Printers are one of those pieces of technology nobody cares about—right up until they don't work.
Suddenly, the inability to print a one-page shipping label has brought an entire department to a standstill and somehow become the most urgent IT issue in the building.
The good news is that choosing the right office printer really isn't that complicated. You just need to look beyond the price on the box.
Start with what you're actually printing
The first question isn't "Which printer should I buy?" It's "How much do we print?"
A receptionist printing a few hundred pages a month has very different needs from an accounting department producing several thousand.
Take something like the HP LaserJet Pro 4001dn. It's a straightforward black-and-white network laser printer designed for teams of up to 10 users, with HP recommending up to 4,000 pages per month.
It's a great example of a printer that doesn't try to make coffee, scan your passport and predict tomorrow's weather. It prints. Quickly. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.
Do you really need colour?
If you're printing invoices, reports, packing slips and internal documents all day, consider monochrome.
Black toner has one particularly attractive feature: there's only one colour to run out of.
If you're producing presentations, proposals or customer-facing material, colour may make sense. Just remember that your supply cabinet will now have black, cyan, magenta and yellow toner—and one of them will inevitably run out five minutes before an important meeting.
Need scanning too? Move to an MFP
If the office also needs to scan and copy, look at a multifunction printer.
For a smaller office, for example, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 3301fdw gives you colour printing, copying, scanning and faxing, with automatic duplex printing and a 50-sheet document feeder. HP positions it for teams of up to seven users and recommends up to 2,500 pages per month.
For a busier department, you could step up to something like the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 4301fdw, designed for teams of up to 10 users and a recommended monthly volume of up to 4,000 pages. It also includes duplex scanning through its automatic document feeder.
That last feature sounds boring until somebody hands you a 63-page double-sided contract.
Then it becomes the greatest technological achievement since Wi-Fi.
Laser vs. inkjet
For a typical business environment, we're usually fans of laser printers.
They're fast, toner doesn't dry out when the printer sits unused, and business-class laser printers are generally designed to handle sustained office workloads.
Business inkjets absolutely have their place, particularly where colour output is important or print volume is relatively low.
The $129 inkjet from the aisle beside the laundry detergent, however, may not be the ideal foundation for your company's document workflow.
Don't buy based on print speed alone
Manufacturers love pages-per-minute numbers.
And yes, speed matters.
But don't get carried away comparing 31 PPM against 33 PPM as though you're buying a Formula 1 car.
Consider how people actually use the printer. First-page-out time, paper capacity, duplex printing, scanning speed and the automatic document feeder can make a much bigger difference in day-to-day use.
The cheapest printer is often not the cheapest printer
This is the big one.
Imagine:
Printer A: $399
Printer B: $699
Printer A wins, right?
Maybe.
Now look at the toner.
If Printer A needs a $150 cartridge every 3,000 pages while Printer B uses a $220 cartridge that produces 10,000 pages, that original $300 saving can disappear surprisingly quickly.
When evaluating printers for our clients, we look at toner yield, cost per page and expected monthly volume, not just the purchase price.
Because the printer is usually a one-time purchase.
The toner is where you begin your long-term relationship.
Wired or wireless?
Wi-Fi printers are convenient, particularly in small offices or locations where network cabling isn't available.
But for a permanent shared office printer, we generally prefer Ethernet when it's available.
Something like the HP LaserJet Pro 4001dn, for example, includes Gigabit Ethernet and is perfectly suited to sitting on the corporate network doing its job quietly for years.
Your printer probably isn't moving very often.
If it is, you have a different problem.
A few practical examples
If we were matching typical office requirements to HP's current LaserJet Pro family, the conversation might look something like this:
"I just need a good black-and-white office printer."
→ HP LaserJet Pro 4001dn
"I need black-and-white, but also scanning, copying and fax."
→ HP LaserJet Pro MFP 4101fdw
"Small office. We need colour and scanning."
→ HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 3301fdw
"We're a busier office and need a more capable colour multifunction."
→ HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 4301fdw
HP currently positions the 3301fdw for teams up to seven users/2,500 pages per month, while the 4101fdw and 4301fdw are positioned for teams up to 10 users/4,000 pages per month.
Buy for tomorrow—not just Tuesday
Finally, give yourself some room to grow.
If a printer is already operating at the upper end of its recommended workload on the day you install it, imagine how happy it's going to be two years from now when you've added eight employees.
Spending a little more on an appropriately sized business printer can get you larger toner cartridges, better paper handling, faster scanning, larger document feeders and a device designed for the workload you're actually going to throw at it.
The bottom line
The right office printer isn't necessarily the most expensive one—or the one with the most buttons.
It's the printer that fits your number of users, monthly print volume, colour requirements, scanning needs and long-term cost per page.
As an HPE partner, Consultation AmaltiTEK can help clients select, procure and deploy HP business printers and multifunction devices, as well as provide the genuine HP toner and supplies needed to keep them running.
So if you'd rather spend your afternoon doing literally anything other than comparing toner cartridge yields, give us a call.
We already went down that rabbit hole so you don't have to.
Stephen Tzintzis
Sep 17, 2026