Monochrome Laser Printer

Only black toner sits inside, which keeps this printer small, quick and cheap to feed. A charged drum picks up powder in the shape of the page, a roller transfers it to the sheet, and hot rollers press it into the fiber. Nothing in that chain is liquid, so nothing in it can dry out between jobs.

Standard toner cartridges print 1,500 to 3,000 pages and high yield versions 6,000 to 10,000. This puts cost per page between 2 and 4 cents and often under 2 on the larger unit. Desktop models run 20 to 40 pages a minute, with the first sheet arriving 6 to 10 seconds after waking from sleep. Some designs separate the imaging drum from the toner, making the drum a second consumable good for 12,000 to 50,000 pages.

Against a Cartridge Inkjet Printer it cannot produce a photograph worth framing, and gray tones arrive as a visible pattern of dots rather than smooth shading. Against a Color Laser Printer it is roughly half the weight and much cheaper to stock. What it does better than either is nothing at all. A printer that runs 40 pages in March and none until September works first time on both occasions.

Students printing essays, home offices producing invoices and contracts, and anyone whose color needs end at a phone screen should start here. Skip it when school posters, product photos or color-coded documents are part of the job, since the page will not carry the meaning. Two things separate a good one from a frustrating one: automatic two-sided printing, and a 250 sheet cassette instead of a 100 sheet open tray.

Read the recommended monthly volume rather than the duty cycle figure printed beside it. Toner is plastic powder, so clean a spill with a dry brush or a vacuum rated for fine dust, and rinse clothing in cold water, because hot water fuses it permanently into the weave.