How to Choose the Best Budget Printer for Your Home

Looking for the Best Budget Printer for Your Home? Consider These.

Need a reliable low-cost printer for your home? We’ll help you to find one!

Like many others, you are probably looking for the best budget printer for your home because you don’t need or don’t have the luxury to buy a top-tier printer. As long as the printer provides you with the best value for money, it will be perfect for you.

In this guide, you will learn the key cost and quality considerations needed in choosing the best budget printer for your home (or home office).

Why You Need a Budget Printer

You may think that the biggest factor in any printer is its price tag but consider this—the bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten. Often, getting the cheapest printer may not deliver the best value in the long run. Instead, consider buying the best value printer based on your priorities and expected usage.

Here is a list of factors that you should consider:

Black and White or Colour Printer
Laser or Inkjet Printer
Cost of Printer
Cost of Ink and Toner Cartridges
Page Yield
Single Function or All-In-One

Black and White or Colour Printer

Given a choice, it is obvious that a colour printer would be your first pick due to its ability to generate multi-coloured prints. But when your pocket is on the line, you have to consider if you truly need colour printouts.

In most cases, black and white printers are cheaper than colour printers.

If you print pictures, brochures, flyers, and other promotional materials frequently at home, then it is probably best to choose a colour printer that is as capable as Brother DCP-T520W Ink Tank Printer.

However, if you regularly print text documents or images without colour, it may be wise to keep your costs low by choosing a black and white printer similar to Brother DCP-L2531DW Monochrome Laser Printer.

Laser or Inkjet Printer

Both laser and inkjet print technologies are able to shine at home or in your office. However, there’s a good chance that one will be better at meeting your needs than the other. Let us look at these factors in detail.

Cost of Printer

When considering the cost of the actual printer itself, inkjet printers are usually less expensive than laser printers. This boils down to the technology of how these printers put letters and images on paper.

For inkjet printers, they rely on print heads and nozzles to deliver microscopic liquid ink onto the paper. Laser printers, on the other hand, rely on the electrostatic charge of a laser to transfer the toner on to the paper, and then bond them using heat.

The two distinct technologies mainly affect how big the printer is and how expensive a single printed page is. The cost of a printed page is then determined by its main consumable—the use of ink or toner cartridges.

Cost of Ink and Toner Cartridges

The cost of the cartridges is a major factor to pay attention to—because when it comes to consumables, it is the exact opposite.

While inkjet printers may be cheaper than laser printers, the ink cartridges of inkjet printers are significantly more expensive than the toner cartridges of laser printers based on their yield. With this in mind, you’ll have to consider how frequently you will be printing, to justify your overall running cost comprising the price of the printer itself and the printer ink or toner.

Some inkjet printers come with internal ink reservoirs that can be refilled with ink bottles—like the Brother DCP-T420W Refill Tank Printer—to help you save money. However, do keep in mind that with certain inkjet printers that use ink cartridges, dried ink may be an issue if it is left unused over a prolonged period of time.

Once again, toner cartridges have the upper hand. Since they are in dry powder form, laser toners last a lot longer than ink cartridges. This further helps you to avoid unnecessary wastage.

Page Yield

Here’s where we get into the nitty gritty of printing costs. To minimize your overall printing budget, you need to carefully consider the page yield of your laser or inkjet printer.

The page yield of a printer is the approximate number of pages you can print with a cartridge. You can easily look it up on online catalogs of the printer itself, or the information on the boxes of the cartridges.

These yields are based on a 5% page coverage, which means having 5% of the page’s total area imprinted with ink or toner. Thus, if a page yield is 600 pages, it means that you can print up to 600 pages with 5% page coverage before the cartridge needs to be replaced. For better context, that is roughly 600 pages worth of short paragraphs or emails.

However, keep in mind that if you are printing more full-bodied prints like a legal document or a full-page color photo, your page yield will decrease significantly.

Generally speaking, the page yields of a laser toner cartridge is significantly higher than the page yields of an inkjet cartridge. A toner cartridge can print between 3,000 to 20,000 pages per cartridge whereas an ink cartridge prints between 135 to 1000 pages per cartridge.

Since each person’s printing needs differ, the actual number of prints changes from user to user. You can take the above example as a rough gauge for your own printing needs.

Single Function or All-In-One

Printers nowadays have more than just printing abilities; they often also include scanning, faxing and photocopying capabilities.

Choosing the multi-function or single function printer that best matches your needs can help you to save a lot of money.

There are two common scenarios when considering whether to buy a single function or multifunction printer:

You already have or do not need the other functions as you simply need a printer for its printing function; or
You need multiple functions for your home or home office beyond just printing.

If you fall in the first category, getting a single function printer such as Brother HL-B2080DW is likely to be the cheapest option. Re-evaluating your home needs could help you to clarify your printing and document management needs, allowing you to choose the best printer for your budget.

Other Money-saving Printer Functions

When searching for the best budget printer, don’t just stop at considering its main cost components. The real value of a budget printer lies in its other less prominent features.

Printers that can help you save electricity or use it more efficiently usually have functions such as automatic on-and-off circuitry or a deep sleep mode like BrotherHL-L3270CDW.

Auto-duplexing capabilities in printers such as Brother DCP-T820DW Ink Tank Printer also help you to save precious minutes, eliminating the hassle of manually turning the paper around.

Don’t underestimate these features as they can help you to keep your electricity bill down, save ink, save paper, and most importantly, save time!

Conclusion

There is no one-size-fits-all budget printer on this planet. However, we hope that with the above factors and options, you can now make an informed choice on buying the best budget printer for your home!

November 26, 2021July 5, 2022

How to Find the Most Affordable Printers for Different Uses

How to Pick an Affordable Printer that Best Fits Your Needs

Visit any electronics retailer and it’s easy to lose yourself in a sea of printers. There are inkjet printers, laser printers, tiny photo printers, industrial-sized printers to all-in-one multifunction printers.

And let’s not forget about the wide price ranges of printers — from slightly over a hundred to over a thousand dollars (or more).

Where do you begin to hunt for the right printer for your home, office or retail outlet?

