What to Know About Print Speed

Copiers and printers have often been rated by their pages per minute or PPM. In most cases, the stated speed is based on letter-sized paper. In other words, if you plan to use a different paper size or special features like duplex, you can expect it to be slower. In addition to looking at the pages per minute, you have to look at the warm-up time. Because of energy saving requirements, copiers go into sleep mode after a while, and before the first print, you have to let it warm up.

The warm-up period can take anywhere from five seconds to a full minute. If you will use your copier throughout the day at different times, longer warm-up times can be frustrating. As another factor that relates to print speed, the monthly duty cycle is the amount of pages that can be printed per month. It lets consumers look at their monthly duty cycles to see which will suit them best. This number will often be grossly overstated.

Instead of looking at the monthly volume, we recommend looking at the recommended monthly volume, which is oftentimes more realistic. You will find this published for some models while not published for others. Your average office does okay with a machine that gives a 25 to 50 pages per minute output. To determine the best print speed for you, look at your office budget.