Why You Should Buy a Business Printer Instead of a Consumer Printer
Posted on December 21 at 3:40 PM
If you are shopping for a new printer, you will probably be a little overwhelmed with the options you have to choose from in terms of the print speed, print quality, security and being able to print from mobile devices. It can easily become overwhelming to try and figure out which is the best printer for you. Unfortunately, this is why most of us end up buying printers based on price and cheap printers aren’t always the best printers.
The two main categories that most people think of when it comes to printers are ‘Laser’ and ‘Inkjet’. There are pros and cons to both which we will cover in another article. However, this article will help you understand the benefits of buying a business printer over a consumer printer. Most of the best printer brands on the market like Hewlett-Packard, Epson, Brother and Canon, spend a lot of time to distinguish these two product lines as well as creating product links for sub categories such as students.
If you have the time to do your research for printers outside of visiting retailers such as Officeworks, JB Hifi and Harvey Norman, you will pretty quickly realise that buying a business printer over a cheap printer will save you a lot of time, money and headaches – even if you only intend to use it for personal use. We know not everyone has the time to do this level of research, so to help you make an informed decision we’ve outlined some of the main benefits of buying a business printer below.
Business Printers are Better Quality and More Durable
When purchasing an important piece of technology like a printer you want to know that it is going to last. Business printers are made to last longer, and endure a lot more use than consumer printers. They are designed to run bigger print jobs, more frequently without sacrificing quality.
If you’re in a business with multiple employees that are printing documents for meetings or slide decks for client presentations every hour, you need to make sure your printer will work all day every day without any interruptions.
The general assumption is that home printers won’t be used as frequently as business printers which is why there is less focus on the moving parts and frames of the printer. However, the average family household now has a couple of working adults, 1 or 2 children in school and 1 or 2 young adults in university. For this reason, a household multifunction printer can now be used for printing photos, large assignments and professional slide decks, scanning and emailing documents and photocopying reports all in one day.
Even if you have no plans to use your printer every couple of hours to print large documents, you will find business printers still offer better value based on the premium quality materials used to build business printers over the cheaper more fragile materials being used on consumer printers.
Business printers are typically made with stronger internal frames, sturdier auto sheet feeders, more durable paper output trays, better quality printer head holders and other internal moving parts.
Business Printers Have Better Print Quality and Print Speed
Print speed and print quality are one of the biggest differences with business printers and consumer printer as time is money for businesses. Because of this, business printers are made to print fast, without sacrificing quality. A lot of consumer printers claim to print photo quality prints at high speeds. However, it’s usually done with some sacrifices including high ink or toner usage, pages that are wet to touch, leaving streaks of ink or toner on the ends of the pages or paper jams.
If you’ve been in an office with people carrying documents from meeting to meeting – you’ll realise very quickly that there’s no time to wait for multipage documents to dry, or reprint pages because they’re not legible. This is why business printers are made with higher quality moving parts, printer heads and paper feeds.
Business Printers Have Better Quality Multifunction Features
Multifunction printers have cheaper entry level options in both business printers and consumer printers. The overall benefit of having a multifunction printer is to save space and reduce the amount of hardware you need to connect to your computer. The core offerings for multifunction printers include print, scan, copy, email and fax. Whilst the perception can be that all multifunction printers are created equal – when buying a cheaper printer, you may find that of all the functions available, there is one that got all the attention and budget in manufacturing. This may mean you’ve got a great quality printer, but the scanner is low resolution resulting in scanning, emailing and faxing documents being poor quality. On the other hand, business printers typically are made with the business in mind where they simply can’t sacrifice quality in any element of their document production or transfer.
Business Printers Have More Reliable Connectivity Options
The majority of people that have a printer for business use will typically need to set it up on a network for all the staff to use as well as be easy for visitors from other businesses or offices to connect to. Given the fast pace – the connectivity needs to be fast and reliable no matter what device the person is on.
Business printers offer features like network connectivity, wireless connectivity as well as USB making it easy to connect to from any device. Consumer printers are also offering these features now making it hard to distinguish the benefit of having a business printer. That being said, you only have to speak to a few owners of consumer printers or read some reviews to see that you get what you pay for. In the case of most cheap printers that offer a wide range of connectivity options, they’re either hard to connect to, constantly drop out, or don’t connect at all. As you can imagine, businesses can’t afford to have these sorts of connectivity issues for their printers which is why networking solutions and wireless connectivity for business printers are far more reliable and easy to configure.
Business Printers Have Better Support and Longer Warranties
One of the biggest differences between consumer printers and business printers is the level of support you receive and the warranties offered.
Most consumer printers will come with a basic warranty that usually lasts a year, with options to purchase extended warranties for another year. On the other hand, business printers come with warranties that can extend to as long as 3-5 years or more, as companies expect their printers to work well for a long time.
Tech support is also much better for business printer owners than it is for consumers that have purchased regular laptops. Rather than having to deal with taking your printer back to the retailer, or a computer repair place, many companies that sell business printers offer premium remote tech support or on-site emergency repair services if required. In most cases, next day service is standard so you don’t have to wait 2-3 weeks for repairs.
This is a major benefit to having a business printer printers that stop working or malfunction can cause serious issues for a business when they’re generating reports, proposals or client presentations. Even if you don’t believe you’d need this type of support; it’s a big benefit you can get from choosing a business printer over a consumer printer.
Regardless of whether you actually NEED a business printer for business, there are so many benefits involved in purchasing one that you may wonder why you should consider a consumer printer at all.
While consumer printers may have nicer finishes and claim to have cool connectivity options like printing straight from social media, instead of buying a cheap printer from JB Hi-Fi, Office Works or Harvey Norman you can take advantage of some of the best printer deals online by purchasing a business printer that will give you extra benefits and peace of mind that you just won’t find in consumer models.
Not only will these benefits save you money in the long run, they will offer you a great printer that can do a lot more for you, with a lot less stress as well as last longer than most consumer printers will.
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