In this article, we break down the different features and functions of a printer to help you find the best printer at the right price that suits your unique needs.

Why You Need an Affordable Printer

Getting a printer isn’t just a one-off cost. Over time, there are additional costs involved as you need to constantly “feed” your printer with different consumables like paper, ink or toner, as well as electricity. Thus, you should consider your total lifetime cost when computing how much you need to spend on printing.

Here are some pointers to consider when searching for an affordable printer.

Cost of Printer — Long Term Considerations

It’s prudent to consider the running costs of operating a printer, especially when your printing needs increase for work or for school.

Here are two ways costs can add up over the lifespan of a printer.

1. Printer Ink or Toner Price

Printer ink or toner is likely to be the highest running cost throughout your printer’s life cycle. Most of us would assume that ink cartridges are reasonably priced for cheap inkjet printers, but this may not always be the case.

The first thing to consider is what type of printing you need—primarily black and white (monochrome) or colour printing? Colour ink or toner cartridges cost more than black ink or toner cartridges.

2. Printing Paper Costs

Different types of printing paper have different costs. Printing regular documents does not factor much into the overall cost, but if you need to print on special paper, like photos or art pieces, the cost of paper might go up.

What Types of Printing Do You Need

Students and working professionals have varied printing needs. Understanding your printing needs would help you to decide which is the best printer for students, the office or home.

Laser or Inkjet Printer

Printers now offer many different features and functions.

First, you have to decide if you need an inkjet or laser printer. Inkjet printers are compact and versatile, capable of printing documents, great for colour image printing and producing high-quality photos. They often feature all-in-one capabilities with print, scan and fax functions.

Laser printers produce crisp and clean text, perfect if you need to print mostly documents with text. Laser printers are also better equipped to handle high volumes of printing.

Single Function or Multifunction Printers

Do you only need to print or would you also need to make copies, scan and fax? Regular or basic printers only have one function, which is to print. All-in-One printers further provide scanning, faxing and copying capabilities. If you need these additional features, the multi-function printers are cheaper than getting separate devices.

Choosing a Printer for Students

If you are a student or you have school-going children in your household, your printing needs are pretty straightforward—school assignments, projects, and reports, with mostly text and occasional colour graphics, charts, or photographs.

Tertiary students preparing for lengthy case studies, theses, or essays may need a sturdy printer to deliver heavy-duty printing.

Choosing a Printer for an Office

While we are moving towards a more paperless work environment, there are inevitably situations where printed materials are still needed. It could be sales reports or analytics reports, which may involve colour charts on statistics, or in some cases, presentation decks when clients are concerned.

After a sales pitch, you may wish to leave copies of your proposals in potential clients’ hands. These printouts likely require high-quality colour printing to deliver crisp and sharp images.

Beyond that, photocopying and scanning are two well-used functions in the office, and having a one-stop machine that caters to a range of needs is an asset to any office.

Choosing a Printer for Your Home

Printing needs at home may differ from those in school or the office, unless you are studying or working from home.

Home printing can get a lot more enjoyable, like printing photos of your recent staycation to producing a fun family vacation photo album. Or you may wish to embark on a scrapbook project, where you’d need to print out images to decorate your scrapbook.

Suffice to say, if you are a student purely looking for printing large amounts of black and white text, laser printers might be the way to go.

If you require a printer for work and need heavy graphics for presentations, both colour laser and inkjet printers work for you.

Require a bit of both for your home? Then you’d need to get a printer that delivers the best of both worlds.

How to Share Printer with Multiple Users

Sharing a printer with multiple users is commonly seen at home or at your workplace. It’s also one of the best ways to lower costs while still allowing everyone to access printing facilities. Printer sharing with different computers and laptops used to be a complicated process—thanks to wireless and remote access printers, the days of connecting unwieldy and ugly printer cables are mostly over.

For Windows users, go to the Control Panel and select Devices and Printers. Then select “Add a printer”, where you will be asked to choose whether it’s a wireless, networked or Bluetooth printer. Follow the instructions on your screen, and you will be on your way. Alternatively, download and install the driver for optimal printing performance.

For Mac users, it’s equally simple. Download and install the driver, and go to System Preferences, then Print and Scan, and you’ll be able to add the printer to your network.

Some printer models can be wirelessly connected with other electronic devices, such as your mobile phones or tablets. If you have images in your camera to print, transfer your pictures to your mobile device and send them to print, as long as you connect your printer to your mobile device. (Certain digital camera models even offer direct wireless connections to printers.)

The Best Affordable Printers for Students

If you are a student, teacher, or educational professional looking for the most affordable student-friendly printer for your needs, Brother has a handful of both laser and inkjet printers that tick the boxes on your requirements list.

Brother Laser Printers for Students

Monochrome Laser Printer

DCP-L2531DW (Multi-Function)

Print, Scan & Copy
Monochrome Laser Printer
Automatic 2-sided Printing
Wireless Networking
Print Quality: Up to 600 x 600 dpi, HQ1200 (Up to 2400 x 600 dpi), Up to 1200 x 1200 dpi
Size: 410 mm x 398.5 mm x 318.5 mm

HL-B2080DW (Single Function)

Monochrome Laser Printer
Automatic 2-sided Printing
Wireless Networking and NFC Connectivity
Print Quality: Up to 600 x 600 dpi, HQ1200 (Up to 2400 x 600 dpi), Up to 1200 x 1200 dpi
Size: 356 mm x 388 mm x 183 mm

Brother Inkjet Printers for Students

DCP-T420W

Print, Scan & Copy
Colour Inkjet Printer
Wireless and mobile printing
Print Quality: Up to 1,200 x 6,000 dpi
Size: 435 mm x 359 mm x 159 mm

The Best Affordable Printers for Offices

For working professionals in the office, factory, retail outlet or other workplaces, you’ll need a printer that has multiple functions as well as colour printing capabilities to impress your clients with. Consider these recommendations from Brother.

Brother Inkjet Printer for Offices

MFC-T920DW

Print, Scan, Copy & Fax
Colour Inkjet Printer
Automatic 2-sided Printing
Wired and Wireless Networking
Print Quality: Up to 1,200 x 6000 dpi

The Best Affordable Printers for Homes

Finally, for your homes, you’ll need either laser or inkjet printers that have a good balance between functions, speed, and flexibility. Do also consider the ability to print in colour—a must for those fun family projects!

