Compare laser and LED printer

Buy­ing a print­er is a respon­si­ble busi­ness: equip­ment, if every­thing is fine with it, can serve for many years, there­fore it is bet­ter if it fits the tasks that a par­tic­u­lar user sets for it.

To make an informed choice, you need to know the pros and cons of dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies, as well as those nuances that you should pay atten­tion to.

Principles of operation of printers of different designs

Dif­fer­ent devices work on dif­fer­ent sys­tems.

The sim­plest of mod­ern designs are inkjet. They have spe­cial tiny holes, noz­zles. The ink that is con­tained in the reser­voir, in the print­er head, pass­es through the noz­zles and leaves a mark on the sheet — many small droplets, each of which is no larg­er than a human hair in diam­e­ter. More­over, the paint is dis­trib­uted addi­tion­al­ly, accord­ing to one of two tech­nolo­gies:

1. 
   Piezo­elec­tric. Next to each noz­zle there is a crys­tal to which an elec­tric cur­rent is applied. Depend­ing on the strength of the cur­rent, the crys­tal bends to one of the sides, com­press­ing the reser­voir, or, on the con­trary, allow­ing it to straight­en out. Under pres­sure, dots of paint are obtained in dif­fer­ent shapes.

2. 
   Ther­mal. Next to each noz­zle there is not a crys­tal, but a heat­ing ele­ment that heats up to 100 ° in less than a sec­ond. The heat caus­es the ink to fall onto the paper. The only neg­a­tive is that the heat­ing ele­ment tends to fail quick­ly.

3. 
   Inkjet devices work slow­ly, do not give the best image, quick­ly over­heat, and their car­tridges tend to dry out. This is a good option for the home, for a per­son who prints black and white doc­u­ments from time to time.

In all oth­er cas­es, the laser sys­tem is pre­ferred. It works in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way:

1. A sheet is insert­ed into a spe­cial groove, the mech­a­nism pulls it inward.

2. Inside, the image received from the com­put­er is processed and a com­plex sys­tem of mir­rors and lasers acts on the pho­to­sen­si­tive drum — the main ele­ment of the print­er. As a result, the affect­ed areas receive a charge oppo­site to the stan­dard charge of the drum.

3. The mech­a­nism is mov­ing. The mag­net­ic shaft mea­sures the right amount of ton­er, which sticks to the charged areas of the drum, leav­ing the rest emp­ty.

4. The leaf starts to move. The drum pass­es over it, the ton­er sticks to the sur­face of the paper.

5. The sheet moves on, it is briefly affect­ed by high tem­per­a­ture and pres­sure — it takes no more than a cou­ple of sec­onds. As a result, the ton­er is fixed.

6. The black and white image at this point goes into the tray — it’s ready. The col­or is rolled sev­er­al more times until the ton­er of all pri­ma­ry col­ors is fixed on the sheet.

Recent­ly, progress has tak­en a step fur­ther: where a tra­di­tion­al laser print­er has only one diode that emits a laser beam, the LED device has sev­er­al. The tech­nol­o­gy itself does not change fun­da­men­tal­ly from this, but it has spe­cif­ic advan­tages that a con­ven­tion­al laser print­er lacks.

Benefits of LED Printer

Usu­al­ly, when talk­ing about the advan­tages of LED print­ers, they talk about the fol­low­ing points:

1. about com­pact­ness and lack of mov­ing parts;

2. about the absence of emit­ted ozone;

3. about high accu­ra­cy and speed;

4. about infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty.

Each of them is worth con­sid­er­ing in more detail.

Compact and no moving parts

The light source in an LED print­er is sev­er­al thou­sand indi­vid­ual LEDs, which are mount­ed in a tex­to­lite plate in the same way that most elec­tron­ic com­po­nents of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy are mount­ed. The plate itself is sealed in met­al, which pre­vents pos­si­ble dam­age.

Diodes are very small, so they fit per­fect­ly on a print­head that is so small that LED print­ers are con­sid­ered the most com­pact in exis­tence.

In a laser print­er, the sys­tem is much more com­plex and volu­mi­nous. It includes mir­rors and a rotat­ing poly­he­dral prism, which refracts the laser beam. It is quite nat­ur­al that equip­ment with more mov­ing parts breaks down much faster.

And some LED print­ers come with a life­time war­ran­ty. Or not on the devices them­selves, but at least on the print head.

Does not emit ozone

NewEgg is use­ful for humans in small quan­ti­ties, but in high con­cen­tra­tions this gas is a poi­son for humans, and one of the most potent. The lay­man heard about it, as a rule, in con­nec­tion with the expres­sion “ozone hole” — it is believed that because of its emis­sions, the Earth­’s atmos­phere suf­fers, it becomes less dense and breath­able.

One of the sources of ozone in every­day life is like print­ers, that is, copiers. Pre­vi­ous­ly, each of them had a coro­na­tor — a thin wire through which an elec­tric cur­rent passed. As soon as he came into con­tact with air, the oxy­gen around was ion­ized and ozone was obtained.

