Looking For The Best Compact Traveler Printer

Best for Your Purpose

Many of us are mobile with our work and business these days. If you fit into the bracket of mobile business person or work on the road then you simply need to consider your need and possibly save yourself a lot of headache and money too by looking for the best compact printers to meet your needs.

Your needs really is the key. You can be spending a lot on features you may not need. It could even be argued that if you’re a heavy user when on the road then it could pay for itself over a period of time. Prints on the road are not cheap when you need many of them.

You are on the road a lot, with your laptop, and you have decided you have had enough with trying to hook up your laptop to printers at business centers. Between having to install new drivers and set up new profiles, you’re considering getting a compact traveler printer.

Brand leaders

The main manufacturers of light and compact portable printers are without doubt Canon and HP. They have long established themselves as market leaders in this field. A very popular model is the latest from Canon, the PIXMA iP100.

It has a fast speed considering that it runs off a battery, with as much as 20 ppm for black prints and 14 ppm for color prints.

It also has a very credible resolution 600 x 600 dpi black and as high as 9600 x 2400 dpi for color prints.
Not the cheapest option on the market but one of the best.

Ranging at under $200 they can be found online easily but that is not the end of the expense. As with most Portable Printers they often come without battery. The addition of a LK-62 Battery Kit will be in the range of around $90.

Bluetooth connectivity is also an option and again it doesn’t come as standard so again, your cost is rising. For full mobile connectivity on the road, you can add the Canon BU-30 Bluetooth adapter for around $50.

Things to look for

You are starting to do your research and you want the best model there is. But how do you determine that? The fact is your requirements could be a lot different from other businessmen. So let us look at some of the things that will help you narrow down which printer is going to be the best one for you.

The first thing to consider is the actual weight of the printer. If you are on the road in a car most of the time, you can sacrifice the weight issue for other features that are more important to you. Many Portable printers are under 5lbs or just a little over.

On the other hand, if you are consistently flying through airports, you will probably want the lightest unit that can fulfill your needs. Also consider whether you actually need to photo print as a lower resolution would suffice if you are only printing documents.

Next, you want a printer that will work with your laptop. Check the operating system requirements, RAM requirements, hard drive space needed, etc. Look at your laptop’s ports. What type of connectivity will work for you? Do you actually need to go wireless? And, if wireless, what type of wireless does your laptop use?

Vast choices

As mentioned the other main competitor to Canon in this field is HP. There offering that matches the ability of the Canon iP100 is the HP h470. Buying this model you have to be a little cute to get the best price.

The HP h470 is the base model and you can often locate one on Amazon in the region of $230, and as with the canon its series of adding to the cost with battery and Bluetooth adapter. If you find a good cheap base model all well and good. But it could well make sense to simply steam in and purchase the HP h470b which comes with a battery and with luck you could find one in the range of around $280.

To add a HP C8263A Lithium Ion Battery to the base model can be as much as $70 so I could be said that there is logic in going upscale by buying the HP h470b. If wireless technology is what you require with your compact printer then buying it separately adds another $30 for the bt500 Bluetooth adapter or another $50 for the HP 802.11 b/g Wireless Printer Network Adapter.

Some may want to just go straight for the HP h470wbt which has all the features you need for full portable wireless printing and can be found used for only $200.

These series of Color portable printers have print speed capability of 22 ppm for black prints and 18 ppm color. Resolution is 1200 x 1200 dpi black and 4800 x 1200 dpi color.

Best for purpose

What will you be printing? Well most portable printers on the market are color and you will not be able to find a portable for black documents only. If you need quality phot prints then the resolution is going to be very important to you but if that’s not vital to your needs then don’t be so concerned about the resolution.

Your needs regarding paper and color can significantly affect the models of printers suitable for your use. And while thinking about what you are printing, look at the printer capacity. If you want to be able to start printing 50 copies of a handout, having a printer that only holds 20 sheets is not going to be the best option for you.

Finally, you are now down to looking at cost. Besides the cost of the printer, consider the cost of operating supplies. Many manufacturers can provide the average cost of printing a black and white page versus printing a color page. All things being equal that can help you decide which model of compact travel printers is really the best one for you.