Standard copiers are the foremost important office equipment, seen in every small to big office space. They help in myriad tasks, starting from scanning documents, printing booklets, and collating documents to printing USB/SD cards and enlarging the documents. All these necessary functions speed up the work of employees and help them become efficient.
However, there are many problems that employees come across using standard copiers, which frustrate the employees such as ink issues, paper jams, and frequent malfunctioning. For all these obvious reasons, offices are now switching to advanced and convenient multifunction printers. They do the job of copiers and lots more!
Multifunctional printers are far beyond copiers or scanners. Along with their diverse printing capabilities, they also can fax and email. They are failsafe as printing devices and are incredibly efficient. In other words, they help employees to complete tasks faster and make them productive.
While the demand for multifunctional printers supplier is consistently growing due to this, let us take a look at the vital differences between multifunctional printers and standard copiers. This blog also makes you aware of the problems of using standard copiers and clarifies why you should be using multifunctional printers instead of them. Read ahead.
Difference Between Office Multifunctional Printers and Standard Copiers
While both, the multifunctional printers and standard copiers work to print paper copies and require toners, there are stark differences between the two. The differences lie in their size, functions, cost, and many other aspects. Let’s take a look.
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Size
Multifunctional printers or all in one printers are advanced versions of printers made out of technology and hence are smaller in size compared to copiers. With time, they have further reduced in size due to innovation in printing techniques. You can find multifunctional laser printers that are compact and small in size and are viable to keep on the office desk.
In comparison to this, copiers are so huge that they need a separate room in the offices! That’s why offices have copy rooms. Furthermore, the size of the device varies and can expand with the increase in paper capacity.
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Function
While a standard copier can only produce paper copies, a multifunctional printer does a lot more than that! Besides copying, it can print, scan, and fax. They can even email the PDF versions directly to the inbox, which helps employees to save documents directly on their computers.
Thanks to all these abilities, multifunctional printers are gaining prominence in this digitally-forward world. They also result in reduced paper use, which helps businesses to contribute to greener initiatives.
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Cost
For all the greater and modern capabilities, multifunctional devices are costlier. The significant price difference between the two is due to the colour inkjet and colour laser printers used in them. Considering their higher costs, make sure to pick the best office equipment supplier in Ireland that specializes in copy and print services to buy your office printer. It can provide you with the right multifunctional printing equipment at an affordable cost.
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Speed
In this aspect, copiers are ahead of multifunctional devices. They can print much faster and even, thousands of copies of a document faster. However, you cannot notice any major difference between a copier and a multifunctional device in printing one or a few copies.
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Ease of Use
Due to their smaller size, multifunctional printers are more convenient to use. With time, they have gone through several advancements, which made it easy for users to switch between different printing modes. A single copy can be produced with the push of a button. But, for copiers, you need to go through several settings and buttons for printing a copy, which is quite intimidating.
Problems with Standard Copier
Even though the standard copiers help in the day-to-day tasks in an office, employees face numerous problems while using them. So, they can delay their jobs and make them inefficient at work. Here are some of the most common issues observed with standard copiers due to which they are slowly losing their significance in offices.
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Ink guzzlers
Despite the employees being careful about excessive printing, copiers need a lot of ink. Copiers need ink faster, especially when they have a heavy print load or require a lot of dark or colour print. Tracking the ink level in a copier is difficult too. You can find that your copier is running out of ink only when the copies come out blank or with light print.
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Paper jams
This is the most common issue that a standard copier encounter. It happens due to the wrong paper size, unusual thickness of the paper, or incorrect paper loading. Any of these issues will make the copier pull out the paper copy inappropriately, and that leads to the jam. Frequent paper jams annoy the employees as they delay their work, make them late for a meeting, and miss a deadline.
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Streaks or lines in the paper
While copying a simple document with text or images, you can mostly notice streaks or inappropriate lines on the finished copy. This is a prevalent issue noticed in almost all copiers! There are many reasons for the streaks or deformities in the copy such as the presence of foreign substances in scanners, glasses, or mirrors. It can also result from an issue with the fusers or malfunctioning of the drum blade.
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Wrinkled paper
Many times, the copier pulls wrinkled or crinkled papers that are not appropriate for the submission of reports or preparing files for the meeting. A copier releases wrinkled pages mainly due to worn-out paper trays or the presence of moisture in the machine.
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Overheating
Overheating due to continuous use is a serious concern with standard copiers. Even though they are kept in air-conditioned office space, the copy machines can heat up at any time. The overheating is mainly caused by the heating of gears, fans, and other mechanisms of the copier. Since an overheated copier can cause huge damage, the manufacturers provide instructions to not run the copier at a stretch for preventing overheating.
Reasons Behind Choosing The Multifunctional Printers For Your Office
Multifunctional printers are not just useful for efficient and error-free printing. They also help in the organization of your valuable documents. So, if your office has standard copiers and you cannot decide whether to replace them with multifunctional printers, these reasons will help you decide.