Against the back­ground of the gen­er­al strug­gle for the envi­ron­ment, the coro­na­tor was aban­doned, replac­ing it with a rotat­ing roller. The result was the ces­sa­tion of ozone pro­duc­tion.

How­ev­er, in laser print­ers there is anoth­er source of it — the beam itself. If you look at the print­ing scheme, it becomes clear that it pass­es through a com­plex sys­tem of mir­rors and lens­es before reach­ing the sur­face of the drum. Oxy­gen that comes into con­tact with it is ion­ized and ozone is obtained.

Of course, the coro­na­tor pro­duced gas in large quan­ti­ties, but even next to a laser print­er, a per­son is able to smell a char­ac­ter­is­tic smell.

LED devices do not have such a dis­ad­van­tage. The dis­tance from the diodes to the drum is small, the beam almost nev­er encoun­ters air that could be ion­ized. Yes, and its char­ac­ter­is­tics are dif­fer­ent from the stan­dard.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, LED print­ers are green devices.

High image fidelity

When a laser print­er is run­ning, it forms each line when the beam hits the sur­face of the drum. The lens that guides it is rotat­ed by a step­per motor. At each step, it turns through the same angle, but the beam trav­els a dif­fer­ent dis­tance, reach­ing dif­fer­ent areas on the sur­face.

There­fore, the dis­tance between the points is dif­fer­ent, and its shape is close to oval rather than round, since the beam falls at an angle.

With an LED print­er, every­thing is dif­fer­ent: there is a diode above each point of the drum. The dis­tances between the diodes are the same, the shape of the dot, respec­tive­ly, remains round over its entire sur­face, both in the mid­dle of the sheet and along the edges.

That is why pro­fes­sion­al sad­ness, which requires great pre­ci­sion, is almost always done with an LED print­er. But for ordi­nary, every­day tasks, the laser is quite enough — the dif­fer­ence between the results can be seen only at high mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, but not at all when viewed with the naked eye.

Information Security

This is unim­por­tant for every­day use by the lay­man, but still curi­ous as a fact: a laser diode, when used as a light source, emits a sequence of puls­es that can not only be seen, but also caught at radio fre­quen­cy.

Each dot that appears on paper cor­re­sponds to an impulse in the radio. If some­one wants to get the image that the print­er prints, he can take the puls­es to the anten­na, decode them with a com­put­er and use them for print­ing.

Diodes also pro­duce radi­a­tion that can be caught by an anten­na, but. There are not one, not two, but sev­er­al thou­sand of them, and they light up at the same time. As a result, the ether is filled with “white noise”, which is impos­si­ble to deci­pher: no tech­nique can deter­mine which diode is on fire and which is not, and where, accord­ing­ly, there is a dot.

There­fore, in places where they work with clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion or with cus­tomer base data, LED print­ers are more often used than laser ones.

High speed

All diodes in the line are placed in a row and glow at the same time, because the print­ing speed of LED print­ers is very high.

But laser print­ers, on the con­trary, pre­scribe each line of the image sequen­tial­ly and there­fore, pure­ly phys­i­cal­ly, they can­not cope with the num­ber of lines that is more than a cer­tain lim­it.

At a res­o­lu­tion of 1200, a laser print­er will print no more than 20 pages per minute, oth­er­wise dis­tor­tion will begin — typos, lines will float, or you will have to reduce the exten­sion. If it is 600, then the speed will increase to 50 pages per minute, but the qual­i­ty will notice­ably suf­fer.

That is why large pro­duc­tions, where speed is in demand, usu­al­ly turn to LED print­ers.

Benefits of conventional laser printer

Against this back­ground, a con­ven­tion­al laser print­er begins to seem some­what out­dat­ed and not even very pop­u­lar. How­ev­er, if you break away from the com­par­i­son, it becomes clear that it has its advan­tages:

1. 
   No need for fre­quent refills. This is a con­stant scourge of inkjet print­ers — they run out of ink quick­ly, and not every user can learn how to refill them. It is eas­i­er with ton­er: it does not dry out over time and is spent much more eco­nom­i­cal­ly.

2. 
   Not afraid of increased loads. There are no ele­ments to over­heat, no ele­ments to dry out. Eas­i­ly copes with the loads that an inkjet device would reli­ably dis­able.

3. 
   Has good print qual­i­ty. Yes, the dots on paper are rather oval, but this is not vis­i­ble to the naked eye, espe­cial­ly if you print doc­u­ments, not paint­ings or pho­tographs.

4. 
   Prints on any paper regard­less of its qual­i­ty. Where­as inkjet ana­logues tend to tear too thin or low-qual­i­ty paper.

5. 
   Ease of set­up. Even a per­son who is not too accus­tomed to work­ing with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy can cope with it.

