When looking at the specs of a printer do you really understand what it all means? Here’s a brief summary of the important specs you would look for when purchasing a printer.
Resolution: the maximum number of dots per inch (dpi) that can be printed. Example; a 300x300dpi printer lays down 1 square inch composed of 300 dots vertically and 300 dots horizontally. Printers with higher DPI produce clearer and more detailed output.
Print speed: Measured in pages per minutes. 35 ppm means you can print 35 pages in one minute. But be careful because sometimes the print speed can be misleading. When manufactures test a machine to find its print speed they print plaintext documents on the lowest setting for print quality. Therefore, if you’re printing documents that include graphics and are on a higher quality paper, the print speed will decrease.
Connectivity: Capacity for the interconnection of platforms, systems, and applications. What connectivity does the printer have? Examples: USB port, networking capabilities, mobility-wireless printing- wi-fi, cloud printing.
Processor and memory: inkjets are line printers and lasers are page printers. For line printers, the computer composes the page in its memory and streams it to the printer in small packets; that means it generally doesn't matter how fast the printer processor is or how much memory it has. Page printers, on the other hand, need to hold an entire page in memory. That means more printer memory allows it to buffer more pages.
Paper handling: The typical paper-handling specs on a printer include everything from the size and thickness of various types of paper to the standard and optional input- and output-tray capacity.