Factors to consider when buying a color laser printer

• Toner costs - The printer may be cheap but how long do the toner cartridges last and how much are they to replace? Toner cartridges can be expensive especially if you're doing a lot of color printing. Does the printer you’re looking at have affordable toner cartridges? Remember that although the initial price for a cartridge is high, it lasts for many pages.
• How much paper do you need to be able to load in the paper tray at once - around 200 pages (less or more?)
• Do you need the printer to print double sided (duplex), automatically?
• Is it important that the printer prints quickly? Print speed is normally given in terms of pages-per-minute. A fast color laser printer will have between 16 PPM and 26 PPM for color prints.
• Do you need the printer to be able to print card stock?
• Does the printer need to be network ready (able to go on a wireless network) or do will a USB cable be satisfactory?
• Resolution may also be important. Many laser printers are designed primarily for text and presentation documents. Therefore if you plan on printing images make sure to purchase a photo-quality laser printer (although these may be more expensive).

I have just bought a Dell 1320C for my home office and I have reviewed it below. It's great for my home office and I have explained why. If you feel it isn't for you and would like to spend a little more I have included two other highly recommended options for you to consider.

I chose the Dell Color Laser Printer 1320C as the home office color laser printer for my home office and I am very pleased with it. The features include:

• An easy set up
• Very cheap outset cost
• Color quality is impressive
• Personal connect with fast USB connection as standard,network ready with built-in Ethernet interface
• Fast colour printing - up to 12 A4 pages per minute and 16 A4 monochrome pages per minute
• Paper handling (input): 250 sheet covered drawer plus single-sheet front feeder
  

On the downside the toner cartridges have small capacities (1000 pages in the standard size and 2000 pages in the high capacity size). On average this means you are paying 3 cents for a half-page of black text and 15 cents for a page with small amounts of black plus all three colors. If you are doing a lot of printing you will notice the cost of replacing the toner cartridges very quickly. It isn't the printer for a busy and growing small office. However, my work involves a relatively low volume of printing. It saves money as we can use color without going via a professional printer. So for the one man or very small office this is a great little buy which I highly recommend.