Understanding Toner vs Ink: What's Best for Your Business?

Should your office use a laser printer (toner) or an inkjet (ink)? For most businesses the answer is laser, but there are exceptions. Here's how they compare.

How toner works

Laser printers use toner, a fine dry powder. The printer uses a drum and static charge to place the toner on the page, then a heated fuser melts it into the paper. The result is sharp text that doesn't smudge, even with a highlighter.

How ink works

Inkjet printers spray tiny drops of liquid ink onto the paper. Inkjets are good at smooth colour gradients and photos, and they're cheap to buy. The trade-off is that ink cartridges hold much less, so each page costs more.

Cost per page

Cost per page is what matters over the life of a printer, not the purchase price. As a rough guide, black-and-white pages on a business laser printer with high-yield toner often cost around 2 to 5 cents each, while a small consumer inkjet can cost several times that per page, and colour costs more on both. Actual numbers depend on the model and cartridge, so compare the cartridge price divided by its rated page yield.

Speed and volume

Business laser printers and multifunction copiers are built for volume. They print faster, hold more paper and are rated for thousands or tens of thousands of pages a month. Consumer inkjets are usually rated for much less.

Reliability

Ink can dry out in the print head if a printer isn't used often, leading to streaks and wasted ink on cleaning cycles. Toner doesn't dry out, so laser printers handle irregular use well.

When inkjet makes sense

• Occasional photo-quality colour printing
• Very low volume, such as a home office
• Some business inkjets are designed for high volume, but they're a different class from consumer models

Our recommendation

For most offices printing more than a few hundred pages a month, a business laser printer or multifunction device costs less to run and breaks down less. Kyocera ECOSYS devices, for example, use long-life drums, so you mostly just replace toner.

Where to buy

You can order genuine ink and toner for all major brands at shop.vonex.ca, or call us at (306) 881-0341. Managed print clients get toner shipped automatically.