My nonprofit, ConnectSafely.org, has a series of Quick Guides on a variety of apps and internet safety subjects that are printed back-to-back in color on a single sheet of 8½ by 11 paper. If we had FedEx Office do our printing, it would cost more than $1 per sheet for two-sided color leaflets. It would be less expensive if we went to an offset printing house, assuming we printed in large quantities, but we frequently update these guides and prefer printing in small batches.

Larry Magid (Gary Reyes / Mercury News)

To save money and to avoid guides being out of date, we now print these guides on demand for a fraction of the cost of professional printing. I typically bring them along when I speak at events and schools, and because I have the printer in my home office, I can print them the night before a trip or minutes before I need to drop them off at a local school.

In terms of image quality, the best on-demand home or office printing quality is usually from a laser printer, but – for about 40% less per page, I’m getting near laser quality from an HP PageWide Pro MFP 477 dw printer.  The printer I purchased for $449 on sale is a multifunction device, which means it can also be used as a copier, scanner and fax machine.

PageWide is based on ink-jet technology, but it’s different from traditional ink jets in the way it works. In a product brochure, HP says “more than 40 thousand tiny nozzles on a stationary print head that spans the width of a page deliver four colors of Original HP pigment ink onto a moving sheet of paper.  Unlike most printers, the paper moves but the print head doesn’t, which HP says makes for quieter operation.

Also unique, it prints two sides in a single pass which is not only faster, but more reliable and less likely to jam as is often the case with traditional two-sided printers that re-insert the page after a very short time for the ink on the first side to dry. With other printers, the re-insertion process can fail, especially if the ink isn’t 100% dry.

The printer is rated for up to 40 pages per minute (more expensive versions are faster) but the speed depends on what your printing. My leaflets usually come out a little slower, but more than fast enough. Cost per page also depends on how much ink you’re laying down. HP, like most printer makers, bases its estimates on 5% coverage and whether you buy the company’s extra large cartridges. The theoretical cost per page is about 1.4 cents for black only and 2 cents for color.  Ours probably cost more than that, but still a lot cheaper than having them printed professionally or even printed on a laser printer.

I’m very pleased with the print quality. If you show someone a document printed on a PageWide along with one printed on a color laser printer, the laser copy will look a little crisper, but not much. Most people I’ve consulted agree that the PageWide prints are excellent. It does matter what type of paper you use. Although you don’t have to go with manufacturer’s paper (any high quality paper should give you good results), I get great results with HP’s Premium 32 lb paper ($12.70 per 500 sheets at Amazon), which is thick enough to avoid any bleed thru on double-sided pages.

You can save a lot of money on ink by buying refilled cartridges from companies other than HP, but I’ve had mixed results by doing this. In some cases, my results are the same as genuine ink or toner from the printer manufacturer, but I’ve also experienced smears, poor color matching and streaks. Because of this, I generally buy “genuine” cartridges, despite the much higher price.

A printer like the PageWide makes sense for small businesses, schools, congregations and nonprofit organizations that do a fair amount of printing. Individuals who print only on occasion are probably better off with a less expensive printer, even though it will be slower and cost more per page. As a general rule, the cost of ink in low-cost printers is higher than for more expensive printers. Home- or office-based printers are not suitable for bound documents nor cost effective for very large printing runs. Color laser printers will give you sharper copies, but they may not be as fast and the cost of toner per page is usually considerably higher than the cost of PageWide ink.

Although you can use the PageWide to print photos on matte paper, I don’t consider this to be a photo printer. I rarely print my own photos. It’s cheaper and better to have them printed at Costco, Walgreen’s or any of a number of online printing services. One reason it’s cheaper is because you don’t pay for wasted paper and ink – if something goes wrong, it’s their problem. You only pay for the good copies. In my experience with photo printing, there is often waste, especially if you’re not experienced printing your own photos. And the process used by professional photo printers – even the machine at Walgreen’s – is higher quality than what you can typically get at home.

If you do a lot of printing, want to cut costs and are less picky about print quality, than check out the Epson EcoTank line.  With these printers, you buy ink by the bottle instead of in expensive cartridges. Ink costs about a penny a page and the printers start at about $180, making this an economical choice for anyone who does a lot of printing. They do versions with automatic two-sided printing as well as multifunction devices, but, from my experience, the print quality is not as good as the PageWide.  You can use an EcoTank for photo printing but you’ll get better results with one of Epson’s photo printers that start at around $200.

If quality doesn’t matter (such as printing drafts), you can save ink on most ink jet printers by printing in draft or eco-mode. It lays down less ink per page which can also result in faster printing, although the quality won’t be as good as other printing modes.

Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist.