How to choose a printer? A practical guide from the people who also service them

We have been selling printers since 1994 and we service them ourselves. That is exactly why we see not only the moment of purchase but also how the choice turns out a year later. Most machines work well and their owners are happy. And when it happens that a machine “wasn’t the right fit” — print quality worse than the previous printer, an agonising setup, a toner costing half the price of the printer — the reason is almost always the same: the printer was chosen by the price tag, not by the actual work.

This guide writes down the questions worth asking yourself before the purchase, not after.

Start with one question: what do you actually print

Not “which printer is better”, but “what comes out of it every day”. The answer determines everything else.

• Documents, invoices, contracts, delivery notes — black text, lots of it. Your machine is a laser.
• Photos, illustrations, a portfolio — your machine is an inkjet. Always.
• Presentations, leaflets, price tags with a logo — a colour laser.
• A bit of everything and not much of it — the trickiest case, covered at the end of this article.

A universal printer that does both equally well does not exist. That is not a sales pitch, it is physics: a laser fuses powder onto the paper, an inkjet sprays liquid. Powder gives letters a sharp edge and doesn’t mind moisture. Liquid gives smooth gradients and a genuine photo print.

Laser or inkjet

	Laser	Inkjet
Text	sharp, clean edge	softer, may bleed
Photos	tolerable, but not a photo	noticeably better — that is its job
Price per page	lower	higher (except tank-system models)
Sitting unused	nothing happens	nozzles dry out
Speed	higher	lower
Moisture, highlighter	doesn’t smudge	may smudge

The main practical conclusion: if the printer sits idle for months, get a laser. An inkjet that prints once every two months spends its ink on nozzle cleaning and sooner or later ends up in our workshop for a printhead clean. We do that work, but it is better not to get there.

The opposite is just as true: if you are a photographer or you print pictures, no laser — not even an expensive colour laser — will give you what a decent inkjet printer gives. Disappointment is guaranteed.

Black and white or colour

A colour laser seems the obvious choice — it does everything a mono printer does, plus colour. In practice there are nuances the shop usually doesn’t mention.

Black text is often sharper on a mono laser. In a colour machine the image is built by four toners working together, and you can sometimes see it on the edges of the letters. The difference is small, but if 95% of your work is contracts and invoices, a mono laser gives a cleaner result and cheaper upkeep. See our range of laser printers.

A colour machine costs more to keep. Four cartridges instead of one, drums, a waste toner container. Even if you barely print in colour, the colour toners are consumed by calibration and they age.

You need colour when your customer needs it. A logo on a proposal, a colour diagram, a presentation — then yes, buy colour and don’t regret it. Just make that decision consciously.

Work out the price per page, not the price of the printer

This is the mistake we see year after year. A cheap printer whose cartridge yields 700 pages ends up costing more than a printer twice the price whose cartridge yields 3,000 pages. The difference pays for itself within the first year.

How to work it out in five minutes:

1. Find the cartridge code for the model (from the technical specifications, or ask us).
2. Check the yield — how many pages it delivers at 5% coverage.
3. Find the cartridge price — both original and compatible (toner prices).
4. Divide the price by the yield. You get the price per page.
5. Multiply by how many pages you print per month.

The spread is wide: machines in the same price class range from a few cents to fifteen cents per page. At 500 pages a month that makes a difference of hundreds of euros over three years.

Check the starter cartridge separately. Cheaper models often ship with a 500–700 page cartridge in the box instead of a full one. It runs out within a month — and only then does the true cost of ownership become clear.

Consumables: check before you buy, not after

Three things worth clearing up while you haven’t bought anything yet.

Do compatibles exist. For common models compatible cartridges are available, cost noticeably less than originals and are no worse for most office work. For fresh models and rare series, compatibles may not appear for a year and a half after launch — all that time you are tied to the manufacturer’s price. We say it straight: if a compatible is cheaper and no worse, that’s what we’ll tell you, even when selling the original would earn us more.

Make sure the model isn’t a subscription trap. Some manufacturers sell printers cheaper in exchange for locking you into their cartridge subscription — such machines accept neither compatibles nor refilled cartridges, and the firmware can block third-party consumables. We don’t take those machines in for service for precisely that reason: there is nothing we can do to help the customer. Ask about this before the till.

Can the cartridge be refilled. Toner refilling is not the business it was twenty years ago: compatibles have become cheaper and are often better value than refilling. For some models refilling still makes sense. There is no universal answer — you have to run the numbers for the specific model, and we’ll tell you honestly when a compatible is the better deal.

Multifunction or printer only

If you need to scan or copy even occasionally, get a multifunction device — a separate standalone scanner usually doesn’t justify itself. But bear in mind: a multifunction has more mechanics, so more that can break, and if the scanner fails you lose the printer too.

If you don’t need scanning — don’t pay for it “just in case”.

Network, WiFi and why setup is sometimes agonising

A modern networked colour machine is harder to set up than a printer plugged in over USB. That is not an advertising line, it is reality: WiFi, an IP address, a driver, sometimes user accounts. Customers complain about this regularly, and they are right to.

Two practical recommendations.

Install the manufacturer’s own driver, not the Windows universal one. The universal driver prints, but takes away half the settings — including the ones responsible for quality.

If one person prints from one computer — use USB. You need a network when several people print, or someone prints from a phone. In every other case it only adds places where things can break.

And if the machine is already bought but the setup isn’t going anywhere — it is solvable, usually in one visit. See printer maintenance and repair.

Workload: how many pages a month

Every printer has a recommended monthly workload. A home-class machine put to work printing 2,000 pages a month in an office will start breaking — not because it is bad, but because it was not built for that.

A rough rule of thumb:

• up to 200 pages a month — home class, almost any entry-level laser will do;
• 200–1,000 — an office machine, look at cartridge yield and duplex;
• 1,000–3,000 — a workhorse with a big cartridge and at least a 250-sheet tray;
• over 3,000 — consider printer rental, where toner is included in the price per page.

We say the last one honestly, even though it isn’t in our interest: at high volumes renting is often cheaper than buying. Toner, maintenance and spare parts are already included and you pay only for the pages you print.

Duplex, tray and the little things you feel every day

• Automatic double-sided printing (duplex) — saves paper and nerves. Worth the extra cost almost always.
• A 250-sheet tray instead of 100 — less frequent paper refills.
• A screen — on a machine with a proper screen you can see the error; on a machine with two blinking lights you have to guess it.

The trickiest case: “a bit of everything”

A home, some documents, a child’s photo now and then, a contract once a year. The honest answer: there is no ideal solution. There are three workable compromises.

1. A mono laser + photos at a photo shop. Cheap, reliable, and the photos come out better than on any home printer.
2. A tank-system inkjet. More expensive to buy, cheap to run, decent photos — but it needs regular printing, otherwise it dries out.
3. Two devices. A laser for paperwork, a cheap inkjet for photos. Sounds like overkill, but over three years the maths often works out better than one “universal” machine that does neither well.

A short checklist before buying

• What do I print most often — text, photos or colour graphics?
• How many pages a month?
• What is the cartridge code and how much does it cost?
• Are there compatibles for this model?
• Is the machine free of any consumables subscription lock-in?
• Is there a full cartridge in the box, or a starter one?
• Do I need networking, or is USB enough?
• Do I need duplex?

If half the questions have no answer — write to info@tahm.ee or call +372 5 15 15 20 and tell us the model you have picked. We’ll tell you straight what will happen to it in a year: how much a page costs, whether compatibles exist, and whether it might turn out to be exactly that printer that “wasn’t the right fit”.

We don’t sell what we would have to repair ourselves later.

Frequently asked questions