There are two main types of printers: impact printers and non-impact printers. Impact printers use a physical print head that makes contact with the paper, and can be line printers that print one line at a time or character printers that print one character at a time. Non-impact printers do not make physical contact and instead use methods like thermal, chemical, electrostatic, laser, or inkjet technologies to print, allowing them to print faster than impact printers.