Not Your Average Inkjet Printer

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Today’s business inkjet printers go beyond the capabilities of home inkjets to provide faster speeds, higher duty cycles, higher paper capacities, and more. This analysis piece will explore different areas in which business inkjet printers are seeing dramatic improvements.

Speed

In the past, laser printers have been considered significantly faster than inkjets. That is because, with an inkjet, the print-head typically moves back and forth across the paper while printing.

The latest inkjet printers for high-volume and high-speed business use, however, have multiple print-heads that stretch across the entire width of the print page. Consequently, just like a laser printer, they can print entire pages as the paper moves beneath the print-head.

This results in much greater speeds than desktop inkjet printers, including speeds as high as 100 ppm for certain models.

Duty cycle

Another characteristic of today’s business inkjet printers is higher duty cycles as well as recommended monthly page volumes. These machines are designed to crank out lots of pages, day after day, month after month. For example, one newer model has a stated maximum duty cycle of up to 125,000 impressions a month, and a recommended monthly volume range of 2,500 to 25,000 impressions a month. These are certainly more powerful capabilities compared to the average home inkjet printer.

Consumables

Another advantage offered by many business inkjets is high ink cartridge yields. For example, one particular enterprise model has ink cartridges that can yield up to 50,000 pages apiece. With higher-capacity cartridges, workers not only have to change cartridges less frequently, but the cost per page for both color and monochrome may be considerably less compared to an equivalent performance laser printer.

Paper Capacity

Increasingly, business inkjet devices are offering input paper trays and automatic document feeder scanner trays that rival comparably priced laser printers. For example, one model offers up to four paper cassette trays for a maximum input capacity of 2,250 sheets of paper. Another model, meanwhile, offers an optional high-capacity input tray that holds up to 3,000 additional pages—bringing the fully configured machine’s paper total to 5,350 sheets.

Expandability and Accessories

In addition to extra paper drawers and cassettes, some business inkjet printers and MFPs also have various paper-handling accessories. The most common of these is a sorting paper bin that can either route copies to separate paper bins or offset copies so they can be easily separated. Staplers are another helpful accessory as is the ability to hole-punch the output.

Hard disk and Security

Many desktop printers and MFPs do not have a hard disk drive while almost all business inkjets include one. Hard drives allow workers to store print jobs on the disk, and only print them once an authorization code has been entered at the control panel. Hard disks can also be used to store copies, scans, and faxes. Most business-class printers and MFPs also have security encoding on the hard drive, preventing stored jobs from being accessed by unauthorized individuals.

Other capabilities

Business inkjet devices are also evolving in a variety of other ways. For example, running costs are going down, and they are increasingly being sold as part of a managed print services (MPS) or maintenance agreement. Furthermore, more and more models are compatible with software tools for tasks like print management and document management.

3 takeaways

  • Today’s business inkjet printers provide significantly greater capabilities compared to traditional home inkjets.
  • For example, new inkjet models can provide print speeds of over 50 ppm (and even up to 100 ppm), duty cycles of over 100,000 pages per month, and paper input capacities of over 5,000 pages.
  • Business inkjets are also increasingly offering higher-yield cartridges, paper-handling accessories, and security features like hard disk drives.
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