of these things on a day-to-day basis around the home, but you some how feel you should have them.
So how to you go about choosing a printer? The first thing you need to do is make a list of priorities so it will be easy to filter out the things you don’t need from the things you do. You also need to set yourself a budget, or a price range. This should be slightly flexible as you may find that spending 10% extra gets you 20% more features, however, there is a ceiling on this and once you get over a certain price the added benefits in terms of technology are marginal.
Start by researching your options online. This way you can learn about the terminology and exactly what your money can buy so you don’t walk into a shop ‘blind’ and get sold the most expensive printer on the market.
Printers tend to fall into two categories, inkjet and colour laser printers. The former is the cheaper of the two, and until a few years ago there was an ocean of difference, in terms of quality, between them, but now it is often hard to play spot the difference.
If you want a printer mainly for printing high quality photos, it is best to buy a specific printer for the job. You can cut out all the other unnecessary gear and focus on really good colour mixing and depth of colour. However, if you aren’t sure what kind of things you will need to do, maybe you are starting a home office, it is best to go for a three-in-one printer, copier and scanner, but you can leave the pin-access behind if it’s for personal home usage.
Ryman has a huge selection of printers and if you search online you can filter according to price, brand and function.
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