Comparing Inkjet and Laser Printers

Inkjet and laser printers allow you to print professional-looking documents, such as brochures, flyers and spreadsheets from the comfort of your home. When selecting a printer, you will need to weigh your available budget against your preferred colour quality and speed.

Find out more below about the basic types of printers and their advantages and disadvantages in order for you to shop with the right type of printer in mind.


Advantages of Inkjet Printers

Inkjet printers are generally cheaper than most laser printers. You can find a reasonable colour inkjet printer for under £100 in the leading chain stores in the UK.  These printers are still the colour printing solution for most home PC owners. Other advantages are as follows:

Smaller size: This saves you space on your desktop.

Versatility: A colour inkjet can print on many types of media, including T-shirt transfers, craft paper and even printable CD/DVD discs.

Larger paper sizes: If you invest more, you can add a large-format inkjet printer to your system that can print A3 pages.

Inkjet printers have advanced a long way in the last ten years. Unfortunately, the printing process is still relatively slow compared to that of laser printing.  Additionally, the ink cartridges and specialist papers can be quite expensive (cheaper compatibles from Jet Tec are available).  Therefore, inkjet printers are more suited for home users and small businesses with lighter printing needs. Inkjet printers range in price from less than £100 to as much as £800, depending on image quality, features and paper-handling capabilities.





Advantages of Photo Printers

Some inkjet printers use more than the four basic colours of inks to produce high-quality photos.  If you own a digital camera and print a lot of photos, you may want to choose a printer specifically for that purpose.

Photo quality: The print quality is not dissimilar to that of professional photofinishing.

Memory cards: A photo printer can often print directly from digital cameras and many models also accept digital storage cards such as SmartMedia, CompactFlash, Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard or a Memory Stick.

Even though a number of different sizes of photo printers are on the market, many are more compact than the average inkjet printer. These photo printers are usually limited to printing 4x6 or smaller prints -  they cannot print standard A4 sheets, which is why they are only suitable as second printers.  If you are a serious amateur or professional digital photographer, a photo printer is worth the expense, and typically cost upwards of £150.

For a home PC owner a normal colour inkjet printer is usually the better option.


Advantages of Laser Printers

A modern monochrome (black) laser printer starts at below £100. This is quite amazing, taking into account that at one time you had to spend a minimum of £1,500 for a standard laser printer. Some advantages of laser printers include the following:

Low cost: Over the life time, toner costs for a laser printer will usually be far less per page than replacing inkjet printer cartridges.

Speed: A laser printer will usually print pages much faster than an inkjet printer.

High-quality text: An inkjet printer, no matter how much you pay for it, will never print black text and line graphics quite as clear as a laser printer can.

Quiet operation: A laser printer is usually far quieter than low-cost inkjet printers - which is a important in a quiet office.

Until relatively recently, colour laser printers were unaffordable for individuals or even small businesses.  However, there are now many models available for less than £500 and these are practicable alternatives to colour inkjets for printing spreadsheets, flyers and brochures. Considering these advantages, choose a monochrome laser printer if most of the pages that you will print are text, especially if colour isn't a requirement. You'll be pleased at chosing a laser model after you have gone perhaps six months without having to replace a single toner cartridge!  What's more, Jet Tec are now producing a range or remanufactured laser toners which are far cheaper than their branded counterparts!



UK Ink Supplies of Lincolnshire - official Jet Tec retailer.

This blog is by UK Ink Supplies, based in Lincoln, UK stocking a wide range of Jet Tec printer cartridges and Jet Tec laser toner cartridges for most printers.  For more information please visit Jet Tec ink cartridges for the latest Jet Tec Epson, Canon, Lexmark, Brother and HP printer products.

New printer cartridges from Jet Tec

UK Ink Supplies of Lincoln and Jet Tec are pleased to announce the introduction of the remanufactured HP 300BXL & HP 300CXL inkjet printer cartridges to the UK Ink Supplies/Jet Tec product range.

The Jet Tec H300BXL ink cartridge replaces the Hewlett Packard HP300XL Black cartridge and the Jet Tec H300CXL ink cartridge replaces the Hewlett Packard HP300XL Colour cartridge.  The Jet Tec ink cartridges are far more cost effective and value for money than the HP made printer cartridges and come with the full money-back Jet Tec guarantee from Europe's leading printer ink cartridge manufacturer.  What's more, all Jet Tec products are made in the UK and are readily available for despatch at your convenience.

