Buy a budget-friendly inkjet or splurge on a fast laser? This decades-old question has some surprising new answers. Here’s the latest advice about picking your next printer.
Coke or Pepsi? That’s an easy one. Cat or dog? The answer’s obvious. Inkjet or laser? Not so simple—the tug-of-war between the classic printer technologies is part taste, part tech, and part real-world considerations. And it’s evolved in recent years in some surprising ways.
Twenty years ago, laser printers were priced out of reach of consumers and most small businesses. They couldn’t print in color and needed expensive special paper. Color inkjets were more affordable but less precise, with ink that sometimes streaked or smeared. These truths turned into stereotypes about the two technologies that remain ingrained in the psyche of the IT market even today, despite tons of evidence to the contrary.