The laser printer is popular because of its efficiency and speed. IBM launched the very first laser printer in 1975. But the laser printing technology had to struggle a lot for coming into limelight.
Hewlett-Packard has brought a revolution in laser printing technology in the year 1984 by introducing the fastest and reliable LaserJet compact printer. Since then the technology has gained so much popularity because it has continued to launch new and advanced features. When the world got its first laser printer, then its prices were higher.
But, it has decreased its purchasing cost year over year and improved technology as well. This printing technology is different from inkjets. It works with dry ink powder called toner. On the other hand, inkjets are using liquid ink to produce print outs. Hence the inkjets and its cartridges are cheaper than laser printers.
Still, the lasers are more affordable. To know the facts about this term, you will have to read further and after reading this ultimate guide for enough knowledge of what is a laser printer. You won’t ask again why it is becoming more and more popular.
Table of Contents
What is a laser printer?
The laser printing technology is mostly similar to the photocopier. When the user sends data to it for printing, its laser beam draws the image or texts on its drum through electrical charges. After that, the drum rolled in toner, and toner adheres to the image on the drum.
The powdered ink of the toner transferred onto the sheet and fused with heat and pressure to print the image or texts. It is the working process of a laser printer.
We are now coming to our main point on why it is more accessible, for this read the below-given factors.
Printing Capacity:
The printing capacity of the lasers is much higher than other traditional printers. You won’t imagine that the significant scale organization, who have a requirement of printing 50 thousand pages per month, the laser printers are their first choice. The cheapest model of this printing technology can print 700 to 1000 pages per week. The capacity of high-end models is enormous. We can only say the laser printers are for printing 24 hours a day.
Printing speed:
If an organization has to print thousands of documents per week, then it is sure that they do not have time to wait for 2 or 3 minutes for each printout.
The laser printers help them this time too. It is efficient to save you much more time for printing tasks.
Many of the cheaper laser printers can print a minimum of 7 to 10 pages per minute.
There are many expensive models also available which are capable of printing more than 30 pages per minute.
Time is more precious than anything. Although it costs a bit higher than inkjets, it can save valuable time.
2. Quality printing
With high printing speed and capacity, laser printing technology never ignores the quality. The color laser printers are indeed more expensive than inkjet color printers, and it cannot print color images in such high quality as inkjets do. But on the other hand, the business organizations mostly have to print black and white images. One can get more top resolution quality printouts through laser printers. The most common models can print up to 600 DPI resolutions. We talk about the printing quality of the cheapest one and the most expensive one. Then you can get a resolution from 300 dpi to 2400 dpi with laser printers.
Printing languages:
The laser printers are using two different standard languages for printing. The most common models work with printer control language (PCL). PCL is perfect for printing databases, spreadsheets, simple graphics, and letters. It works with all the windows software and desktops. The second one is the postscript. This printing language is more advanced, and it is the norm of Apple Macintosh printers. It is because it saves the entire file in its memory first then produces print outs. You can also upgrade your PCL printer to postscripts by installing specific drivers.
Paper handling:
Paper handling systems can also be considered as a significant fact while rating different printers. Most of the traditional printers’ aspect lasers can hold a very less amount of sheets in their input tray.
On the other hand, you can insert up to 250 sheets at one time in the input tray of some high-end models of laser printers. If you have owned an auto-duplex laser printer, then you do not have to manage paper handling for double-side printing.
The manual duplex printers are also convenient for paper handling while both side printing tasks.
Warm-up timing:
Now, again coming to the most annoying task is waiting. But lasers are still here to help you with this. It will take only 5 to 10 seconds to start a printing job after the user sends data to it. Once it gets warmed up, then it will print continuously without a single pause. On the other hand, you can see that other traditional printers take more than 1 one minute for initializing setup. But the laser printers will take a maximum of 30 seconds in this term.
Affordability:
Let’s have a look at the most crucial factor behind its popularity. As we have mentioned earlier that the lasers are a bit expensive than inkjets, and the toner also costs more money to refill than dry inks. But still, lasers are more affordable.
It is because even the original ink cartridges cannot print more sheets than the cheapest toner.
As an example, if the ink cartridge is printing 100 sheets with a full tank, then a full toner can print more than 500 pages.
On the other hand, the cheapest model of the lasers will cost less than 1 rupee per page printing. The high-end laser printers can produce print outs at just 2 to 4 paisa. You cannot find this much affordability with other traditional printers.
FAQ section:
Our Monochrome And Laser Printers The Same?
Monochrome is a technology of laser printers. When we talk about all the laser printers, then the black and white and colored, both are included.
How Much Will The Best Laser Printer Cost To Buy?
It depends on your needs. If you have to print minimal pages per week, then you get the best one according to your requirement by spending less than 10 thousand rupees. As per the features increases, the price hikes as well.
Bottom line!
We think we have won the bet that after reading this article, you won’t ask again why laser printers are becoming more and more popular. The above-discussed factors are the reason. You cannot find this much efficiency, speed, and affordability in any other printing technology.
As final words, we can only say that if you have a requirement to print only black and white images of high volume, then no other technology can match the level of laser printers. For color printing, it is not as good as inkjets.
