Best brands of laser printers for small offices

Laser printers can save you time and money when printing large volumes of work from your small office. Although laser printers may typically cost more than ink-jet printers, laser printers can produce more, higher quality prints at faster speeds. Also, toner or ink for laser printers, typically costs less per printed page than ink cartridges used by ink-jet printers.

Popular brands of laser printers include Brother laser printers, Dell laser printers, Epson laser printers, HP laser printers, Lexmark laser printers, Minolta laser printers, Samsung laser printers, and Xerox laser printers. But you are not looking to buy what is popular, you need to choose the type of laser printer that best fits your needs or in other words the best brand for you.

Most laser printers fall into the following categories:

- Black and white laser printers - A black and white laser printer can give you sharp, clear black-and-white text and graphics without the added cost of color ink cartridges.
- Color laser printers - If you print a lot of graphics or brochures, you may want to choose a color laser printer. Most laser printers use a toner which combines cyan, magenta, yellow, and black to create all the colors of the rainbow.
- Multifunction laser printers - Space saving multifunction laser printers can give you sharp, clear black-and-white text and graphics.These multifunction laser printers are popular in small offices because of their more compact size.

Once you have decided what type of laser printer you are most interested in, you can narrow down your choices for laser printers based on your working space, the volume of printing and your budget. Keep in mind that different types of printers will have different supplies to take into consideration and you may decide to choose one type of laser printer over another based on something like how expensive the replacement toner cartridges are.

- Personal laser printers - Personal laser printers are the best option for home office or small business use.Personal laser printers can print hundreds of pages a day.
- Laser printers for workgroups - If in your small office business you have more than 10 employees who will be sharing one printer, a workgroup laser printer is a good choice.
- Network laser printers - Network laser printers are usually not going to be used in small offices unless you are able to connect a high-speed network laser printer directly to your local area network (LAN) from wherever your office is.

For most people, the really difficult decision in choosing the best brand laser printer comes down to deciding which features are most important.Laser printer features include:

- Resolution - Resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi).A higher resolution means a better image quality.
- Speed - Keep in mind that manufacturers usually base their stated printed pages per minute speeds on pages printed at the lowest quality setting.Also remember that color printouts take longer than black-and-white printouts.
- Paper handling/capacity - Make sure that the laser printer that you choose can handle the types of paper you want to use.Cardstocks, glossy papers and papers of different textures will receive toner differently.If you plan to frequently print to different-sized paper, look into a printer with several paper trays.Also, look for a printer that feeds paper automatically if you are planning on doing length printing projects.
- Memory capabilities - The more memory your laser printer has, the better it can handle numerous print jobs without error. Memory is especially important if you are printing graphics-heavy color documents.
- Connections - Many people neglect to check that the printer they choose comes with the correct cables to connect with your computer.