Do Portable Laser Printers Exist?
Of the 2 types of printers circulating around the market, inkjet printers are more common among portable printers. Their level of portability has reached a point where they can be used even if they are not plugged in. They have internal batteries that are good for a few hundred pages. With the case of laser printers, there is no portable laser printer yet that can operate on par with the inkjet counterparts.
However, that is not to say that there have not been any attempts. The Samsung ML-1630 is one of the attempts of making portable laser printers. However, when this printer was made, the possibility of laser printers running on batteries has not yet been conceptualized. Laser printers need more energy in order to print because it employs a heating element in the process. Compared to inkjet printers where most of the power is spent on shooting out ink, laser printers need more power to heat the fuser as well as operate the laser.
To put it simply, portable laser printers do not exist yet. The reason we mentioned above is one of the reasons why the existence of portable laser printers is not possible. Aside from this, there are other reasons why laser printers cannot be used as portable printers.
Laser printers use a toner to transfer ink to the paper. Unlike inkjet printers that use a print head, toners are large and its length must encompass the width of the paper you are printing. If a portable laser printer is achieved, it may only have one color, which is black. Colored laser printers are much larger because they have 3 additional toners of different colors in order to produce a wider spectrum of colors.
The main hindrance for a laser printer to be converted to a portable printer is its size. As mentioned above, in order to make a colored printer out of a laser printer, it needs 4 toners. Being a laser printer, it also needs a drum, which is also very large, and a lot larger compared to the toners. The laser printer cannot be made without the drum because the image of the page to be printed is transferred to the paper with the changes of charge on the surface of the drum.
Inkjet printers do not have the same constraints as compared to laser printers. The vital part for the inkjet printer to operate is only the print head. Of course, there are motors involved to roll the paper. However, these motors can take the form of small components. As far as speed is concerned, most users are lenient to printing speeds of portable printers since they can bring it with them wherever they want.
Ultimately, converting laser printers into portable printers may be an impossible feat. However, with the advancement of technology, it is not far-fetched to hope that the same portability as inkjet printers can be achieved. If that does happen, they may call it with a different name because with the current way laser printers work, it is not yet possible to squeeze in all the essential elements of a laser printer into one small package.
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