Brother Laser Printer for Home

MFC-L3735CDN

Print, Scan, Copy & Fax
Colour LED Printer
Automatic 2-sided Printing, Scanning, Copying and Faxing
Wireless Networking
Print Quality: Up to 600 x 600 dpi, 2,400 dpi (600 x 2400)
Size: 410 mm x 475 mm x 414 mm

Brother Inkjet Printer for Home

DCP-T520W

Print, Scan & Copy
Colour Inkjet Printer
Wireless and mobile printing
Print Quality: Windows: Up to 1,200 x 6,000 dpi
Size: 435 mm x 380 mm x 159 mm

With a clearer picture of your needs and what’s available, you’re now ready to find the best affordable printer for your unique uses!

November 26, 2021July 5, 2022

How To Choose The Right Laser Printer For Home Use

Looking For The Perfect Laser Printer? Here Are 10 Top Factors To Consider

Are you looking for a laser printer for your home? Wondering if a laser printer is a worthwhile investment?

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it makes perfect sense for families and home-based businesses to buy laser printers. The main advantages of laser printers are their greater speed, durability, precision, and economy. Indeed, a laser printer can move very quickly, allowing it to churn out documents and images at a much greater speed than the average inkjet printer.

Furthermore, thanks to the advancement of technology, laser printers are now becoming more accessible for home and personal use. The prices for many models have come down considerably and their sizes are getting smaller too!

To decide if you should give laser printers a shot, you may need to first think about your expected usage.

Do You Need a Laser Printer?

Do you frequently need to print high volumes of black and white documents?

Value having clear and sharp text on your printouts?

Always need your printing jobs done in a hurry?

If your answers to the above questions are “Yes,” then it’s likely that you and your laser printer will be a match made in heaven.

But don’t go running off to the electronic or hardware stores yet. You need to first consider the pros and cons of laser printers.

Pros of Laser Printers at a Glance:

Laser printers are built for speed and volume. If you are a high-volume user who appreciates efficiency, this will definitely spark your interest.
Laser printers also produce crisp, sharp text. If your print jobs are mostly text documents with the occasional image or two, laser is probably your best bet.
Laser printers tend to have a lower cost per page. Although toners are more expensive, you will get higher yield in terms of more pages out of a toner cartridge compared to a traditional inkjet cartridge.
Most lasers also come equipped with high capacity paper trays which saves you the hassle of constantly having to top up paper.

Cons of Laser Printers at a Glance:

The upfront cost of a laser printer is usually higher, although the newer models are surprisingly affordable.
Laser printers cannot handle photographic paper but inkjet printers can.
Laser printers tend to be bigger and thus would take up a larger footprint in your home.

What to Consider When Buying a Laser Printer for Your Home

1. Upfront Cost

When it comes to buying a laser printer, your first consideration is typically the cost of the printer itself. While you may desire certain features in your printer, it is often your budget that will take up the bulk of your decision-making process.

If affordability is top of mind for you, you may want to check out the Brother DCP-L2531DW. This laser workhorse is designed for personal productivity and cost-efficiency, and the bonus is that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. It is also multi-functional, with wireless and mobile printing features, as well as scanning and photocopying capabilities.

2. Size of Printer

With their relatively larger footprint, laser printers in the past tend to only be found in offices and other professional work settings. However, there have been notable improvements in this area in the past few years, resulting in the creation of consumer-friendly laser printers that are smaller and more suitable for home use.

Arguably though, if you only have limited space on a desk, it may be easier to find an inkjet that fits into that smaller space. However, if space is not an issue for you, do consider getting a laser printer for its speed and efficiency.

3. Printer Connectivity

Most modern printers — whether inkjet or laser — offer various forms of connectivity such as Wi-Fi and Ethernet.

If you prefer to directly communicate with your printer from your mobile phone, look for Wi-Fi Direct capability. This allows a direct connection to be established between your device and the printer. Near Field Communication (NFC) is another feature to look out for. With NFC-enabled printers, you can print or scan directly from your mobile devices. Simply place your NFC-enabled mobile devices over the NFC tags on the printer to establish the connection.

You may also want to consider the ease of printing from Cloud services such as Google Docs, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Evernote. Do read up on the different services that your ideal printer supports, as this could translate into time (and sanity!) savings. It would be a breeze to print from Cloud services without needing to use a computer.

As a leading edge printer company, Brother offers direct Cloud printing services on its range of modern laser printers.

4. Types of Functions

Before rushing out to buy your new laser printer, you’ll have to ask yourself what types of documents you will be printing to determine the type of printer you should get.

These days, laser printers often come equipped with useful functions such as scanning and copying. You may not use these features frequently, but when you do need to call upon them—for instance in scanning your child’s educational certificates, or your testimonial letters—it’s nice to know that you have them all available at a touch of a screen/button.

Fancy being able to send scans directly from your printer to your mobile device or email? With Brother Cloud Apps—a free suite of innovative, cloud-based applications—now you can!

5. Types of Print Jobs

Laser printers are specifically built to quickly print out large numbers of documents and pages, whilst inkjet printing is generally a better fit for occasional or low-volume print usage.

Wish to have the versatility of printing both images and photos? You may need to weigh your options more carefully here.

Colour lasers offer superior print quality and colour depth and richness — if you are talking about printing on normal paper — but if you need to print on photo paper for poster quality prints, nothing beats an inkjet printer.

6.Black and White vs Colour

With the technological advancements in laser printers, the quality of both their monochrome (black and white) and colour prints have seen vast improvements in recent years. As such, whether you’re printing photos for personal use or professional use, you can expect excellent colour prints from your laser printer.

7. Print Speed

When it comes to speed, laser printers beat their inkjet counterparts hands down. These mean machines can churn out around 40-50 pages per minute while inkjet printers print at a more gentle speed of 16-20 pages per minute.

