The most important factor you need to consider when choosing an inkjet printer is your own use. What, exactly, do you expect to use your printer for? Because that's a pretty broad question, we set out to identify printers that meet a wide range of needs.
There are two main classes of enterprise printers we looked at: Printers meant for general departmental use and printers meant for industrial or factory use. Departmental use is all about printing full pages at volume, while industrial use is often about portability and labeling.
When we looked at the departmental printers, we looked for printers that offered a considerable paper capacity, so there wasn't a need to reload them all the time. Likewise, we looked for printers that offered a particularly large ink tank or cartridge, again to reduce downtime and maintenance. Because security is becoming such a concern, we looked for printers that offered a solid security solution. And we looked for printers that would integrate well into your other departmental business operations.
For handheld printers, we looked at typical applications. Some printers need to plaster giant serial numbers on the sides of shipping crates, while others need to be able to put a bar code on product boxes traveling down a production line. We identified a number of printers that can help meet those needs.
We also took a long look at the wide range of multi-function printers that are ideal for small or home office use. These printers typically offer printing, as well as copying, scanning, and fax capabilities.
If you have a small office, a multi-function (or MFP) printer can be a valuable investment, although, with the decline in landlines, you may find yourself using the fax capability less and less.
Here, too, we tended to favor cartridge-free printers, although we do include some printers with cartridges. Although speed was important, we tended to favor printers that offered printing from both computers and mobile devices. We also looked at a couple of printers that allow you to do all your printing on the go, without having a power socket.
One category we did not rate was photo printers (although many of the printers we recommend can print photos). Because this guide is meant business and office decision-making, we felt it didn't make sense to recommend dedicated photo printers. That said, if you are in the market for a photo printer, CNET has a great run-down of their favorites.