Newbie needs help with choosing a printer

[jamie297]

Hi everyone,

I need advice choosing an A4 desktop color printer and i'm hoping someone can recommend something suited to my needs. Sorry but my knowledge of printers is basic.

I need a high quality printer for printing onto large labels. Basically, it needs to be able to produce professional looking prints with vibrant colors and ideally it will be able to produce crisp looking text/lines.

I know the more you spend the better the printer, but I'm on a budget so it needs to be the cheapest printer that still produces excellent prints, I'd imagine that you get to the point where the quality doesn't get that much better but the price still rises.

Also, it needs to be able to use 'fade resistant' ink as the prints will need to last for a good few years. Are there only certain brands who can do this or is this type of ink freely available for all printers?

If someone can suggest particular models then that would be great, or perhaps things to look for, like dpi? (sorry that is as far as my knowledge goes and I don't even really know how many dpi decent printers will have).

Thanks for your help

Jamie

 

[plotter]

to print really crisp txt i would say go with laser not inkjet. i bought a xerox 6130 which is postcript so the halftones come out looking really sharp too. and re man toners for these are really cheap on ebay and i have had no problems with them or the print quality... and i think i only paid about £150.00 new from printerbase

 

[niklaus]

Inkjet printers are likely to produce better color prints but eat up a lot of ink than other printers.The cost of the cartridge is about that of the price of the printer. So, Id still recommend the laser printers for you. They cost a little more in the beginning compared to inkjet but they do not consume too much ink. So, rationally, it could still be cost effective in the end.

 

[xfactor printing]

Inkjets are highly dependent on coated paper to deliver a crisp and perfect color result. With lasers, the toner is fused on top of the paper and can print reasonable quality on a wide range of uncoated and much more economical stocks than the specialty inkjet coated media. In my experience, laser toner has also not had any issue with fading. One issue with laser prints however is abrasion resistance and fold damage to the prints. If your label is going to fold around a corner or get scraped against other items repeatedly, you may or may not encounter some issues with toner chipping or scraping off the surface where inkjets might have the upper hand in this one regard (abrasion resistance.)

 

[midnightstar]

How about the HP wireless printer All-In-One? It is iPad compatible and its price is less or slightly more than $130.