The Basics of Choosing Colour Multifunction Printers

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Multifunction printers today offer the average customer more than just a printing solution. They have included several abilities such as copying, scanning, and even faxing in others. Colour multifunction printers are available as either inkjet or laser printers. These printers can print at such high qualities—especially the laser printers—that many businesses have taken to using them to print their own in-house marketing materials instead of contracting individuals for the jobs. When buying a colour multifunction printer, there are several considerations you ought to make. You have the desired colour range covered so what next? How do you choose your ideal printer? Hopefully, the following additional considerations will help you arrive at an easier choice.

Need versus Want Functions

It is essential to note down the features of the printer that you absolutely need before going for the purchase. These features will mainly be determined by what use you intend for the printer. Will you be using the printer at home? Or is it purely needed for office use? Will you be mixing both? The printing, copying, and scanning features of these printers aren't always as straightforward as they sound. Some of these printers are limited to perform these functions over a network. Ensure that if you plan on connecting the printer to a network, the scanning option works on a network. Others, on the other hand, are able to scan and copy via a USB connection. This would serve best at home where there may not be a network connection available for the colour multifunction printer.

Some of these multifunction printers may not need a PC at all to do some basic copying work. They work as standalones complete with a viewing screen and keypads. These also offer standalone faxing options. Another point of note is either flatbed or document feeders. The flatbeds are useful when scanning single sheet photos and documents while the document feeders can let you do multiple paged documents. When going for document feeders, also bear in mind the need to scan two-sided documents. Some of these feeders can duplicate such documents instantly. For an office situation, this may be an important feature in the printer that saves you a lot in time and cost.

Volume and size

Finally, many people fail to realize the implication of the printer output values. Buying a printer should be guided by how much you intend to print. For office printing, clearly you will need a printer with more volume on output per cartridge or toner. Remember, a colour multifunction printer can be quite the large machine to have in a home so consider your size options too; most of them are large anyway. 


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