Five Color Printers That Will Change Your Office Life

Whether it’s a small office or a full-fledged one, you cannot do without a color printer. Buying a color printer can be a trifle tricky because price need not be the only criteria that will give you the best buy. Some color printers offer great resolution but their speed is pathetic or vice versa. Some color printers come at very low rates but if you will end up changing the cartridge every month, you would eventually be paying a whole lot more than you bargained for.

Color printers should be specifically chosen on a need-basis. If all your prints are usually going to be for text then a low-res laser color printer will do just fine but if it’s photos that you will be printing mostly, you will have to focus on resolution even if that means a compromise on the quality. Here are five top-quality, affordable color printers from different ranges that can change your office life to a more productive one:

The Xerox Phaser 7500DN Color Laser Printer gives amazing professional results with speeds of 35 ppm. It uses a single-pass color Xerox technology but amazing color control range and built-in printer management tools. Resolution is just fine at 1200x1200 dpi and you can expect the first print in about seven seconds. It offers an amazing maximum duty cycle of up to 150,000 pages per month with no connectivity problems with either the Max or Linux systems. It includes a unique booklet printing feature too. It even analyzes your color and black usage! It’s in the $3,000-plus range though.

The Lexmark C543DN Color Laser Printer is one of the rare printers that combines high resolution with rapid speed. This network-ready machine has built-in duple Xing capacity for easy two-sided printing and it comes with high-capacity toner cartridges. Incidentally, Lexmark guarantees its buyers that it will not raise the price of its toner cartridge for as long as you own the machine! For $300.63 you get 1200 x 1200 dpi color printing of up to A5 size and an expected turnaround of about 35,000 pages per month.

The $977-HP Color LaserJet gives 25 pages per minute and is extremely popular. Coming from a good brand, the printer keeps operating costs in check by offering a 7,500-page output all-in-one print cartridge. You can expect brilliant color in your documents with this machine that also has an easy-to-navigate menu. Monitor printing status is pretty clear and the paper-trays can hold up to 500 sheets at a time. The PC Magazine even ranked HP a ‘Reader's Choice’ for 15 years in a row!

An extremely cheap laser color printer also from the HP group is the $199 approx HP Officejet Pro L7780 34 PPM that actually is an all-in-one offering fax, scan and copy facilities too. It prints at 35 pages per minute (ppm) in black and up to 34 ppm in color.

When ranking five color printers you cannot miss out the just under-$500 Samsung CLP-660ND color las that gives a higher resolution of 2400 x 600 dpi in its category. One of the few green-compliant color printers, the Samsung offers a (hold your breath) 80,000 pages duty cycle with print speeds of up to 25 ppm in both color and black & white printing. It surely is an efficient and addition to any office. The great resolution makes up for the under-14 second first page output!