Any business that doesn’t want to be a laughing stock needs to invest in a reliable machine that will send faxes to clients and other businesses; it’s just impossible to be taken seriously otherwise, no matter how uncommon faxes seem to be these days. When you decide on a fax machine, Sharp (a company that makes electronics and appliances) has many models that run the gamut on printer technology-from thermal transfer to copier toner.

Before choosing a model of fax, you should consider your options. First of all should be how you machine prints on paper. Some of the faxes out their use rolls of thermal transfer ribbon for toner. On these models, faxes and copies are made through the transfer of heat through the toner and onto the paper. These don’t make great copies, but can do the job for just any office that doesn’t plan to use their machine for anything but faxes. The UX 1300 model is an example of this type of fax.

Some faxes use a newer (but already very familiar) technology to print and make copies. That would be the Inkjet, and many stand-alone faxes now use this ink instead of toner (like Sharp’s UXB20). These printers are usually at least a tad better at printing than thermal printers, and faxes will look and feel more like anything you print from a computer. Just remember that the quality between Inkjet printers is not always the same: a photo printer will always look much nicer than a machine designed to just make faxes.

Laser machines are usually the best types of printers, although they can get expensive. These function just like other laser printers. They use a drum and toner like other laser printing devices. A problem with these is that they can be prohibitively expensive. Make sure you can use these fax machines as reliable copier or computer printer if you are going to spend the money on this technology. They are also much more expensive for color copies.

When choosing a fax machine or any printing device, be sure to look at how much the toner will cost you. Thermal transfer replacement toner can be found for the UX 1300 for just over $35, for example. Since this technology isn’t as popular anymore, it may get more difficult to find these types of toners lying around office supply stores. It printed about 510 pages on a full roll.

Inkjet printers use a more common technology for cheap printing solutions. While the particular ink cartridge you need for your printer may or not be available anymore, the cartridges are more common in general. You get slightly better quality with an Inkjet printer, and I found a cartridge for Sharp’s UXB20 for the same price as the thermal rolls. The yield in printed pages was only estimated to be 10 less at a max of 500.

Toner for Laser copiers and printers will be much more expensive (cheapest at around $60, up to hundreds of dollars). They will also print thousands of pages before they have to be replaced, however. If you plan on making lots of copies or faxes then this may be the type of machine for you. It may even be cheaper in some cases when you compare cost per page, but it will be a much larger initial investment.

Get Sharp UX 1300 toner cartridge, which is from Sharp cartridge and is the best Printer toner.