While many will spend a very long time warning you about the importance of shopping for ink and toner over printers, the fact is that when you get a printer you’ll (hopefully) be using it for a very long time. Whether your printer takes Brother ink cartridges, HP packs, or Dell cartridges, you want it to fill the role that you have in mind for it, and also to do that with as little maintenance as is possible. How are you going to sort through the massive list of not only printer companies, but the huge variety and sub varieties of models available?
Firstly, you need to understand the two major categories of printers out there. Firstly, there are Laserjet printers, printers which are extremely common and well used in most business settings. These printers, as their name suggest, all use lasers to print your document. That’s right, lasers. The data is sent from the computer to the printer where it is converted into text and shapes on the page. Then paper is pulled through the rollers and a small low powered laser ionizes the paper in that shape, writing a charge (usually negative) to form each letter and number. The paper then passes very close to a dispenser with positively charged toner (ink dust) ready and waiting. When negative and positive near one another, the opposites attract and the ink is applied in the precise shape of the text. Next (this entire process taking place very quickly in small space) the paper passes through a heat fixer which momentarily exposes it to intense energy, melting and fixing the ink to the paper and also removing the charge. Then you end up with your text, crisp and ready to go.
These Laserjets, which use a variety of toner cartridges including HP toner cartridges, Cannon, Brother toner cartridges, Epson, and more by brand, are very useful due to their high quality text and fast printing speed, making them perfect for high volume offices. While these are often large with multiple trays and outlets there are also smaller laserjets (which often tend to have lower performance reviews). Color toner is available for certain models as well but can get pricy. Also the toner has been known to smear especially when fresh out of the printer.
You can also consider solid ink stick printers, which are highly efficient and also known to produce very sharp color photos. These printers are up and coming and you can occasionally find a very nice promotional deal on them as different manufacturers push them at the market.
Inkjets tend to be used in smaller, home or personal office settings and operate under a very different principle. For these printers liquid ink in smaller cartridges is used. The data is transferred to the printer which takes it and converts it into a dot pattern, arranged in rows. The paper is then pulled up and a row (usually a half inch tall or so) of dots is printed, each minute droplet of ink fired out of a system of tiny nozzles. Then the paper is pulled through and another row is printed again, and again, and again. This creates the classic chugging printer sound we all remember from childhood.
Because this system is lower tech they are usually far cheaper. However, they can also be made of far inferior quality. Advantages include a really fast star up time (in contrast to laser printers which need to get hot before they can print), print that doesn’t smear (although the text may run if it is exposed to water, in contrast to the waxy laser toner which stays very well), and very high quality image printing. In fact, most personal all in one printers are inkjet due to the high quality scanning/printing/copying capacity of inkjet printers combined with the small size and the way inkjets excel in occasional, slow-rate printing environments (like a home or personal office).
Of course, there are unique printers out there for particular tasks. If you are looking to set up a pamphlet printing job or you want to produce your own high quality graphic novel you will likely need some rather exotic hardware. But if you are a normal, common consumer these are pretty much your options. Make sure you always check the reviews on the printers you are considering and take the relative cartridge and page count into consideration as you select a printer made to fill the role you have for it.