When it comes to ID card printers, you will have several important decisions to make before purchasing one. Knowing how many cards you need to print at a time will be a large factor in that decision. Will you be printing individual employee ID cards as you hire new people, and thus need a hand feed or small hopper model? Or do you run check-in for conferences and need to print hundreds of guest badges in a single morning?

We’ve outlined the basic differences below to help you understand the differences, and you can also try our free Printer Comparison Tool.

Hand-Feed Only

Hand feed ID card printers do not have hoppers to hold blank or printed cards; to print, you must manually insert the blank cards into the printer. This style of printer is the most time and labor intensive. Hand feed printers are only recommended for extremely small ID card programs that will not need to batch print cards.

Hand feed printers like the Magicard Pronto use the same printing technology as larger printers, but do not have a hopper. If your business only needs to print a card or two at a time, such as visitor passes, a hand-feed printer is perfect for your needs because they are compact and efficient at printing just one card.

Small Hopper

ID card printers with small hoppers can do batch printing on a very small scale – less than 100 cards per batch. They are designed for small ID card programs, such as boutique stores or other small businesses. They can easily print a handful of cards without needing to restock blank cards or a new ribbon, but cannot handle large batches.

The Fargo C50 ID card printer has a small 50 card input hopper and 30 card output hopper. This makes it a great option for small businesses printing visitor or employee ID cards, because you won’t need to print hundreds of cards in a day – a time consuming process with such a small printer.

Mid-sized & Large Hoppers

Mid to large-volume ID card printers have larger hoppers that usually hold between 100 and 300 cards. These printers can handle all but the most taxing ID card programs, and give you a wide range of brands and models to choose from so you can always find an ID card printer that fits your needs.

A popular ID card printer with a large printer is the Zebra ZXP Series 7 – this customizable printer has a 200 card input hopper and 100 card output hopper and upgrades for dual-sided printing, encoding, and lamination. This makes the ZXP Series 7 adaptable to many organization needs, and the large hopper is great for small batch printing.

High-volume Hopper

If you need to print hundreds of cards at a time, you’ll want to invest in a high-volume ID card printer. These styles of printers are designed with extra large hoppers and high-yield ribbons so you can print hundreds of cards before needing to replace your cards or ribbons. There are only a few ID card printers with extra large hoppers, so your options will be limited.

A printer like the Evolis Quantum 2 has a 500 card input hopper and a 500 card output hopper, and can print 1,000 monochrome cards per hour! Additionally, the hoppers are detachable, so you can have additional hoppers ready to go when you need to switch them out for minimal down time between batches. This is incredibly helpful if you need to print a large volume of cards, such as event badges for conferences when you need to check in hundreds of guests in a single day.