These new range Jet Tec ink cartridges are compatible with the following Hewlett Packard HP Deskjet and Photosmart printers:

HP DeskJet D1660, HP DeskJet D1663, HP DeskJet D2500, HP DeskJet D2560, HP DeskJet D2563, HP DeskJet D2660, HP DeskJet D5560, HP DeskJet F2480, HP DeskJet F4210, HP DeskJet F4235, HP DeskJet F4240, HP DeskJet F4272, HP DeskJet F4275, HP DeskJet F4280, HP DeskJet F4283, HP DeskJet F4288, HP DeskJet F4580, HP Photosmart C4635, HP Photosmart C4680, HP Photosmart C4683, HP Photosmart C4688, HP Photosmart C4740, HP Photosmart C4780, HP Photosmart C4783, HP Photosmart C4795 plus others - please ask for full compatibility.

Look out for the colourful 'Butterfly' images on the Jet Tec environmentally friendly packaging to easily spot your printer ink cartridge for your HP printer.





UK Ink Supplies of Lincolnshire - official Jet Tec retailer.

This blog is by UK Ink Supplies, based in Lincoln, UK stocking a wide range of Jet Tec printer cartridges and Jet Tec laser toner cartridges for most printers.  For more information please visit Jet Tec ink cartridges for the latest Jet Tec Epson, Canon, Lexmark, Brother and HP printer products.

How to Troubleshoot Ink Cartridge Problems.

The Jet Tec ink cartridges are the life blood of your inkjet printer - keeping your ink cartridges in the best working order can extend the lifespan of both the printer and the cartridges. With inkjet prices currently high, extending the life of each Jet Tec cartridge through proper maintenance and troubleshooting can save you a lot of time and money. If you can learn to recognise common problems early, you can remedy those problems quickly and get back to printing your documents.

Are you having problems installing your new ink cartridge?

Here are some helpful tips to solve common problems when installing a new ink cartridge:

Step 1
Remove the Jet Tec clip or tape from ink cartridge.

Make sure that you have removed all the tapes and protective plastic covers on the ink cartridge.

Step 2
Check that the Jet Tec printer cartridges are securely in place.

If the printer does not work after you have changed the cartridge, in all likelihood it means that the ink cartridge is not securely in place.

Step 3
Clean your inkjet printer cartridge heads.

Most printer software come with a set of tools or utilities for cleaning and aligning the ink cartridge and printer heads.

You may need to repeat this process several times if you have not used your printer for some time.

Step 4
Leave ink cartridge overnight.

If the cleaning routine does not work, try leaving the cartridge in the printer (turned off) overnight.

The next day, run the cleaning process again. The dried ink will soften, making it easier for the printer to clean.

If you have tried all of these steps and the new ink cartridge is still not working you may have a faulty cartridge and will need to return it.


UK Ink Supplies of Lincoln

Blog by UK Ink Supplies, based in Lincoln, UK stock a wide range of printer cartridges and laser toner  cartridges for most printers.  For more details please visit Jet Tec ink cartridges for the latest Epson, Canon, Lexmark, Brother and HP printer products.

Inkjet Printers and Laser Printers

In computing terms, a printer is a device (usually peripheral) that produces a hard copy of documents stored in electronic form, usually on print media such as paper, card or transparencies.

Many printers are primarily used as computer peripherals, and are permanently connected by a printer cable to a computer which serves as a document source. In most newer printers, a USB cable connects to a computer which serves as the document source. Other printers, commonly known as network printers, have built-in network interfaces and can serve as a hardcopy device for any user connected to the network.

In addition, many modern printers can directly interface to electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards, or to image capture devices such as digital cameras, and scanners; some printers are integrated with a scanning and/or fax machine function - these printers are generally known as "multi-functional" or "all-in-one" printers.

Printers are designed for short-turnaround print jobs; requiring all-but no setup time to achieve a quality hard copy print of a required document.

The two main types of printers commonly found in the home and business are inkjet and laser toner printers.

A laser printer rapidly produces high quality text and graphics by employing a xerographic printing process by producing an image by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor. In contrast, an inkjet printer operates by propelling variably-sized droplets of liquid or molten material (ink) onto almost any sized page. They are the most common type of computer printer used by consumers.

In contrast, the printing press is designed and optimised for high-volume print jobs such as newspaper print runs: printing presses are capable of hundreds of pages per minute or more, and have an incremental cost-per-page which is a fraction of that of printers.

The printing press remains the machine of choice for high-volume, professional publishing. Although, as printers have improved in quality and performance, many jobs which used to be done by professional print shops are now done by users on local printers.

However, as printer technology has improved in quality and performance, many jobs which used to be done by professional print shops can now be readily done by users on local printers.


Blog by UK Ink Supplies, based in Lincoln, UK stock a wide range of printer cartridges and laser toner  cartridges for most printers.  For more details please visit Jet Tec ink cartridges for the latest Epson, Canon, Lexmark, Brother and HP printer products.