Advantages and disadvantages of wireless printers

When we visit our clients in Sydney, we often get asked about wireless printing and photocopying technology, also known as Wi-Fi printing/copying.

In today’s blog, we would like to share our thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of wireless network printers. To begin with, we’ll give you a short outline of them.

Advantages of Wi-Fi printer:

1. Lack of wires needed, except for power.
2. You can place the printer where you want to.
3. It gives you the ability to print directly from handheld devices such as tablets and phones.

Disadvantages of Wi-Fi printer:

1. They can reduce the speed of your wireless network.
2. Wi-Fi printers also open a new door to anyone accessing your network if your security is lacking.
3. It is not uncommon for Wi-Fi printers to have problems with connection loss and drop outs.
4. Wi-Fi printers can have slow print times and print errors if the network is busy, if there is interference in the network or if there is a low signal strength.
5. Setup can be very complicated.
6. When problems occur, they are harder to be located in Wi-Fi printers

Firstly there are two types of wireless printers available today. A Bluetooth printer can be connected to any Bluetooth-capable computer. Its main benefit is that it can be placed several metres from your computer and still work without having a cable draped across your desk. A Wi-Fi printer connects wirelessly to a Wi-Fi router so that any computer can access it on that network.

It looks very neat as you don’t have the extra cable to run from your router or computer.  As you have the ability to place the printer almost anywhere, you do not need to be restricted by putting the printer next to a computer or a network port, also saving on the cost of cabling. Finally, we find wireless printers are more likely to support the ability to print from mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets.

Of course on the other side of the coin are the disadvantages that come with wireless technology and wireless printing. The speed of wireless printing can be much slower than a wired option. This is due to the router acting as a repeater which will always reduce the speed at which a print job is sent.  Add this to the possibility of many people printing to the one machine at the same time, the traffic jam of print job will slow productivity as well as add stress to your wireless network.

If the printer loses its ability to connect to the wireless network, it can be difficult to fix as turning it off/on may not rectify the problem.

To sum up, at this point in time it is our recommendation that if you want to connect FROM a wireless device TO a printer then hard wire your printer to the wireless router. By having that directly connected to the router, you end up with a quicker, more stable and more secure solution.

However, if you are still fascinated by the latest wireless printing technology here are some brands that provide the best quality products:

HP printers

Canon printers

Konica Minolta printers

Ricoh printers

Sharp printers

For more information about printers and copiers repair, contact Superior Office Machines