Do You Make These 3 Mistakes When You Buy A Printer?

Written by Julie Robinson Tuesday, 10 May 2011 10:24

1. You Don't Make Use of Online User Reviews

1. You Don't Make Use of Online User Reviews

Now that we have the convenience of online stores, we are able to make use of the user reviews on these sites before we buy a printer. Before the days of the internet, this would have been impossible; you would have had to rely on leafing through those consumer magazines with the hope that the printer you wanted to buy had had a review done on it in one of them.

Thank goodness those days are gone, and you can find all the information you need at your fingertips by looking at the online stores on the Web. When buyers purchase their printers, they are only too keen to write about any problems they may have experienced in the form of a customer review. This also holds true for those that are happy with their purchase and choose to write about their positive experience.

It certainly takes a lot of the guess work out of buying a printer as you can go by the star rating that each user has given the product, and get a good idea of what you're buying before parting with your hard earned dollars.

2. Buying a Printer on Price Alone.

We like to save money where we can, so sometimes the lure of a cheap printer on special can be tempting to buy. However, there's no point in buying a cheap printer if it isn't going to be appropriate for your printing requirements.

For instance, for those who print a lot of text documents that are mainly black and white, it wouldn't make sense to buy a cheap color ink jet printer, even if it was a bargain. The reason being that color inkjets use up the ink in the color cartridges even when printing in black and white so you will go through your color ink quickly and of course need to replace that ink. And these cartridges aren't cheap and add to the cost of the "bargain" printer.

3. Not Checking the Price of Replacement Cartridges

To get the most value for money out of your printer you'll want to find out how much it costs to replace the cartridges. Some printers sell for quite an affordable price up front, but the cost of replacing the cartridges can often be as expensive as the printer originally cost, especially if it was on special.