If you've been shopping for a wireless colour laser printer, you know that there are a lot of them to choose from. A quick search on Amazon gives 175 results. Change the spelling to 'color' and you get 590 results. How can you find out which printer is best for you?
In this article, I'll talk about how to decide which wireless colour laser printer is right for you: what features to look for, how to use Amazon's printer prices and ratings to help you narrow down the choices, and how to make your final pick.
Do You Need An All In One Printer?
If you've already narrowed down the search to a wireless colour laser printer, you've simplified your task considerably. Think about this: Amazon lists over 1500 wireless printers, over 2300 laser printers, and more than 2400 color printers. So you've already eliminated thousands of printers from consideration.
To narrow the field even further, figure out whether you need additional features, like faxing, copying, or scanning. If you need any or all of these features, that will narrow your search further. If you need all of these features, you're looking for a multifunction, or "all in one" printer, and Amazon lists only around 250 all in one wireless colour laser printers.
Printer Prices And Ratings
Next, you can narrow the search by price and rating. Amazon has a feature that lets you easily narrow a search by viewing only those products within a certain price range or above a certain average rating level.
To do this, first do a search on Amazon. Let's say you searched for 'wireless colour laser printer'. Then look on the left side of the page and choose a department (you must be in a department to do the next step). For this search, I chose Office Products, then narrowed the search further to Office Electronics, and then Printers. At this point, I have 296 search results.
Once you're searching in a department, the left column of the search results page contains lots of options that let you narrow the search further. You can narrow the search by features, brand, resolution, and more. We're going to narrow our search by 'Avg. Customer Review' and then by price.
Under 'Avg. Customer Review,' click the line that shows 4 stars. That narrows the search to 112. Then, under Price, click '$100 to $200'. This narrows the search to just 36 printers.
Buying A Printer
Fortunately, Amazon isn't perfect. The world's largest, most trusted online retailer still makes a few mistakes. Some of the printers in this list are priced above our limit of $200.00, while others are only under $200 if you buy them used. Assuming we want a new printer, we can eliminate 21 more printers. Of the 15 that remain, two are monochrome printers -- another mistake!
By the way, don't let these mistakes discourage you. Amazon is still a very reliable and trusted retailer. But you can always just use the Amazon site to choose a printer and then buy it elsewhere.
Now that you've narrowed your choices down to a baker's dozen, you can just read each printer's details and make your decision. Remember, all of these printers have an average customer rating of four stars or higher. You might want to stick with printers that have more than 10 customer reviews (that would eliminate a couple more), or printers that are sold and shipped directly by Amazon, so that you can take advantage of free shipping (that eliminates several). Or you might just want to read some customer reviews and decide that way.
However you make your final decision, and whether you buy from Amazon or another retailer, you'll be confident that you've selected the right wireless colour laser printer for your needs.
Still not sure what printer to get or what features you need?
I know how hard it can be. There are dozens of manufacturers making hundreds of different printers. It can get really confusing just to figure out what all the features and specifications mean, let alone which features you need and which printer is right for you.
