What Features Do You Need to Consider when leasing or purchasing a copier mfp?
Speed
Speed counts when it comes to copiers. No one likes long waits at the copier, and for organizations that have a larger seat count and thus a higher demand placed on their machine, the difference in speed between various machines can add up. Speed is measured in pages per minute (ppm). Often, people associate color printing and copying with longer wait times, but many, if not most, copiers today have the same speeds for both black-and-white and color copies. Laser copiers generate a faster output than inkjet.
The paper-size spec is all about functionality, ensuring your machine can accomplish what you need it to do. Many copiers offer flexible paper choices, allowing you to easily change sizes and feed the size of paper you need through the tray. A related feature that most businesses consider a must is automatic duplexing – where your color copier automatically works to copy (print, scan or fax) two-sided documents. This feature is a major timesaver. Without it, you’ll be manually feeding pages into the machine, flipping them, inputting them back into the machine and repeating the process ad nauseam. This process can be incredibly time-consuming, resulting in frustrated users and costly errors along the way.
Paper Capacity and Duty Cycle
When reviewing business copiers, you’ll see a number for monthly duty cycle in the manufacturer specs. This is the number of pages that your color copier can successfully print each month. Just like speed, this can greatly affect busy offices and large workgroups that rely on a printer to consistently meet a large demand. Monthly duty cycles may be as low as 10,000 pages or as high as 150,000-plus pages. Think of the duty cycle as an indicator of a printer’s endurance over time.
Ease of Use
Many people will be using and sharing your copier, and those people come from a range of technical backgrounds. As such, ease of use is an important factor in a color copier. It must be intuitive and convenient to use. This presents itself in many forms, such as touchscreens that mimic a smartphone interaction, content workflow solutions like scanning, and searchable file formats. Ease of use also applies to the system setup and initial user training. You’ll want to avoid copiers that require extensive setup – plug-and-play functionality is important.
In addition to a printer’s user interface, you may want to consider its size and weight. Before purchasing, consider where you will place the copier and whether it’s in a central location, easily accessible to all employees. For smaller copiers, weight is an important factor if you plan to place it on a desk or if it’s meant to be portable.
Connectivity
In today’s world of multiple devices and the cloud, it’s generally considered that the more options your digital copier offers for connections, the better. USB connection is still standard, but modern machines also offer mobile connectivity and options for users to connect to their cloud drives, such as Box or Microsoft OneDrive. These options give users one-touch accessibility to print their files that are stored anywhere, from almost any device. Wireless printing, allowing a user to print directly from their tablet or smartphone, is also important.
Security
In the age of the cloud and IoT, security has risen as an important factor in office accessories such as copiers.Many copiers now come standard with password controls, centralized print policy controls, and user-level access to restrict who can use the copier. Copiers are no longer viewed as a mundane office accessory; IT organizations view them as another endpoint, vulnerable to the same threats as laptops, mobile phones and data centers. Manufacturers are responding to this trend by building in security from the start.