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-L2550DW 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-L2375DW 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 Brother HL-L3270CDW.

Auto-duplexing capabilities in printers such as Brother DCP-T720DW 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!

October 8, 2021December 29, 2022

How to Find the Most Affordable Computer Printers for Different Uses

How to Pick an Affordable Computer 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 computer printer for your home, office or retail outlet?

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

Why You Need an Affordable Computer Printer

Getting a computer printer isn’t just a one-off cost. Over time, there are additional costs involved as you need to constantly “feed” your computer 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 computer printer.

Cost of Computer Printer — Long Term Considerations

It’s prudent to consider the running costs of operating a computer 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 computer printer.

1. Computer Printer Ink or Toner Price

Computer printer ink or toner is likely to be the highest running cost throughout your computer printer’s life cycle. Most of us would assume that ink cartridges are reasonably priced for cheap inkjet computer 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 computer printer for students, the office or home.

Laser or Inkjet Computer Printer

Computer printers now offer many different features and functions.

First, you have to decide if you need an inkjet or laser computer printer. Inkjet computer 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 computer printers produce crisp and clean text, perfect if you need to print mostly documents with text. Laser computer printers are also better equipped to handle high volumes of printing.

Single Function or Multifunction Computer Printers

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

Choosing a Computer 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 computer printer to deliver heavy-duty printing.

Choosing a Computer 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 Computer 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 computer printers might be the way to go.

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

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

How to Share Computer Printer with Multiple Users

Sharing a computer 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. Computer printer sharing with different computers and laptops used to be a complicated process—thanks to wireless and remote access computer printers, the days of connecting unwieldy and ugly computer 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 computer printer to your network.

Some computer 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 computer printer to your mobile device. (Certain digital camera models even offer direct wireless connections to computer printers.)

The Best Affordable Computer Printers for Students

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

Brother Laser Computer Printers for Students

Monochrome Laser Computer Printer

DCP-L2550DW (Multi-Function)

Print, Scan & Copy
Monochrome Laser Computer 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-L2375DW (Single Function)

Monochrome Laser Computer 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: 356 mm x 360 mm x 183 mm

Brother Inkjet Computer Printers for Students

DCP-T420W

Print, Scan & Copy
Colour Inkjet Computer 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 Computer Printers for Offices

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

Brother Inkjet Computer 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 Computer Printers for Homes

Finally, for your homes, you’ll need either laser or inkjet computer 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 Computer Printer for Home

MFC-L3770CDW

Print, Scan, Copy & Fax
Colour LED Computer 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)

Brother Inkjet Computer Printer for Home

DCP-T520W

Print, Scan & Copy
Colour Inkjet Computer 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 computer printer for your unique uses!

October 1, 2021August 1, 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-L2550DW. 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-L3770CDW 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.