Portable printers are usually fairly lightweight and sometimes carry the option of using a battery instead of drawing power from the computer. Usually they realize basic print resolutions suitable for plain text printing. You can find on the market the following types of the portable printers: Thermal printer, Thermal transfer printer and Ink-Jet printer. The main advantage of thermal and thermal transfer printers is that they can be very small. The smallest thermal and thermal transfer printers weigh approximately one pound. Usually the ink-jet portable printer weighs more than 2 pounds. Thermal printers require a special type of paper.
Plotters are large-scale printers that are very accurate at reproducing line drawings. They are commonly used for technical drawings such as engineering drawings or architectural blueprints. The two basic types of plotters are called flatbed plotters and drum plotters. Flatbed plotters are horizontally aligned with a flat surface to which a piece of paper is attached. The paper remains stationary and the printer moves pens across the paper to draw the image. Drum plotters, also called upright plotters, are vertically positioned. They have a drum that the paper rolls on. Drum plotters usually make more noise and are more compact than flatbed plotters.