When purchasing a color ink jet, a four-color printer will present the best results. The four colors are cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink. In order for the three-color printer to create black ink, all three colors need to be placed perfectly on top of one another on the paper. The main disadvantage of the ink jet is that the cartridge replacements are more expensive to replace than the ribbons for dot matrix printers. Additionally, if a replacement is needed for a color cartridge, it will cost more than a black cartridge.
Laser printers produce text and graphics that are very clean and crisp.
Most laser printers can print at least four pages per minute, with some churning out six pages a minute. Although affordable laser printers are unable to produce color images, black and white images are done with professional quality. With laser printers, it is necessary to decide what type of resolution one is willing to accept. The more dpi a laser printer uses, the greater the resolution of text and graphics. Most of today's laser printers print at 300 dpi, with higher end models printing with a resolution of 600 dpi.