Power: Should You Turn Off The Printer?
Many people wonder whether a printer should be left on all the time, or should be turned off when not in use. Understandably, an electrical device consumes electricity after it is switched on. Of course, you want to keep the electricity costs as low as possible. Especially at night, most people think it’s better to turn off the printer.
Standby consumes less power
Most modern printers have a sleep or standby mode. This means that these printers go into what is known as sleep mode, which consumes very little power. If a print job is started, the printer wakes up from deep sleep and is immediately ready for use. If you switched off the printer and then switched it on again, it would take a certain amount of time before it was ready for use.
With inkjet printers, the unsightly side effect then occurs that they first want to clean their print head again. This uses a lot of printer ink. When laser printers are switched on, the power consumption is higher because the fusing unit has to be heated up again. After all, the canon c5235i toner powder is transferred to the paper by enormous heat. In standby mode, a laser printer, therefore, starts up again much more quickly for a print job and is therefore ready for use more quickly.
The energy consumption
Many consumers are skeptical precisely because of the rising energy costs. However, a printer in standby mode only consumes an average of 3 watts of electricity. The costs are negligible, so you can definitely leave a printer switched on. Incidentally, many inkjet printers are no longer equipped with an on/off switch. When not in use, they automatically switch to idle mode.
Leave the printer switched on
Even though printers that are switched on consume some power in standby mode, they should not be switched off regularly. The printer hardware does not suffer from this. Due to the minimal energy supply, the most important components are supplied with electricity, so that, for example, the print heads of inkjet printers are kept clean and protected and excessive heating of laser printers is prevented. You also benefit from the fact that the printer is ready for use immediately after sending a print job. You should only switch off your printer for maintenance purposes.