Thread: Print Speed

A printer's speed is measured in either the number of characters per second (cps) or the pages per minute (ppm) the printer can produce. However, these two measurements are rarely used together. Characters per second is used for printers that form characters one at a time, such as daisy wheel and dot matrix printers. Pages per minute is used for printers that produce documents without focusing on individual characters, such as inkjet and laser printers. Large printers that print an entire line at once (line printers), such as those used with mainframe computers, use lines per minute (lpm) as their print speed rating.



Daisy wheel printers are by far the slowest, with a top print speed around 30 cps. Line printers are the fastest at 3,000 lpm, or the equivalent of about 6,600 cps (characters per second). Dot matrix printers print up to 500 cps, inkjet printers produce from 2 to 10 ppm, and laser printers range from 4 to 20 ppm. A laser printer with a print speed of 6 ppm has the equivalent speed of around 40 cps in letter quality. The quality of the print and whether it is color or black and white have a definite impact on a printer's speed.