By itself, a laser print­er is a great thing that is quite suit­able for house­hold work.

Comparison of disadvantages

In fact, all the advan­tages of an LED print­er man­i­fest them­selves only in spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tions — for exam­ple, when work­ing in a large pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty or when try­ing to print pho­tos with excel­lent res­o­lu­tion very quick­ly.

But the short­com­ings when work­ing at home are quite notice­able — and dif­fer from the short­com­ings of a laser print­er.

The dis­ad­van­tages of the LED ver­sion are:

1. High price. This is per­haps the main prob­lem faced by users. To buy a can of ton­er, you will need about 10 dol­lars — and col­or will be much more expen­sive. And the device itself will not cost less than 100 dol­lars — a sig­nif­i­cant expense if you plan to put it at home and print doc­u­ments.

2. The com­plex­i­ty of the repair. To fix the LED print­er if it fails, you will need the help of a mas­ter — a must. And in order to replace the ton­er — too. At the same time, spare parts and a spe­cial­ist who knows how to work with them can not be found every­where.

3. Speci­fici­ty. The LED print­er is a good solu­tion for the office, for a large enter­prise, for the stu­dio of a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who needs high res­o­lu­tion. For a house, such capac­i­ties are usu­al­ly sim­ply not required.

A laser print­er has sim­i­lar prob­lems, but still dif­fer­ent:

1. Price. Ton­er costs a lit­tle less, and the print­er itself will cost more than 50 dol­lars. You can buy it from the hands — this will reduce costs, but add risks.

2. Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Since the main part in a laser print­er is mov­ing, there is always a dan­ger that it will fail. And this dan­ger is greater than with the LED coun­ter­part.

3. Ser­vice com­plex­i­ty. Exact­ly the same as with LED — you need a mas­ter to change the ton­er and, more­over, to car­ry out repairs. Unless it will be eas­i­er to find it, even in a small town.

4. Non-envi­ron­men­tal. This is rather a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple for peo­ple who seek to min­i­mize harm to the plan­et. Of course, dur­ing oper­a­tion, a laser print­er emits less ozone than an inkjet or matrix print­er, but there is still some per­cent­age.

5. Spe­cif­ic dis­ad­van­tages — low­er accu­ra­cy, low­er print­ing speed, lack of infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty — do not work when it comes to home use. For most peo­ple, the pow­er that the laser option can pro­vide will be enough.

Nuances of choice

When buy­ing a print­er, there are sev­er­al impor­tant cri­te­ria that you need to focus on:

1. 
   Print speed. If you plan to print sev­er­al pages of doc­u­ments, a laser print­er is per­fect — and even an inkjet can han­dle it. But if you plan to print reg­u­lar­ly and in large quan­ti­ties (for exam­ple, print books) and quick­ly, you will need some­thing more seri­ous.

2. 
   Print qual­i­ty. For doc­u­ments, a laser print­er is suit­able — even an inkjet. But if you plan to print large pho­tographs or entire paint­ings, you can­not do with­out good res­o­lu­tion and, accord­ing­ly, high-qual­i­ty equip­ment.

3. 
   War­ranties and reli­a­bil­i­ty. LED print­ers can last a decade, laser print­ers usu­al­ly fail faster. If you plan to use the same device for many years, and inten­sive­ly and every day, it is bet­ter to let it belong to the first.

4. 
   Main­te­nance com­plex­i­ty. In big cities, you can afford to have an LED print­er — there are parts and crafts­men for it. But in the regions, you should be a prac­ti­cal per­son and choose some­thing that the dis­trict def­i­nite­ly knows how to fix.

5. 
   The cost of con­sum­ables. In the laser ver­sion, they are cheap­er, although not by much.

When choos­ing a spe­cif­ic print­er, you need to take care that:

1. he had good reviews on the sites, and from real peo­ple, and not from bots or paid pro­fes­sion­als;

2. he had a guar­an­tee and doc­u­ments from the man­u­fac­tur­er — oth­er­wise, if it breaks down, it will have to be repaired by the mas­ter, and this is expen­sive, plus it will not be pos­si­ble to change the defec­tive prod­uct;

3. his trade­mark was well-known and pop­u­lar — this is a good guar­an­tee of qual­i­ty, plus a high­er chance that there is a ser­vice cen­ter near­by, whose ser­vices you can use.

The answer to the ques­tion “which print­er is bet­ter” does not exist in iso­la­tion from a spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion. For a large office that works with a client base, or a huge enter­prise that con­stant­ly prints some­thing — invoic­es, orders, state­ments — an LED print­er is bet­ter suit­ed. For a small office or a poor enter­prise — laser. But for the home, you need to choose accord­ing to your needs: and as a result, it may turn out that not even an LED or a laser is best suit­ed for them, but an ordi­nary cheap inkjet print­er, which is cheap and can­not boast of excel­lent image qual­i­ty.

An indi­vid­ual approach is the key to suc­cess.