Walk into any printer aisle, or go to any printer website, and you are bound to be blown away by the huge variety available. There are a dozen major printer manufacturers each sold at hundreds of outlets, and each of those companies make entire families of printers with multiple options in each. And then there is the toner that you need to continually refill afterwards, often with four or five more options including color, page count, remanufactured, or OEM. It is a dizzying market and intentionally so as each corporation fights hard for every printer sale and sets up an entire niche market around the ink and toner for it. Understanding this market, and the little nuances that come with it, is the best way to decide what printer to invest in, what ink and toner is best to also invest in, and how to save money as you do it.
First you need to understand the big two types of printers. While there is additional diversity these are the two families you are most likely to encounter and, in fact, buy. For home and small business use you have inkjet printers, printers which take a sheet of paper and apply a huge number of tiny liquid dots of ink to the page in a pattern as it moves up. Literally the ink shoots out of jets. These printers have a very quick start up time and can print high quality images. They are also convenient as many come as all in one printers with scanning and copying ability built in. However they tend to print slowly. These printers use, as mentioned, liquid ink, which can be easily located online by the term ink. For example, to find an online retailer of brother inkjet supply you would search for: Brother ink
If you want something for high volume office printing you will need more of a LaserJet printer which will use high capacity ink powder cartridges, called toner. Just type: Brother toner into the search bar to find an online retailer of brother printer supply. LaserJets are typically far more expensive, far larger, and are worth the investment. They print fast high quality text and last a long time by literally using a laser to draw the shape of the text onto the document in a negative charge. The positively charged toner dust sticks t this charge and heat fixes the toner onto the sheet. Unfortunately these printers take a while to warm up and can sometimes get stripy in their printing. The cartridges are also more expensive, but last far longer in terms of pages printed.
You can decide on individual printers by looking for what is available, running quick price comparisons using Amazon, and looking online to check consumer and business reviews of the product. If it has a generally good ranking you will be set, if not then you may have something to worry about (although you should keep in mind that people are generally more apt to complain than complement).
You should NOT be fooled by the promise of a suspiciously great deal on a printer. When this happens it usually means one of two things: either the printer is low quality or else it is a trap and the ink for that printer will be especially expensive. These types of printers are often found bundled into personal computer deals, and can be a good solution if you only have occasional printing but definitely should be avoided if you need a workhorse. As you check your reviews make sure you also check the cartridge price relative to other similar printers of the same brand.
When a company, say Dell, sells a printer they will often discount the price in order to win a buyer (as the competition is fierce and market share is everything). They make this cost up in the huge profit margins of their Dell toner cartridges, especially considering that when someone buys their printer they are essentially planted in a monopoly and forced to buy only one type of cartridge—the cartridges for that particular printer. It ensures long term profits against the short term.
However, other companies are quickly muscling into these mini monopolies. Third parties, both reputable and not so much, offer a wide variety of third party cartridges online and sometimes, in the case of a few office supply chains, in physical locations as well. While some of these cartridges are indeed generic low quality junk that essentially robs you of your money (and can harm an expensive printer) other cartridges are perfectly comparable. Always be sure of your seller, again, by checking the reviews.