When comparing your printer’s pages per minute (ppm) rating, do bear in mind that such ratings usually depict printing under optimal conditions—usually with documents consisting of unformatted black text sent to the printer. Once factors such as document formatting, colour, and images are thrown in, your print speeds may slow down.

8. Cost of Toner

When purchasing a laser printer, the cost of replacement toner needs to be considered in addition to the initial upfront cost.

You may also need to take into account the cost of other consumables such as a replacement drum unit, which transfers the toner onto the paper, over the long-term.

9.Paper Handling

Most printers can handle paper up to A4 sizes, so if you’re looking at printing documents on A3 paper, your options may shrink by quite a bit. Printers that can print on A3 (or larger) tend to also have a larger footprint, requiring more space at home.

If you need things to be printed on envelopes or other types of specialty paper, you will need to look for a printer with a multi-purpose tray. Do also check your printer’s specifications to assess the weight limit of the paper that it can handle (in gsm).

Most people tend to overlook this, but there are other smart paper handling features that could make your life a little easier. These include functions such as automatic duplexing, which allows seamless 2-sided printing, as well as the ability to scan or copy multi-page documents via an automatic document feeder (ADF).

10. Power Consumption

Power consumption is another point worthy of consideration. In particular, you may wish to look out for eco-friendly printer models that come with a deep sleep mode. Do also check how much power the printer uses when it is actively engaged in printing tasks.

What are the Best Laser Printers for Home Use?

black and white laser printer for home use

The Brother DCP-L2550DW monochrome laser Multi-Function Centre combines wireless and mobile printing, scanning and copying capabilities to deliver productivity and ease of operation. With a fast print speed of up to 34ppm, and excellent print quality that guarantees sharp, clear text and graphics every time, this laser printer offers great value for money.

The Brother MFC-L3735CDN digital colour all-in-one delivers print, copy, scan and fax functions for home and small offices. Its 250-sheet capacity adjustable paper tray minimizes refills, while its 30-sheet capacity multi-purpose tray tackles diverse print needs including cardstock and envelopes. Its two-sided copying and scanning function further help Work From Home (WFH) folks to save precious time while creating more convenience.

Having a trusty printer in your home is vital to your professional or school success. With the above key considerations and printer recommendations, we hope you will be empowered to choose the best laser printer for your home.

November 26, 2021July 5, 2022

How To Use an NFC-Enabled Printer on a Mobile Device

Your Handy Guide to Using an NFC-Enabled Printer on a Mobile Device

Keen to print directly from your mobile device to an NFC-enabled printer?

We know how attractive that idea can be! Especially when you dread the following printing scenarios:

Needing to log on to your laptop just to print a few documents
Being confused by the convoluted set-up process involving wireless printers

There are many perks that an NFC-enabled printer can bring to your home or office. Read on to find out how you can print from your mobile device via an NFC-enabled printer, as well as the benefits that NFC enabled printers bring.

What is NFC printing?

As its name suggests, NFC printing, also known as Near Field Communication printing, works by establishing the wireless network connectivity between a mobile device and a printer when they are in close proximity. This is a form of short-range wireless technology that most modern smartphones, tablets and devices have.

With such technology, you can literally walk up to the printer, tap your phone on it and watch as your selected prints are printed right before your eyes.

NFC technology has made printing so convenient and fuss-free that you don’t need to log on to your PC or laptop just to print a document!

How to print from Android mobile devices using NFC printing

To use NFC Printing, both your printer and your mobile device must come equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Let us walk through the processes needed to activate it on both devices.

How to activate NFC on Android mobile devices

#1 Check if your mobile device supports NFC

Are your mobile devices already NFC-enabled? Well, you will be glad to know that the latest Android smartphones and tablets are mostly NFC-enabled. You can check by searching on your device settings for “NFC”.

(Unfortunately, as of now, there isn’t an easy way for iOS devices like iPhones to print using the NFC technology.)

#2 Activate NFC on mobile device

To activate NFC on your Android phone or tablet, follow the steps below:

On your Android device, tap on “Settings”
Select “Connected devices”
Select “Connection preferences”
You should see “NFC” and “Android Beam” options
Turn both of them on

Once NFC is activated on your mobile device, you can direct your attention to the printer.

How to use an NFC-enabled printer

#1 Check if your printer supports NFC

How do you know if a printer is NFC-enabled? Most printers will have an NFC icon located on the printer—this will also be the area where you should place your device to establish a connection.

#2 Enable NFC on Brother printer

To turn on the NFC capability on a Brother printer, follow these simple steps:

Select Settings (screwdriver icon)
Select “All Settings”
Select “Network”
Select “NFC”
Select “ON”
Select Home (house icon)

#3 Install and use Brother iPrint&Scan app to select the print job

To print via NFC on a Brother printer, you will need to install Brother iPrint&Scan App on your mobile device.

If you are printing a photo or a document, ensure that the memory card containing the image or document has been inserted into the mobile device.

To select the print job, here are the steps needed:

Open the Launcher on the mobile device
Tap the Brother iPrint&Scan icon (carefully read and accept the terms of the license agreement)
Select the document to be printed

#5 Establish NFC connection and print

When the Print Preview screen is displayed, hold your mobile device against the NFC icon on your Brother printer. Be sure to line up both the NFC tags.

Once your mobile device is connected, you will hear a sound and “Touch to beam” will be displayed on the mobile device’s screen.

Simply tap your device’s screen to proceed with printing, while maintaining the proximity, and voila! You have just printed directly from your mobile device to your NFC printer!

Benefits of NFC Printing

NFC printing has become a popular mode of printing because it is fuss-free and convenient.

What users appreciate the most is its fast and seamless connection. Thus, the quick tap-and-print process of NFC printing can help to optimize business productivity.

Brother’s NFC-Enabled Printers

Searching for the best NFC-enabled printer for your home or corporate office? Check out some of Brother’s best printers with NFC features!

Inkjet

MFC-T4500DW

Laser

For Home Use:

For Business & Office Use:

Once you get your hands on an NFC-enabled printer, you would understand why it’s so popular and better appreciate this state-of-the-art technology!

