Copier Brands - The Best, Cheapest, Most Reliable Digital Printer Copier Manufacturers

Here are the 8 Major brands/manufacturers of digital office copiers and what makes each one distinctive:

Xerox/Fuji Xerox

They invented the first copier in the 1950s, are the most well-known brand name, and without question, makes the best heavy-duty machines.  A few years ago they confessed some financial issues that almost brought the company to it's knees, but since then (plus a few new CEO changes), they have made a come back.

Canon

They are the most popular and best selling by far of all brands...for decades.  They make great machines, but can often be over-priced compared to the others.

Panasonic

They make the easiest-to-use machines (by far) and the most innovative.  They swing from most reliable to not very reliable at all (so check with the testing companies, like Buyer's Lab, before you buy a newer model).  They have more techs working to innovate the industry and thus have more patents than any of the others - even Xerox.  This also explains the lack of reliability sometimes, because they are always pushing the envelop.

Konica/Minolta

They make solid, reliable machines, and make the best office high-res, graphical color machines.  Like Panasonic, they are also very innovative.  They also bought the national dealership, Danka, in 2010.

Sharp

They will often have the most 3rd-party awards of any other brand from the 3rd party testing companies.  They also tend to be pretty easy-to-use.

Ricoh Family (Ricoh, Lanier, Gestetner, Savin)

They are often the lowest priced in any given area and they win a lot of government bids because of that.

Toshiba

They make very solid machines at a good price.

Kyocera Mita Family (Kyocera Mita and Copystar)

They make good machines and a good price.

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Digital Copiers - Everything You Need to Know About Buying a Digital Copier Machine

All About Digital Copiers

Exactly What Is a Digital Copier?

Technology is truly something to behold.  Gone are the days when analog copiers reign supreme in the business world.  Thanks to the continuous search for the better and best, digital copiers are now the trend... and rightfully so.

One of the advantages of digital-copiers over their analog counterpart is that they have the ability to store documents into memory.  To put it simply, the information is imprinted on the drum through laser, the document gets printed, and the image of the document is saved in the copier's memory.

This leads to two benefits:

First, you can have a document copied just from the memory.  Say you forgot the document in your cubicle.  You can save yourself from a trip back if the document has already been copied and stored in memory.

Second, since the document is already in memory, you can send it electronically to other devices provided that they can receive the information.  Examples of which are computers, fax machines, and even some phones.  This saves time, not to mention paper.  You do not have to wait on documents from the main office to be sent through FedEx.

Another aspect of digital-copiers is that they can generate more than one set of copy with just one scan. You do not have to run the original document ten times to have ten copies.  If you only need two copies of a document, this is not much of a benefit.  On the other hand, if you are in the business where hundreds to thousands of copies are needed almost everyday, then you better invest on a digital-copier or two.  You can leave it all to the digital copier, do other pending tasks, and comeback for the copies later.

Next, digital copiers produce copies of unsurpassed quality.  Digital-copiers produce high quality copies that more often than not, are hard to tell the original from the copy.  Compared to other copiers, digital copiers are preferred by majority for this feature alone.

Best of all, maintenance cost is relatively cheaper.  The ink used by digital copiers create more copies than the cartridges normally used by analog copiers.  While buying a digital copier will cost you more than other copiers, in the end, you are really saving money.

If you are looking for a digital copier, Xerox, Ricoh, Konica-Minolta, Toshiba and Canon are some of the brands known for their digital technology, copiers included.

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Color Copier - Do You Really Need One?

Recently I was working with a client who was purchasing a new Toshiba copier.

Like many of my repeat and new customers one of his major considerations was whether he really needed to upgrade to a color copier or would the black copier be OK for his needs.

One of the first questions I ask in this situation is "how are you handling color copies and prints now?". Typically my clients are doing one of two things: 1) they outsource their color printing to Staples, Office Depot or a local printer or 2) they print them out on a desktop color printer.

Once I have established what they are doing now my next questions is "how many color copies or prints are you doing per month and year?"  Many times my customers don't really know their true volume so we have to do a little investigative work.

One helpful strategy is listing out on a piece of paper all the different types of color copies and prints they do throughout a year and then listing beside each project the approximate number they do for that project per month and year.

I think it's important to look at this annually because many times there are printing projects that are only done once or twice a year and the customer tends to forget about those projects if we are only thinking in a monthly context.

In the case of this customer once we listed out all of his annual color printing needs he only did about 500 color prints per year.  I consider this a very low color volume.

I advised him that this didn't justify purchasing a color machine and he should continue to send those jobs out to a printer.

I did also find out that he was sending his jobs mostly to Office Depot. OUCH!! can you say expensive.  I advised him to find a locally owned print shop or go online where in either case the prices would be significantly less than Office Depot or Staples.

In the situation of a company doing thousands of color copies and prints per month I would recommend considering a color copier.

It comes down to doing the math.  How many color prints and copies do you do per year times what you pay per copy/print at a local print shop versus what you would pay to do them in house on your own color copier.

Once you know these numbers you have to consider the added cost of a color copier versus a black copier.  Your purchase price or lease payment will surely be higher for a color copier than a standard black copier but in many cases it's worth it.

Another consideration is the time involved in calling a printer, driving there to drop off artwork if necessary and then driving back to the printer to pick up the job.  As we all know during the business day Monday-Friday our time is money and I feel this is a legitimate consideration when deciding to buy a color copier or a black copier.

When it comes to local printers I have seen color copies/prints done in the range of 15 to 35 cents each. This is just my experience and your local printer may do them for less.

With a Toshiba copier (which is one of the brands I sell) you can make a color copy or print for anywhere from 7-10 cents each.  Where you would fall in this range depends on what size color copier we are speaking of.

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Toshiba Copiers

With the rise of technology, offices use a variety of equipment.  Various functions are to be performed by various types of equipment as found suitable.  One such piece of equipment is the copier, found in almost every office today.  A copier is used to copy various types of documents required in the day- to- day activities of an office.  Since such documents are to be used to run projects or are normally given to other people it becomes important to use quality copiers.

Such a quality copier are Toshiba Copiers.  This brand of copier has a wide range of uses, and as such; one can choose from the many types available for them.  This brand of copier comes in both small and large sizes.  In choosing an ideal copier for business, it would be wise to consider the volume of work to be performed.

If your business is small-scaled you may need to use a small sized copier known as the Small Work group which handles copying twenty pages a minute.  Though document copying in this type of Toshiba Copier is mainly black and white, it is normally of high quality copying.  In case you venture in the medium size business, you will require a medium to large size copier product.  They come in either black and white or color style, and are capable of copying out larger scale batches of copies.  These medium sized copiers, copy on average twenty to forty-five copies per minute.

The larger copiers are ideal for mass production of copies.  For this last style of this brand of copiers, one can get up to 135 pages copied in a minute.   For this large size copier, one can get either black and white or colored copies.  This type is also capable of multi-tasking, as it can print, email, copy, scan, and fax your various documents; making this a truly versatile piece of equipment for your office.  With the different Toshiba Copiers available in today's market, whether your budget allows for brand new or just the more affordable refurbished, you can get many different types of copiers that will help realize your business potential. 

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