Color Digital LED Printer vs. Laser Printer

Color digital laser printers and light-emitting diode printers are nearly identical. Both use a photosensitive drum and can print your business documents relatively quickly by melting toner to the paper. The difference between the two printer technologies is in how the drum is illuminated: Laser printers use a laser beam to move across the drum, whereas LED printers use an array of LEDs to flash the entire line at once.

Cost
Because of the simplicity of the LED array, LED printers are typically less expensive to produce. Laser printers, on the other hand, necessitate a precisely focused laser beam and a delicate optical assembly with numerous moving parts. Because of these components, many laser printers are more expensive than comparable LED printers.

Reliability
LED printers are more reliable due to the same factors that make them less expensive. The main image engine in an LED printer has no moving parts because the LED array remains stationary and simply blinks the page pattern. While the majority of laser printers use stationary lasers, they also use a rotating optical piece to scan the laser’s beam against the drum. The multiple moving parts in the light engine of a laser printer make it more prone to failure.

Image Quality
Although the differences can be subtle, laser printers generally produce higher-quality printouts than LED printers. Because a laser printer has only one light source, each pixel receives the same amount of light. On LED printers, the print array contains thousands of LEDs with slight differences in light output. LED printers have a fixed resolution that is determined by the number and size of LEDs in the array. Laser printers, on the other hand, can change the size of their dots to change their resolutions.

Size
Drums, toner cartridges, and a paper path are all found in laser and LED printers. The simpler light engine on an LED printer, on the other hand, requires less physical space, giving LED printers a smaller footprint. However, the size advantage of an LED printer does not apply to colour printers because the printer must still be large enough to hold four different toner cartridges.