November 26, 2021July 5, 2022

Leather Strapped Tote Bag

I wanted to share with you all how you can take a basic sewing pattern and use it as inspiration to create the look you want. Before I start a crafting project, I have already found an inspiration photo that I want the final product to look like. I take that photo and then find or create a design pattern that looks similar to the one I aspire to make. From there, I purchase the materials based on my inspiration photo (with a few tweaks in color to match my style and my personality).

This DIY tote bag is a two-part project. I’d love for you to check out how you can customize this tote bag and make it your own. Click the link below for the second part to this post.

http://blog.scanncut.com/monogram-tote-bag

SUPPLIES:

Canvas
Leather Strap
Rivets
Measuring tape and/or ruler
Pen or pencil to create your pattern (dimensions included in this post)
Heavy Duty Snap Pliers
Brother Sewing Machine

INSTRUCTIONS:

Create your pattern according to the measurements given (or draw right on your fabric with a removable pen or chalk).

Cut out your bag pieces (2 main body, 2 facing)

Starting the with the main body of the tote bag, with right sides facing, sew the side seams and the bottom of the bag.
Take the facing and sew down the sides. Make sure the right side of the fabric is facing each other.

With the wrong side of the bag facing out, attach the Facing to the top of the bag. The right side of the Facing should be facing the wrong side of the bag. (See image) Sew in place.

Turn your bag right side out and pull the facing to the outside. Press the seam down.

Fold the facing under about 1/2” and press. Pin and stitch in place.
It’s time to attach the handles! Before we do that. Mark the placement of your handles with a fabric marking tool. Markings remain the exact same on the opposite side.

Let’s move on to the rivets. With the rivets, you want to make sure you gather the correct rivet pieces for the handles on your DIY bag. You’ll need a front and back for the canvas and front and back for the leather.

You’ll connect the rivets to the bag and strap according to the instructions on the back of the rivet packaging. When connecting, you’ll need the snap pliers.

That’s it!

This article has been republished from Brother Sews USA.
The original article can be seen here: http://blog.brothersews.com/sewing/leather-strapped-tote-bag/

November 26, 2021November 26, 2021

How to Choose the Best Black and White Printer for Home Use

Looking for the Best Black and White Printer for Your Home? Look no further!

Having trouble deciding on the best black and white printer for your home? Wondering if you’ll save more money replacing your old colour printer with a black and white printer?

Let us help you to resolve your dilemma!

In this article and infographic, you will discern the differences between colour printers and black and white printers, see how they compare in terms of cost, page-yield, and other variables, and learn how to choose the best monochrome laser or inkjet printers for your home printing needs.

Black and White Printer VS Colour Printer

If you already own a colour printer, but rarely ever print in colour, the question you may ask yourself is this: “Should I ditch my colour printer for a laser black and white printer?”

Technically, you could just print in black and white or grayscale by changing your print settings. However, that may not be the best solution going forward.

Here are the two biggest reasons why you should consider switching to a monochrome printer.

Cost

In the long run, your printing costs could go up as some printers require you to change the entire colour cartridge once a certain colour is low or empty. You’ll then end up paying for the colours that you are not even using!

That’s not all. If you only need to print in black and white but accidentally selected an incorrect setting, your printer will use up other colours too.

Contrary to popular belief, printing in grayscale actually uses colour to help create better tones, smoother transitions, and more print detail in the midrange. So think twice before you print with grayscale, expecting only the black cartridge to be used.

Ultimately, if you are sure that you only need black for your printing, getting a black and white printer can help you save costs on both the printer and its cartridges. A monochrome printer is generally cheaper than a colour printer. Black ink or toner is also cheaper than CMYK ink or toner.

Page yields

Monochrome printers also have higher page yields than colour printers.

As there is only one type of cartridge to cater for (i.e. black), the cartridges for monochrome printers can store more ink or toner of the same colour, resulting in higher page yields per cartridge.

Paired with its cheaper cartridges, you can look forward to a markedly reduced cost per page with a monochrome printer!

How to Choose the Right Black and White (Monochrome) Printer

So you’ve considered the pros and cons and decided that a black and white printer will suit your home printing needs to a tee.

But that’s not all there is in choosing the right black and white printer.

Knowing your printing preferences—such as whether you will need to print image-heavy documents or text-heavy documents most of the time—will also help you make the best decision.

November 26, 2021July 5, 2022

What to Consider When Buying a Color Printer

Not Sure Which Color Printer Suits You Best? Here is Your Printer Buying Guide

Decided to take the leap and invest in a colour printer for your home or small office?

Perhaps you’ve created a gorgeous work of digital art and wish to share it with the world by displaying your art in your home. Or maybe you feel that having the right colour images can help to improve the impact of your work documents or presentations.

But how do you choose the best colour printer to meet both your professional and personal needs? After all, there are literally thousands of different colour printers out there.

The good news? Colour printers have evolved over the past few years—many models now offer superior photo-quality print results and convenient state-of-the-art features—so you are totally spoilt for choice. You will also be glad to know that most colour printers today include multiple functions like copying, faxing and scanning.

Types of colour printers

When searching for a colour printer, it’s generally a toss-up between an inkjet printer or a laser printer. This decision largely hinges upon what you print and how often you print.

Let’s consider inkjet printers first.

Qualities of an inkjet colour printer

An inkjet printer is a type of printer that works by expelling ink droplets onto paper. Such printers use liquid ink from individual color ink cartridges or internal ink reservoir tank, which are then expelled through separate nozzles—each one spraying a different colour of ink.

Pros of an inkjet colour printer:

Affordability

Cost is one of the biggest advantages of colour inkjet printers. Even the least expensive inkjet printers are able to produce images with great quality.

If price is a top-of-mind concern for you, then an inkjet printer would be your best bet for low-priced colour printing in a home/small office setting.

Excellent Print Quality

As we have alluded to above, the advancement of ink technology has enabled inkjet printers to provide high-quality output for both images and text. Due to their finer and smoother colours and detailing, inkjet printers are built for high-resolution photo printing.

With the level of quality of most colour inkjet printers today, it can be difficult to differentiate between a professionally-printed photograph and one that’s been printed using your inkjet printer – especially when printing on photo paper!

