So, you need to choose a new printer or fleet of printers for your office, but aren’t quite sure where to start? You’ll be reassured to hear, at BTS we’re familiar with this situation and have helped hundreds of businesses find the right printers and print solutions to suit their specific requirements. We have a team of experts who are ready to talk to you about your business and its print requirements, but we’ve also pulled together the main factors that should be considered during your selection process…
MFP vs single function – The type of printer your workplace needs depends on your daily requirements, which of course vary from one business to another. As the names suggests, a single function printer is one that just prints, without any additional functionality.
While this may be enough for some businesses, many require the features of a multi-functional printer (MFP), which include scanning, copying, sending documents and receiving faxes.
Cartridges and toner – To print true black, inkjet colour printers should have a separate black cartridge. We’d advise choosing an inkjet printer that has separate cartridges for each colour too – it’s cheaper to replace individual colours rather than the whole cartridge. Replacing a laser printer’s toner cartridge is more expensive, but it does last a considerably long time.
Speed – A good inkjet printer can print at speeds of around 14 pages per minute (PPM), and laser printers usually offer speeds of around 20PPM or above. Where speed is concerned, it’s also worth considering warm-up times, as some models are slightly slower than others, which is often over-looked but extremely important depending on the nature of your business.
Connectivity -Most printers and photocopiers are now designed with Bluetooth and wireless printing functionality built-in, and subsequently offer compatibility with smartphones and tablets to offer mobile printing for remote workers and home workers.
Paper type and size – If you need to frequently print anything bigger than A4, we have larger devices to support this requirement. Before you make your selection, it’s also worth checking the types of paper the printer you’re considering can take and how thick the stock can be, in order to research the cost, you’ll need to budget for supplies!
Environmental factors – In today’s world, ensuring your business is as environmentally friendly as possible is, of course, incredibly important for CSR. With the amount of toner, paper and electricity used every day by office printers, it’s easy to be concerned about the impact that your office printer has on the environment. We’ll always provide you with the most environmentally friendly multi-functional devices.
Quality of finish – Before you buy your printer, we can demonstrate the quality of the finish by test printing examples of your work. Resolution is measured in dots per inch (DPI), and the higher the DPI, the better the image quality. The standard resolution of 600DPI is perfectly adequate for most printing but using a higher resolution for photos may deliver marginally better results – talk to us about what you need.
Duplex printing – Duplex printing is the technical term for “printing on both sides”. It’s a great feature for saving paper and also for creating leaflets, instruction manuals or brochures, if that’s a requirement for you. It’s a great feature if your business is trying to make positive changes to support the environment and save paper wherever possible.
Networking – Most of our printers, which are aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, include network connectivity (both cabled and Wi-Fi) as standard. It’s simple to connect up a modern business printer to your company network, which removes the need for individual printers for several members of staff. This is a huge cost saving benefit!
Paper trays – It may appear slightly trivial, but if your business does high volumes of printing, you don’t want to be constantly re-filling the paper tray. Make sure you choose a model with the right capacity for you. You may also require more than one paper tray to manage different sizes or types of paper.
Memory – If you need to print large jobs or have multiple users, you’ll need to ensure the model you choose offers sufficient memory. Ideally, you’ll want to be looking for printers that have more than 16MB of memory.
Advanced functions – Do you need additional features, such as automatic feeders, collating, stapling and folding? These are all great timesaving tools if you produce large printed documents on a regular basis.
Service – Buying new printers and MFPs is about more than just the initial sale and usage. We know that the aftercare and maintenance service that is provided throughout the duration of your device’s life cycle are equally important, which is why we’ve achieved 100% customer satisfaction!If you’re looking to buy or lease a new printer, get in touch and talk to us today. Our dedicated team will conduct an audit of your current office printing requirements before finding you the right printer/s at the right price to suit your specific needs. Every business is different, so we don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. We spend time learning about your requirements and goals and recommend a product or custom-made solution that works for you.