Inkjet Vs Laser - The power wars
So the battle between inkjet printers and laserjet printers has spilled out of the print speed and convenience medium and onto the Power Highway.
According to research conducted by Techlogg.com the amount of power consumed by different printers varies enormously according to the technology used in the printer. For instance when they compared a Lexmark E230 Mono Printer with a Canon S800 inkjet printer and found huge differences in the amount of power consumed by the printer when actually printin. This is hardly suprising due to the technology involved in the laser printer. The high-voltage corona-discharge/primary charge roller mechanism laser printers use to print requires plenty of electricity, but also enables the printer to print far more quickly than the inkjet printer.
They concluded ‘Whilst sitting quietly, our test unit pulled 5.9-watts but start printing and that high-voltage charge mechanism really sucks on the power cord, eating through 699.2-watts for brief periods during each page print.
By contrast, we tested a late-model Canon S800 individual ink-tank inkjet printer and even when printing, it only consumed 13.1-watts on average, pushing up to 19-watts when the paper-loading stepper motors kick in.
When in standby mode, it pulls just 1.3-watts and when powered up but not printing, the power consumption only rises to 4.9-watts, similar to that of our test laser printer.
In terms of energy efficiency in printing, inkjet printers leave laser printers for dead but for the rest of the time, the standby power consumption is very similar.
VERDICT: Inkjet printers use up to 90% less power than laser printers while printing but things are pretty much even in standby mode.’.
I would like time to compare the actual cost per page of each printer, because the laser will spit out probably 4 - 5 times the amount of printing that the inkjet will in the same time, thus the inkjet will use more power over the longer period required to match the laserjet output. As usual with Green issues, more questions than answers!
You can read the original article here