Smaller Footprint

Inkjet colour printers also tend to be more compact in size compared to laser colour printers. Even inkjet printers that are multi-functional do not have a large footprint. This makes them suitable for homes or workplaces that have tight spaces.

Cons of an inkjet colour printer:

Slower Speed

Most inkjet printers are designed for low-volume printing. Thus they may take longer to churn out large print jobs.

The slower print speed of inkjet printers, however, is slightly mitigated by the fact that an inkjet printer can start printing as soon as the printer is turned on, without needing any warm-up time.

Qualities of a colour laser printer

Colour laser printers combine the speed of traditional monochrome laser printers with the ability to print in colour. In laser printers, colour is added to the page by melting toner powder onto paper.

The initial cost of laser printers may be higher than inkjet printers. Likewise, the toner cartridges used in laser printers are also pricier than the inks used in inkjet printers. However, colour laser printers could still be an economical option in the long run due to their lower cost per page and faster print speeds.

Here is a breakdown of the main advantages and disadvantages of colour laser printers.

Pros of a colour laser printer:

Faster print speeds

Laser printers are traditionally built for speed (around 50 pages per minute!) while inkjet printers print slower at about 16-20 pages per minute.

Cheaper printing cost per page

Everyone knows that the higher upfront costs of laser printers and toner cartridges are partially offset by their lower cost per page. This is because laser toner cartridges can print significantly more pages than inkjet cartridges—even in colour.

How do we calculate the cost per page?

Cost per page is the most accurate way of measuring your printer’s cost-efficiency. To calculate your printer cartridge’s cost per page, simply take the price of the cartridge and divide it by the expected page yield of one cartridge:

For black and white printing:

cost per page = cartridge price / cartridge page yield

For colour printing:

cost per page =(black cartridge price / black page yield) +( 3x colour cartridge price / colour composite page yield) + (drum price / total composite page yield)

High-volume print jobs

Colour laser printers are known to be workhorses—they simply come built with the capacity to quickly churn out large numbers of documents and pages.

Good colour print quality

With the technological advancements in laser printers, the quality of the colour prints has seen vast improvements in recent years. As such, whether you’re printing photos for personal use or professional use, you can expect excellent colour prints from your laser printer.

Cons of a colour laser printer:

More suited for document printing

Colour lasers are designed to print documents. While they can also handle graphics-and-text documents like brochures and newsletters, laser printers may not be optimal for printing photographs.

Larger footprint

Due to their relatively larger footprint, colour laser printers function best in larger offices and other professional work settings. If space is not an issue for you, you may want to consider colour lasers for your printing needs even in your home.

Quick and Easy Tips To Improve Colour Print Quality

How do professional photographers and designers create high-quality colour prints? This is the million-dollar question that we will address in this next section.

Vibrant colour yield (RGB to CMYK Colour Variances)

There are two ways to print in colour: RGB or CMYK.

RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. The RGB colour mode combines these base colours in varying quantities to form just about any colour you can imagine. For example, if you want to create a yellow colour, you would simply combine green and red.

CMYK works quite differently from RGB—here, the printer uses subtractive colours, or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. In CMYK mode, all of the colours are subtractive which basically means that the more colours you add together, the darker the resulting colour is going to be.

When printing documents on CMYK printers, do ensure that you are creating your documents in CMYK colour mode. If they are not designed in CMYK, you can also convert them to CMYK through a photo editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, or layout programs such as Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign.

● Print Resolution

Print resolution is measured in DPI (dots per inch). The more dots there are in an inch of paper, the sharper the resulting image.

Your printer needs to have a resolution of 600 dpi in order to print high-quality documents (and 1200 dpi to achieve sharp, detailed images).

When shopping around for printers, you may notice that print resolution is always presented as a set of two numbers, for example 1200 x 3600 dpi. This means the maximum resolution of that printer is 1200 multiplied by 3600 dpi.

● Paper Type

Substandard paper can result in substandard colour print quality so be sure not to overlook this small but important factor! Often, print problems such as excessive colour bleeding or colour dullness can be attributed to low-quality paper.

How to Choose the Right Colour Printer

Now that you’ve learned the characteristics of both colour inkjet and laser printers, your next task is to choose the best colour printer for your use.

1. Print Quality

If you’re expecting to print a lot of photographs on glossy or matte photo paper, a colour inkjet printer may be the best fit for you as the quality of the output is superior when photo paper is used.

However, if printing on plain printer paper, the print quality of a colour laser printer is on par with an inkjet printer.

2. Print Volume

Colour laser printers also work well if you need to churn out many documents per day—for most home printer buyers, this usually isn’t a dealbreaker as they normally only print a few documents every few days.

Thus, as you can see, the right colour printer for you really boils down to your expected print usage and your preference in terms of print quality.

Types of Colour Printers from Brother

Considering getting an inkjet or laser colour printer? Take a look at these recommended models from Brother.

Best for Affordability

The DCP-T420W is an affordable colour inkjet printer that offers cost-savings in the long run due to the ultra high yield ink bottles, which allows you to print 7,500 pages in black and 5,000 pages in colour. It also delivers professional quality prints with crisp black text and vibrant detailed images.

Best for Features

The DCP-T520W combines multiple functions of printing, scanning and copying into one nifty printer. It uses the same ultra high yield ink bottles as the DCP-T420W, thus allowing you to enjoy better page yields and lower costs per page.

Best for Efficiency

If you have a need for speed, the HL-T4000DW might be your ideal choice for a printer. It features automatic 2-sided printing, prints up to A3 size, uses ultra high yield ink bottles, and is able to print up to 22 images per minute or 35 pages per minute (in fast mode).

Best for Versatility and Overall Performance

Brother’s latest inkjet Multi-Function Centre MFC-T4500DW delivers business-class performance at a reasonable price. With low printing costs, you can print high volumes without constantly worrying about your bottom line. Furthermore, it also offers A3 paper printing capabilities, so you can expand and showcase your work without having to lose any details.

