Tips Printer Speed Color printers are not known for their speed.
Color images require three or four times as much processing and printing as black and white images.
In addition, color documents are usually much more complex than the typical one-color page. Color lasers are typically the fastest type of color printer. Thermal wax and dye sublimation printers tend to be much slower. These machines must heat and apply the colors to a page, which increases both warm-up times and printing times. Only a few thermal wax machines offer a rated speed of 2 ppm, and most actually operate at well under 1 ppm.