Laser-Jet or Ink-jet printer, Which One Is Best For Your Home Office?

Besides the computer, another common piece of equipment for the home office is the printer, whether it’s a multifunctional printer that combines printing, copying, scanning, and faxing or just the plain printing function. But I believe most of the printers used in the home office would be multifunctional printers (MFP).  To further distinguish the printer types technology-wise, there are ink-jet printers and laser-jet printers.

So putting aside the functional issue which printer should you choose: an ink-jet or laser-jet printer? In this discussion, I strictly shared my opinion based on my own experience, so it may be biased, but I hope that you may still find it useful for your purchase decision. I have owned both ink-jet and laser-jet MFP printers, but currently, the one on my home office desk is the HP Laserjet Pro M127FW Wireless All-in-One Monochrome Printer. Prior to this I had the EPSON WF2540 which is a color ink-jet MFP printer and it’s broken in just about a year of infrequent use besides its quality issue, let me explain.

Actually, prior to the EPSON WF2540, I had an HP ink-jet MFP printer and it lasted quite a while before it broke, a lot longer than the EPSON WF2540 though. Anyway, the initial user experience is good when I bought the EPSON WF2540. It can be set up to print wireless and print both sides manually. However, after a while, the major shortcoming of the ink-jet printer showed up, since I only print once in a while, sometimes not printing for several weeks, the black ink printer head got blocked with dry ink. I tried the built-in print head cleaning function; replaced it with a brand-new ink cartridge, but the problem still couldn’t be fixed. OK, at least I can still scan the document or print to Adobe PDF to save the document or a purchase receipt into a pdf file… so I thought, but soon after, the scan auto feed mechanism broke down too, strange noise came out from the printer, which I really don’t get it since I rarely use this printer, so why it broke down so fast? Or maybe it is just my bad luck getting a lemon product.

Because of that bad experience with the EPSON printer, I decided to do some research on getting a new MFP printer. After learning the lesson about the dry ink problem, I decided this time to get a laser-jet printer. Instead of being in the liquid form like the ink-jet printer, the “ink” in the laser-jet printer cartridge is in the powder form, which will not dry up, so it’s very long-lasting even if you don’t print for a long time. Also because of the quality issue with the EPSON WF2540, I decided to go back to HP, and I picked the HP Laserjet Pro M127FW Wireless All-in-One Monochrome Printer. The reason I decided on this black-only printer is that I don’t really need to print in color, so it’s cheaper. Another reason is I have given up printing photos on my own printer, it actually cheaper to have your photos printed at Costco or Walgreen and usually they can be picked up the next day. Please note that a laser-jet printer generally costs more than an ink-jet printer within the same functionality and size. The HP Laserjet Pro M127FW Wireless All-in-One Monochrome Printer currently costs about $10 more than the color EPSON WF2540 on Amazon.

Another reason I like about the HP Laserjet Pro M127FW Wireless All-in-One Monochrome Printer is its form factor. It is about the same size as the EPSON WF2540 but a bit taller. It’s compact and does not occupy too much space on my 63-inch wide sit-stand desk along side my 27-inch LCD display and a banker’s lamp and still has a bit of space to spare. Since it’s also wireless, I can move it to another location if needed to. One thing to note is that the two side manual printing does not work if your computer still runs the Windows XP operating system, but works fine with my Windows 10 laptop computer. So far the printer works flawlessly on printing and scanning and I am pretty happy with the purchase.

Oh, almost forgot to mention, I bought the HP Laserjet Pro M127FW Wireless All-in-One Monochrome Printer at Best Buy, not on Amazon and they do price matching with Amazon now, it’s about time.

Anyway, it really depends on your printing needs & budget when deciding on which type of printer to purchase for your home office. Below is a list of the top 10 selling laser & inkjet printers on Amazon currently:

Top 10 Selling Laser-Jet Printers –

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