Best for Speed

Brother’s colour laser all-in-one MFC-L3735CDN delivers excellent colour performance with fast print/scan speeds. It also offers lower cost thanks to super and ultra high-yield toners. This intelligent multi-tasking printer is equipped with a dual CIS Automatic Document Feeder that allows you to scan up to 70 sheets directed to your preferred medium. It also comes with advanced security features.

Best for Home and Small Business

The Brother MFC-L3770CDW colour laser printer delivers superior colour performance and fast print and scan speeds, making it the perfect companion for your home or small business printing needs. This workhorse is able to boost your productivity with fast colour print speeds of up to 24ppm.

Conclusion

Deciding on the best colour printer for your home or office will depend on your specific printing needs and the factors that stand out the most to you.

We hope this detailed comparison between inkjet printers and colour laser printers will help you to make the right buying decision for yourself!

November 26, 2021July 5, 2022

How To Print Auto Duplex on Laser Printer

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Confused About Auto Duplex Printing On Laser Printer? Here’s how

Clueless about auto duplex printing on laser printers? Don’t worry we’ve got you covered. Auto duplex printing is basically printing on two sides of the paper automatically. Yes, it means that you don’t have to flip the pages manually when you want two-sided printed pages.

But how do you do that? Is there a special switch that you need to flip? Read on to find out!

Manual VS Auto Duplex Laser Printer

Manual duplex printing can achieve the same result as automatic duplex printing — the only difference is that you will have to turn the page over yourself to print the other side.

On the other hand, in auto duplex printing, the printer does the flipping for you. This saves you time, money, effort, and paper!

An auto duplex laser printer helps you to enjoy higher print quality, faster print speeds, cleaner prints, lower print costs, and more efficient printing.

Check out some of Brother’s best Laser Duplex Printers

Here are some additional tips to enhance your printing efficiency:

Two Ways to Optimize Printing Speed

1. Use a Laser Printer

Compared to inkjet printers, laser printers usually print more quickly, regardless of whether your prints are in colour or monochrome (black and white).

2. Use Auto Duplex

As mentioned previously, auto duplex printing saves you the hassle of manually flipping the pages. Just press print, make yourself a cup of coffee, and come back with double-sided prints!

How do you set up auto duplex printing?

How To Do Auto Duplex Printing

Setting up duplex printing can change your printing routine and reduce costs. All you have to do is to follow the steps below:

November 26, 2021January 9, 2023

DIY Monogrammed Sweatshirts

Take a plain sweatshirt to the next level of style with machine embroidery. From monograms to fun designs, you can customize this cozy wardrobe essential for yourself and others. These DIY monogrammed sweatshirts make great gifts for family and friends alike! Check out the tutorial below on how to embroider a sweatshirt with your Brother embroidery machine.

Supplies:

Pacesetter Cut Away Stabilizer
Brother NV800E
Temporary Spray adhesive for embroidery
5 x 7” hoop
Clips (hair clips)
Fabric marking tool
Embroidery designs

Step 1

Always prewash your garments before embroidering.

Lay out the sweatshirt and mark the location you want the monogram with a fabric marking tool. It’s a good idea to print out a template or create a sample stitch out to figure out your preferred placement. Traditionally, a monogram is embroidered 6.5”- 7” down the left shoulder seam. However, I did one on the right shoulder seam that came out great! I also like to place the monogram in the center front as well (typically 3” down from the center neckline line).

Once you find the location you want, mark the center, vertical, and horizontal locations (basically create a rectangle). I like to create a cross and center the design at the center of the cross where the lines intersect. Mark what works best for you.

Step 2

Flip inside out.

Use a Cut Away stabilizer that will cover the embroidery area and hoop size. Spray with a temporary spray adhesive and press onto the area that will be embroidered. I use Cut Away stabilizer on sweatshirts because they’re worn and washed often. This will help the embroidery last a long time compared to other stabilizers.

Step 3

Flip right side out.

Place the outer hoop inside the sweatshirt and put the inner hoop on the top, making sure the design is centered in the hoop.

Step 4

Roll the excess material towards the outer hoop and away from the hoop area. You can use clips to keep the excess material in place (I use hair clips, an embroidery tip I got from a friend).

Step 5

Create your monogram. You can create your own or use the built-in ones that the Brother Machines offer. My designs measured about 3 x 3 “. You can use software to create your design and lettering, or just piece it together on the Brother Touch Screen. I have the Brother NV800E, which makes it easy to add and edit designs right on the screen.

Step 6

Embroider away!

Once your embroidery is complete, turn the shirt the wrong side out and cut away the stabilizer. I typically cut it about ¼’ away from the design. Over time and after multiple washes, the stabilizer will soften.

Other examples / Valentine theme (optional images)

I hope this inspires you to give embroidery a try on your garments. It’s a great way to upcycle old t-shirts, sweatshirts, and denim jackets. Here are a couple other examples.

This article has been republished from Brother Sews USA.
The original article can be seen here: http://blog.brothersews.com/embroidery/diy-monogrammed-sweatshirts/

November 25, 2021July 5, 2022

How To Buy The Best Affordable Printers for Students

Need Affordable Printers? Here Are The Best Printers For Students!

Are you a student who needs an affordable printer for your printing needs?

Tired of paying for expensive prints every time a school project is due?

Having to wait in the long queue at the school’s printing shop during submission deadlines?

Perhaps you are a parent who grimaces at the struggle of your children, and wishes to make their lives easier.

Students (and parents) rejoice! In this article, you will learn how you can save money on printing by investing in the right affordable home printers perfectly suited for your needs.

Why Do Students Need Affordable Printers

But first, let us address the elephant in the room — do children, teenagers and youths need printers?

The short answer is a resounding yes! Here are four reasons why students need low-priced printers at home.

Printing of School Projects and Assignments

With project-based learning and school projects being the norm these days, students need to print reports, essays, photos, and other assignments.

These may sometimes include colour printouts of charts and graphs, or captioned photos depicting different locations that they’ve been. It is also common for students to print out lesson plans and notes from their teachers.

Tertiary level students in universities may also need a printer to proof-read long essays or churn out copies of their research reports.

Printing of Personal Fun Projects

Beyond school projects, having an affordable printer also allows your child to stretch her imagination with fun personal projects.

