We trust that our list of the best lasers we've tested, plus this guide's advice, will make your choice easier. Laser printers have much to offer businesses of all sizes, from sole proprietorships to large corporations. They are worth considering, for some folks, for home use as well.

We update these picks often, but also check out our printer category page for the very latest reviews we've posted, including many models that didn't make the cut here but are also worth considering. And for more printer buying advice and reviews, check out our top printer picks overall, the best inkjet printers, and our picks for best all-in-one printers.

Do you need HP's PCL or Adobe's PostScript? Support for one or both of these two page-description languages (PDLs) is critical for those who need it, but otherwise irrelevant. PCL was once standard for business users, and is still required in some cases, but is not usually needed. PostScript can be essential for pre-proofing commercial print jobs, particularly in concert with desktop-publishing applications that won't work without it. It also guarantees that when printing a document, page breaks and line breaks will be the same when printing on any PostScript printer, and also the same as you saw on screen, assuming the program was set to use a PostScript driver. (Converting it to PDF format serves the same purpose.)

Generally speaking, if you're in a position to buy a printer for your business, you should already know if you need one or the other of these PDLs. If you don't need them, you can often find an identical or similar model for less from the same manufacturer, minus only the PCL or PostScript support. Don't pay extra for it if you don't need it.

Almost any printer will include a USB Type-B connector for a direct wired connection to a single PC. (USB connectors supporting the faster USB 3.0 protocol are showing up with increasing regularity.) And even if that's the only connector, Windows will let you share the printer on a network. But the easiest, and most efficient, option for connecting to a network is an Ethernet port, which all but the least-expensive lasers generally include as well. Connecting with Ethernet is usually as simple as plugging in the cable.

Most lasers today also offer Wi-Fi for network connection, either as an alternative to Ethernet or as the only choice. Wi-Fi lets you put the printer anywhere without having to worry about stringing cables, but it is sometimes tricky to set up. AIOs with fax functionality will add a phone-line interface (RJ-45), unless they use cloud-based faxing.

Support for Wi-Fi Direct is also common, though sometimes that feature comes under a different name. It lets you establish a direct peer-to-peer connection between the printer and a computer or mobile device. However, you don't actually need Wi-Fi Direct to print wirelessly. If the printer is attached to a network, using either a wired or wireless connection, and you can connect to the network by Wi-Fi from a computer, phone, or tablet, you can print over the network. Just check to be sure that the manufacturer offers a free downloadable app for printing (as well as for scanning, for an AIO) that your phone or tablet can use. Another option that is less common is support for Near-Field Communication (NFC), which lets you initiate the wireless connection to a mobile device by simply tapping the device on a specific spot on the printer.