Most printer shoppers are faced with two choices - an inkjet printer or a laser printer. Printed ink and laser toner are two popular technologies and each has their strengths and weaknesses. However, do you know what the differences between them? Understanding the technology and nuances of each can help you make an educated decision as to which printer to choose.

PRINTER INK INSIGHT
Printer ink for inkjets is housed within a hard plastic cartridge that holds a small tank of ink. There are nozzles and metal plates contained within the print head, the part which comes into close contact to the paper. Higher end inkjets have cartridges with more nozzles; the more nozzles you have, the better the print resolution will be.

Inkjets work like this: when you send a print job to the printer, the device heats up the ink in the cartridge while shooting a small electric current through the metal plates within the print head. The ink forms misty bubbles in the cartridge as it is heated up, causing some swelling. From there, the nozzles release the ink, which forms into droplets on the paper. A vacuuming action sucks in more ink so that the nozzles could spray some more ink droplets. This action continues until the print job is complete.

The printer ink technology is simple, but does not have the efficiency and speed for large print producers. In addition, the ink will run out over time, requiring the purchase of new cartridges or the refilling of the old ones.

A LOOK AT LASER TONER
A laser printer uses more expensive technology to print images onto paper, but the process is more efficient, cleaner, and faster. Instead of using liquid ink held in a cartridge reservoir and sprayed onto paper in droplets, laser toner is in an ink powder form. The printing process also requires a laser and drum component.

The cylindrical-shaped drum at rest has a positive static charge but when you create a print job, the drum starts to roll and the image is drawn as a pattern onto it, with the pattern being negatively charged. Next, the laser toner is sent to the drum, where the positively charged dry ink particles attract to the negatively drawn image. The dry toner clings to the image. Next, a wire uses a negative charge on the paper or other medium used to print on which basically "grabs" the image off the drum and transfers it to the paper. Finally, a heat source melts the laser toner onto the paper, leaving an image behind.

When you are printer shopping, you have to compare the technologies and the cost of operating them. You also have to determine exactly how often you plan to print documents and images and decide if the expense of printer ink or laser toner is worth it.

This was written by Printerinks.com, your home for printer inks and laser toner.