Color laser printers promise faster print speeds, crisper text, and graphics good enough for business use. We'll tell you what to expect from the wide range of color laser printers out there for your home or home-office setup.

Color lasers are a good choice for office use, assuming you need color. They're a poor fit for home use, partly because even the best quality color laser photo output falls short of true photo quality, and partly because color lasers are bigger and heavier than most people would want for a home printer. Their limited photo quality also keeps them out of the running for dedicated or near dedicated photo printing, and their large size ensures that there aren't any mobile color lasers.

Some printers sneak into the color laser category even though they aren't actually lasers. LED printers are similar in design, but substitute LEDs for lasers as a light source. Solid ink printers and gel-ink printers (such as those by Ricoh) use a completely different technology, but offer laser-like speed and quality. These printers qualify as laser-class. All the comments here about color lasers apply to these printers as well.

You can find color lasers for both personal and shared use, but even the smallest single function printers are bigger than you'll probably want to share a desk with, and AIOs are bigger still. So personal in this case translates to a printer you can keep nearby, not one that you'd want sitting on your desk, towering over you.

Continue reading>>>>>>