She could design and print out a photo book documenting your last family vacation. Create a sign-board just for her room. Or write a fictitious story involving space aliens and cowboys!

A home printer also allows you to print out family photos — a perfect way to decorate your home during these times.

Expensive Shop Printing Costs

Beyond the above reasons, printing can also be increasingly more expensive at print shops with rising labour and rental costs.

While professional printers may be suited for large volume commercial prints, small-scale printing costs for home users are likely to be high. This is especially so for high resolution colour printouts for images such as photos, posters, or other illustrations.

Inconvenience of Printing in School or at a Shop

Faced with mounting pressures at school, students who need urgent print-outs of their assignments may find it frustrating to look for an available print shop.

Often, queues at such printing shops may form — especially close to project deadlines!

Besides battling other students to get your job printed first, you may also have to contend with occasions where the shop closes, like weekends, public holidays, or non-retail hours.

What To Look For in an Affordable Student Printer

Getting an affordable printer will help you to solve your student printing woes. You won’t need to go to a library or an internet cafe to print out your work, or rip your hair out when your regular print shop closes.

Before you run out to get any affordable printers you can find, consider these factors when you choose a printer that is best suited for a student.

students coursework — Classmate Classroom Sharing International Friend Concept

Print Quality of Printer

Low cost shouldn’t equate with low quality. While searching for the best economically-priced printer, you’ll need to ensure that your printer doesn’t skimp on print quality.

Check that your value-for-money printer can print out various documents with perfect clarity. It would be such a shame if your hard work came out with a bunch of blurs, lines and smudges!

Space Needed for Printer

Next, consider the space you have for your printer. You wouldn’t want a printer that takes up too much space, given the constraints of your room.

Try to find one that is compact yet packed with the features that you need for your school and personal printing needs.

Cost of Printer — Think Long-Term Costs

Lastly, you’ll need to consider the price of the printer itself, as well as its running costs.

Often, students and their parents opt for the cheapest printer available in the market without considering the ongoing cost of its consumables. Such costs may add up — especially when the volume of school work that needs to be printed goes up.

There are four running cost components that you should consider:

Printer Ink or Toner Cost
Printer Paper Cost
Printer Electricity Consumption
Printer Maintenance or Repair Cost

Printer Ink or Toner Price

The printer ink or toner is one of the biggest running costs when it comes to owning a printer. You wouldn’t want to get a cheap printer that has a huge cost for its ink or toner.

You may want to consider if the majority of your print jobs are to be in black and white or colored. This will help to determine your budget for the cartridges — yes, colour cartridges are more expensive.

Do also be careful of using third party ink or toners — those may not be suitable for your machine and may damage it in the long-term.

It is wise to find a balance between your cost-per-page and the upfront printer cost.

Once you have these costs figured out, it would be easier to see if a printer will burn a hole in your pocket in the long term.

Pro Tip: If you’re looking to get an inkjet printer, you should use it at least weekly to maximize its cartridge use. Idle printers can dry up cartridges or result in clogged print heads.

If you are not printing constantly, and have longer idle time in between prints, it is better to get a laser printer. While the upfront costs of Laser printers may be higher than inkjet printers, toner replacement wouldn’t be as often. Besides, laser printer toners are dry powders which wouldn’t dry up with time.

Printer Paper Price

The next cost to consider are your paper costs. There are different types of printing media and they all have different prices.

If you need to print art pieces on a certain print medium, its costs and compatibility may vary from printer to printer. Getting these special papers from the same printer brand ensures that your printouts will be of a premium quality — it also helps you to avoid printer jams and other mishaps.

If you are just printing regular documents, sticking to regular A4 plain paper shouldn’t be much of a problem. A cost saving tip is to buy your printing paper in bulk or during a sale — it is much cheaper than buying them individually.

Printer Electricity Consumption

This next cost might seem negligible to some, but with any electrical appliances, the electricity consumption costs of your printer do add up over time.

Where possible, look for printers that have a deep sleep mode or energy saving functions. This might not seem like an important cost to consider in the beginning — however, in the long run, it will save you a considerable amount.

Printer Maintenance and Lifespan

What’s the point of buying a printer which spoils the next year? Fixing it or buying a new one altogether can be both troublesome and costly.

To prevent this, ensure that you buy a reliable printer with a good warranty. Often, this is a good sign that its maintenance costs will be manageable.

Do also look out for printers from established trustworthy brands that provide reliable customer service. This can help you to reduce your printer maintenance costs, and minimise the need for you to replace your student friendly printer every few years.

Where To Buy The Best Printers for Students

If you are looking to buy the best affordable printer for students, here are a few printers from Brother that can meet a student’s needs for affordability, high print quality, low consumables prices, and compact in size.

1. Brother Laser Printer For Students

Monochrome Laser printer:

DCP-L2531DW

Print, Scan & Copy
Monochrome Laser Printer
Automatic 2-sided Printing
Wireless Networking
Print Quality: Up to 600 x 600 dpi, HQ1200 (Up to 2400 x 600 dpi), Up to 1200 x 1200 dpi
Size: 410 mm x 398.5 mm x 318.5 mm

Colour Laser Printer:

DCP-L3551CDW

Print, Scan & Copy
Color LED Printer
Auto 2-sided printing
Wireless & Network Connectivity
Print Quality: Up to 600 x 600 dpi, 2,400 dpi (600 x 2400)
Size: 410 mm x 475 mm x 414 mm

MFC-L3735CDN

Print, Scan, Copy & Fax
Color LED Printer
Auto 2-sided printing & scanning
Wireless, Network Connectivity & NFC
Print Quality: Up to 600 x 600 dpi, 2,400 dpi (600 x 2400)
Size: 410 mm x 475 mm x 414 mm

2. Brother Inkjet Printer For Students

Colour Inkjet Printer:

DCP-T520W

Print, Scan & Copy
Inkjet Printer
Wireless and mobile printing
Print Quality:
- Windows: Up to 1,200 x 6,000 dpi
- Mac: Up to 1,200 x 3,600 dpi
Size: 435 mm x 380 mm x 159 mm

Now go find your perfect printer and skip the nuances!