What Is a Printer in 2025? It Depends on What You’re Actually Printing

I’m a production manager, and I’ve been handling B2B printing orders for eight years. I’m also the person who maintains our team’s mistake checklist, because I’ve personally made and documented 14 significant printing mistakes—roughly $7,300 in wasted budget. That’s why I hesitate when someone asks “what is a printer?” and expects a one-line answer.

When I first started in 2017, I thought a printer was a machine with a paper tray and toner. Then a customer asked me how “ASA 3D printer filament” compared with “a big 3D printer,” and I realized my vocabulary was too narrow. Same word: printer. Completely different process. The useful answer is not a definition—it’s a scenario.

A printer is simply the bridge between a digital file and a physical output. The problem is that the word “output” now covers photos, documents, labels, and functional plastic parts.

So let’s stop arguing about which printer is “best.” Let’s figure out what you’re actually making.

Scenario 1: You want a physical photo from your phone

If the output is a small print you can hand to someone, stick into a journal, or place at an event table, you’re in photo-printer territory. This is where a Kodak Step Printer makes sense. It’s compact, it’s designed around the idea of printing a few photos from a phone, and it doesn’t try to be a general-purpose office machine.

A mistake I keep seeing is people comparing a portable photo printer to a big office printer, as if one should replace the other. That’s like comparing a label maker to a copy shop. They share a verb, but not the same workflow.

I’ve set up too many event photo stations where someone waits until they arrive to download the app. If your model works with the Kodak printer app, install it before the event, connect the printer, and test one print first. That sounds obvious. I can promise you, from standing in a crowded venue while someone updates software, that it is not obvious.

Also, don’t panic about resolution as much as people think. For a 2×3-inch print at 300 DPI, you need roughly a 600×900-pixel image. Even older phone photos usually clear that bar. The real trap is cropping, not pixel count. Use the Kodak printer app’s preview feature and actually look at the frame. The phone screen does not always show you exactly what’s going to come out.

My personal low point was an anniversary photo table where I printed 34 identical-looking prints before noticing that the crop was cutting off the top of the subject’s head. The app showed the preview correctly for the first photo, and I assumed the rest of the batch was fine. Embarrassing. The fix wasn’t a better printer; it was checking the preview before each batch.

Scenario 2: You need documents, forms, or shipping labels

If your daily output is an invoice, a packing list, a label sheet, or a standard 8.5×11 inch document, you’re in a different scenario. A Kodak Step Printer is not the tool for an 80-page bid package. You want an all-in-one printer, or a dedicated label printer if shipping labels are the bulk of your volume.

I used to believe that one good all-in-one printer was enough for everything. In a small office, that can be true for a while. But I’ve watched teams feed adhesive-backed label sheets through a standard document printer and then deal with the 40th label starting to peel off inside the paper path. It’s not a quality problem—it’s a machine-design problem. Adhesive labels can work through a regular printer, but they’re not what the printer was optimized for.

If labels are a core part of your business, a dedicated thermal label printer removes a lot of wasted motion. No toner, no ink, no label sheets jamming at the worst moment. I still think a standard all-in-one has a place, especially when print jobs vary. But the more specialized the output, the more you should let the output choose the machine.

And here again, the Kodak printer app matters mainly as the management layer. It handles setup and gives you a place to check printer status. It doesn’t magically turn the wrong printer into the right one. That decision has to happen before you buy.

Scenario 3: You’re searching ASA 3D printer filament or a big 3D printer

Now the search gets genuinely different. If you’re comparing ASA 3D printer filament, you’re not asking about paper at all. You’re asking about layer adhesion, bed temperature, chamber temperature, and part strength. That’s additive manufacturing wearing the same name as your office inkjet.

I want to be honest about my own boundary here: I’m not a 3D printing engineer. I don’t tune extruders every day, and I’m not going to pretend I can. But from a buying perspective, I’ve seen enough failed projects to share one warning: do not buy a big 3D printer just because “bigger build volume” sounds future-proof.

ASA is an outdoor-friendly material, similar to ABS but more UV-resistant. The tradeoff is that it needs high temperatures and controlled airflow, and large flat parts can warp as they cool. A big 3D printer can create more of those large surfaces, which means more stress on the part and more chances for the first layer to peel. Open-frame machines are especially risky for ASA. I can’t give you exact temperature settings, but if the printer isn’t designed for this material, you’ll feel it in failed prints and wasted filament.

There’s also a quieter operational cost: big 3D printers are slow. They can run for 30 hours on one large build. If you need a 40-centimeter ASA bracket twice a year, a service bureau might save you money even though it seems expensive on a quote. I’ve learned that the “price per hour” of owning equipment only makes sense when you actually keep it running.

The 60-second way to find your scenario

The quick version I give my team now includes three questions, and they prevent most of the expensive confusion:

1. What is the final object? If it’s a photo for a guestbook, choose Scenario 1. If it’s a document or shipping label, choose Scenario 2. If it’s a functional part with measurable strength, choose Scenario 3.

2. What is the final size? Tiny prints like 2×3 inches work well with a portable photo printer. Office paper and label sheets work well with an all-in-one or label printer. Large plastic parts need a big build volume—and that’s exactly when I’d pause and question whether you need it daily.

3. What consumable makes it go? Photo paper for the Kodak Step Printer. Toner or ink for documents. Filament for 3D printing. If you don’t know what consumable the machine takes, you haven’t actually chosen a printer—you’ve just chosen an appliance with good marketing.

My rule after all these years is not to pretend every printing workflow fits one formula. “What is a printer?” is a fair question, but the honest answer is “it depends on what you need it to make.” Once you name the output, the choice becomes clear—and you can stop paying for the mistake of buying the wrong machine.