College Students – Laser vs. Ink Jet Printers

One dilemma which college students face before they move in is whether they should purchase a laser printer or ink jet printer. Printers are costly liabilities in college, especially when you will need to print mass amounts of essays. This article will go through the pros and cons of Laser and Ink jet Printers. Before we do so, what kind of stuff do college students tend to print? In most cases, it would essays after essays … after more essays. Essentially, you only need a black and white printer because color is not required. Nowadays, you will also see many All-in-One Printers on offer. These can cost slightly more than an average printer because it includes features like a scanner and fax system. Honestly, these features are pretty redundant for college students unless you happen to need to scan many files. Therefore, we can take All-in-one Printers out of the equation. We can also take multi-color printers out of the equation as you will only need black ink for most of the time.

- Ink Jet Printers are significantly cheaper than Laser Printers, especially if you get B/W printers.

- Fast at printing. No warm up time required.

- Not very cost effective for college students. You will be expected to print mass volumes of paper therefore you will need to replace the ink cartridges frequently.

- Ink Cartridges are known are to dry up quickly when the printer remains passive for a long time.

- Slow when printing many documents in one go.

- Laser printer uses toners so you won’t have any issues of drying ink.

- Silent.

- Initial purchasing price is expensive.

- Print quality of images and photos are usually worse in Laser Printers. However like I mentioned, there is hardly a need to put images into your college papers.

- Laser Printers are bulky in size. It may take up a large amount of space in your dorm room so ensure you know the layout of your dormitory before purchasing a printer.

- If you own a large laser printer then you may have to wait for it to warm up (can take a while) before it starts printing.