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Helps in Documentation Management
Having a high-grade multifunctional printer will help you in document management by placing all your printing resources in one place. While they do basic jobs like printing and scanning, they can also let you fax from the same device.
With the advent of new technologies, more advanced versions of printers are developed that let you manage the document flow, maintain the security of information, and digitize the documents in seconds.
A multifunction device works as the hub of your digital information, which is readily available to your employees. So, you get a searchable library customized to your information base or workflow, which eliminates the need to keep heaps of paper records.
Some of the latest models of multifunctional printers are integrated with software that lets one operate with a wireless device or smartphone. Thus, multifunctional printers help in managing and organizing your documents both, physically and digitally.
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Enhanced security
With digitization taking over every field of business, printer security has become a big concern for offices. Printers provided by the pioneering multifunctional printers suppliers in the market are equipped with security measures.
The printers are networked in a way to work like computers that have built-in security features to prevent hacking and other cyber threats. This is one of the key reasons for the increasing demand for multifunctional printers among all business printing services.
The upgraded multifunctional printers enable the users to set permissions for their documents and keep the most valuable or confidential information locked digitally. You can even provide individual access codes and track which employees are accessing the information using the security codes.
For some of your crucial employees or members of the office, you can even provide additional features like secure pull printing. It does not allow the documents to remain in the output tray for more than a second.
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Ease of use
Printing becomes a plain sailing job for anyone in your office with multifunctional printer devices. The multifunction devices are not only easy to operate but they also let all printing activities happen in one place which is convenient for any office use. You can even set up access control access and track the user access from the same device.
Many of the latest models of multifunctional devices come with user-friendly displays. Instead of basic information in black and white, the users get all essential information on printing status and can also search different options.
So, with multifunctional devices, you do not have to spend much time training the users or seeking customer support to get acquainted with its functions.
Also, these modern printers have managed support! It means there’s a special team working as a part of the multifunctional printers supplier to ensure timely security updates, respond to complicated or urgent office printing needs, and perform audits to make the printers operate efficiently.
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Reduces costs
Multifunction printers take up fewer resources to operate, which reduces the total costs incurred by offices in printing! They consume less electricity and have 3-5 Energy Ratings, which signify their energy efficiency. Multifunctional devices with ratings are approximately 40% to 50% more efficient than models without energy ratings.
Also, you will need a few printers because one machine is capable of doing multiple functions. Hence, operating a few machines, each of which consumes less electricity and will save a lot on your electricity bill.
Apart from the energy utility, these printers also require fewer ink cartridges and paper in their entire lifespan. This is because they can convert documents into suitable digital formats. So, your printing costs reduce drastically, if you switch to multifunction printers.
Different Types of Multifunction Devices for Your Office
Multifunction print devices are mainly of three types- black and white multifunction, colour multifunction, and compact multifunction.
When it comes to buying a competent and upgraded multifunction device for your office uses from a multifunctional printers supplier, evaluate these three types and make a choice.
1. Black and white multifunction printer
Also called monochrome multifunction printers, these are cost-effective options for offices as they use only one cartridge but print high-resolution and black-and-white documents. These printers are most suitable for data-intensive or text-intensive office work.
2. Colour multifunction printer
These are used in offices, which need to print a high volume of copies every day in high-resolution colours. You can easily rely on their colour and image quality. It is best suitable for printing marketing copies, graphs and charts, as well as high-quality digital photographs. Businesses should buy multifunction printers after analysing their print volume requirement, print speed, and approximate paper capacity.
3. Compact multifunction printer
These are the most widely used multifunction printers. You can spot them everywhere, from startups and small shops to large business stores and office spaces. These are comparatively smaller in size and also convenient to use. These are considered the most suitable multifunction printers because they ensure brilliant print quality in colour, print at a faster speed, and improve the productivity of your work.
In simple words, they enable businesses or offices to optimise their space while deriving the same benefits as conventional multifunction devices.
Buy Advanced Multifunction Printers to Uplift Your Printing Efficiency!
While copiers are fundamental office equipment needed by employees in day-to-day tasks, there are many difficulties in handling them! They result in delays or downtime, which hamper the productivity of the employees.
That’s why multifunctional printers gained popularity in the corporate world, which helped in printing and several other functions. It lets you scan, fax, email, and convert documents into convenient digital formats seamlessly in a quick time.
Switching from standard copiers to multifunctional printers is perhaps the best decision if you are looking for more efficient printing options for your office. It helps you digitalize the documents, organize and manage them, and minimize your overall printing costs.
If you think it’s time to switch to multifunction printers, consider buying the upgraded versions of the devices from Munster Business Equipment. We are a trusted multi-functional printers supplier in Ireland and are known for our widespread managed print services. Our high-grade multifunction printers are available at affordable prices and ensure premium-quality print solutions.