Until recently, business color printers cost too much to be worthwhile for most offices. Instead, small and mid-sized companies turned to printing companies and local copy stores for each color printing job. Now, prices have fallen considerably, so businesses can find suitable printers for as little as $500.

Color printers come in a wide range of models, from $75 inkjets to $10,000 networked machines. However, there is an important caveat for businesses choosing a color printer: ongoing costs.

Those $75 printers are acceptable for a home user who prints only a handful of pages per month. Buying one for your business, though, is a losing proposition: you can expect to pay many times the cost of the printer every year in ink and other consumables. They also aren’t built for business volume – even a five person office can overwork a low-end inkjet in a matter of months.

Buying the right color printer for your business can save quite a bit of money, both by eliminating frequent trips to the print shop and by reducing the need to get huge runs of printed marketing materials. Making sure you know what you need your printer to do will help you spend the right amount – and we can help.

This BuyerZone Color Printers Buyer’s Guide will:

• Review the different types of business color printer technologies
• Highlight the key specifications and features you should look for
• Uncover the often-overlooked, but very expensive, cost of maintaining a printer
• Benchmark what you can expect to pay for a color printer