When shopping for a cheap laser printer is pays not to go to cheap. Laser printers are favoured by offices and home users that do a lot of printing, so they are well known for being more reliable, durable, printing better quality prints and at a faster speed.
For this reason they are a little more expensive than there inkjet counterparts. But there are still some savings to make on them and if you're willing to invest a little time, you'll find these great deals and money saving sales.
So with all this in mind lets look at the things to look for in a cheap laser printer and go through some of the best brands too.
Resolution This is one of the biggest advantages of having a laser printer. They measure this is DPI, or dots per inch. The lower end models will print in 600 DPI, and some at 1200 DPI. Higher end ones will do this at 2400 DPI. For most users needs printing in black and white, 600 DPI gives you a very good quality text print. If you're printing lots of graphics and images, you may want to consider getting a 1200 DPI, or if it's for high end clients, then a 2400 DPI will be perfect for this.
Print speed Laser printers print at a faster rate than an inkjet printer. This may not be to much of an issue for you if you are the sole user. But, the good thing about a laser printer is that if it's on a network with multiple users, then print speed really comes into affect. The cheaper laser printers can print at around 12 - 15 pages in a minute. Some of the high priced models can go at 45 pages in a minute. This sounds excessive, but if it's a busy office, your printer needs to handle this.
Memory Laser printers that have more memory can also help in print speeds to. This rages fro 2MB up to 128MB. Basically, the more MB, the faster the laser can print multiple jobs. For example, if you plan on sharing a mid size laser printer with about 15 people, a memory of about 16MB will be great for this. This is taking into account that the majority of printing is the usually short page text documents. Large documents, power points and image prints will take longer and need more memory.
First Page Out Having a higher memory in your printer will help reduce the first page out time. This isn't the page per minute time, it's the time the printer takes to load up the page that it is about to print. Cheap laser printers first page time is about 30 seconds. So if it's busy it can take some time. Better models go up to about 5 seconds to load the print up.
Double Side Printing This is well worth getting if you will be doing a load of printing, it will save on the amount of paper you use, and also help reduce waste for the environment too.
Input/Output Capacity Quality high end laser printers have a big input and output capacity. This is the amount of paper the printer holds in the tray that loads in to the printer and also the tray that holds the printed pages. Base model should hold around 150 pages and this can go as high as 1000+. Shared printers of around 15 people should be about 600 pages in both input and output trays.
Best Laser Printer Brands
There are a load of brands in laser printers. We feel that the better known ones are the ones to look out for deals on. These are better performing and also easier to get cheaper deals on replacement toner too. This can work out expensive on some of the lesser known models as not all toner housing is uniformal.
Brother Laser Printer These are a massive brand in printing and they have a load of different laser printers. Going from fairly cheap, all the way to some really high end models too. They have a compact high end model at Currys for under £200. This does 18 pages in a minute and also has wifi capabilities.
Samsung Laser Printers Samsung makes some really great looking and functioning laser printers. They are better in the higher end models. There is a great small office printer from them at Currys. It is an all in one wireless laser printer, compatible with Apple Air Print and Google Cloud Print. It also has NFC connectivity too, this is a fast connection, so it shouldn't get to clogged up when printing.
Cannon Laser Printer These are a well known brand in the photo field and they do a great range of printers and photo printers. They are the perfect place to get your hands on a cheap mid range laser printer. Argos is the place to go for this.
Ricoh Laser Printer These guys might not be the most well known brand, but they are a decent size, and make some great value for money budget laser printers. They are a decent quality, so buying one shouldn't be to much of a worry. They have the cheapest laser printer that we've found. Under £50 for a laser printer from Argos is really good value.
HP Laser Printer These are probably the biggest name in printing. They are great at the mid range quality cheap laser printers. Any of the HP laser printers range are great value for money from either Currys and Argos.
These are all the big brands in laser printing and we feel the best place to get the best value on these is Argos and Currys. They have good discounts and also cash back deals on a few of their laser printers.
For small, home laser printers we think Argos has the better selection. They have a wider range of the cheaper ones, but all with Argos customer service for piece of mind. Currys is better for mid range ones and their staff are trained to give you good advice on which ones will suit your needs the best.