A Buyer's Guide to Inkjet Printers

An anonymous reader writes "CoolTechZone.com has posted a good writeup on how to select an inkjet printer without falling prey to many of the common marketing gimmicks."

Comments

Gimmicks?

[Nuclear Elephant]

how to select an inkjet printer without falling prey to many of the common marketing gimmick

The first of which is that you should buy an inkjet printer in the first place.

Re:Gimmicks?

[ryanov]

What are you going to buy for a color printer if not an inkjet? I can't afford to blow that much on a color laser.

Re:Gimmicks?

[Nuclear Elephant]

Sorry, that wasn't meant as a troll. But it is beyond me why we're still using technology that's just a slight spin on the old dot matrix printers. Especially in light of newer and still somewhat inexpensive technologies such as color laser ($400) and Dye Sublimation ($250). Especially considering most people use a color inkjet for photos, which Dye Sub is far superior to. It clicks in my head at least that the only reason anyone's using inkjet today is because of the propaganda from manufacturers who make more money on the ink than the printer.

Re:Gimmicks?

[lukpac]

Today's dye sub printers can do a full 8x10. The old residential dye sub stuff used to be crap, but dye sub has been used in professional print shops for at least a decade and the residential stuff has now caught up with the "real technology". My wife's a professional photographer and swears by them now. We've got an Olympus dye sub, HP color laserjet, and one of the higher end HP inkjet printers (before we found the dye sub). The Oly by far blows away all of the others in terms of photo quality. If you're just printing occasional photos, the laserjet does just fine... but if you want professional looking photographs I haven't found anything as good as a dye sub.

Still, I think you'd agree a dye sub is good if you *only* want to do photos. Most people don't want different printers for photos and text, especially if they aren't using it all the time. Same thing with a color laser - probably not worth it for those that only print from time to time.

As far as inkjet photo quality goes, I haven't liked the newer HP models. I usually ended up seeing lines if I looked closely. I don't know how one could agrue with the better Canon and Epson inkjets...

Re:Gimmicks?

[V. Mole]

Sorry, no, We're talking about working professionals, who sell their prints for serious sums of money. These people can afford pretty much whatever they want, and a lot of them choose inkjets. You get more choices in materials and better color fidelity if you're willing to take the time and effort. Also, dyesub's make lousy B&W prints.

Ink

[QMO]

I can't get the article, but from experience I know:

Find a supplier of ink before you buy the printer.
(Ink that works and is cheap.)

ink...

[rwven]

The biggest curse with inkjet/bubblejet printers is that when you want one, they all but give the thing to you, but then charge you 50+ for an ink refill which will run out within a few hundred pages (or less). The companies really pretty much stay in business based on the ink sales.

Buying a "cheap" laser printer is actually much more cost effective. You save a lot more in the long run if you don't mind printing only in B&W. 5000+ pages per toner at about $100 for the toner is a much better deal than $50 for the ink which will likely last you only around 100 pages give or take.

CoolTechZone

[Matthew Weigel]

This is the site that last week, had an op-ed up arguing that "loving" Microsoft is OK, and Linux is just the product of some nefarious cabal of hypesters and PR men. Yeah, uh, I don't see me caring about this review of inkjet printers either. One of the things that matters to me is whether I can print to it in Linux, which I kind of doubt they'll be able to handle.

Troll?

[TheRaven64]

I don't know what the moderator who marked this as a troll was thinking. Inkjets are a marketing gimmick (even if they weren't always). They have a significantly higher TCO than an equivalent laser printer, offset by the fact that they have a much lower capital investment cost.

People are conned into thinking that they are cheap because the initial outlay is low, and then they realise later that they will keep paying for it. Maybe for very low volume printing they are good (except that if you use them infrequently the ink in the heads dries up and you have to replace both the print-head and the ink), but for everything else they are a very expensive way of transferring data to paper.

Re:Troll?

[FreeBSDbigot]

I agree except for one application -- have you ever tried printing photos on an affordable laser printer? It's not pretty. Yes, inkjet consumables are expensive compared to laser printers, but laser printers just don't produce decent photographs.

Re:Troll?

[tgibbs]

I don't know what the moderator who marked this as a troll was thinking. Inkjets are a marketing gimmick (even if they weren't always). They have a significantly higher TCO than an equivalent laser printer, offset by the fact that they have a much lower capital investment cost.

However, for color printing, color laser printers simply do not approach the quality of an inkjet on high-quality paper. Indeed, I can barely distinguish the output of a modern $100-200 ink jet from our $9500 Kodak dye-sub.

By comparison, color prints from our >$1000 HP color laser printer have dull, less saturated color.

Here is the easy answer

[El Cubano]

how to select an inkjet printer without falling prey to many of the common marketing gimmicks.

Buy a color laser printer. Here is why:

Many prints for low cost (mine was ~US$400 and has 7k page black toner and 5k page color toner for each of C, Y, and M).

If all you want is a printer (i.e., not multi-function do everything device). Laser is the best way to go. I bought my Samsung CLP-550N from NewEgg (I am not affiliated with either Samsung or NewEgg) and have been exceptionally happy. There were cheaper versions, but here is why I got the one I did:

• Samsung has a real Linux installer and Linux support for pretty much all of their printers (though, in my case I did not use it, see below).
• The 550N came with a built in ethernet card
• It speaks PS level 3 (this is why I did not need their installer, as it speeks native PS).
• It has a builtin duplexer
• the CPU is 266 MHz and it has 128 MB of RAM
• It is exceptionally quiet
• Setting it up with CUPS took about 15 seconds. Much easier that when my father visited and needed to print something from Windows (Windows wanted the install CD for drivers, which he had not brought with him, so we had to hunt down drivers on the net).

Seriously, just the built in duplexer and laser alone would be a deal at US$400. The builtin ethernet and extra CPU and RAM were basically a bonus. Not only that, but the quality is better than that of other inkjets I have seen.

THe only down side: you need to purchase special laser quality photopaper. Inkjet photo paper can melt when it hits the the 180 degrees C drum (or so I am told).

Re:Here is the easy answer

[OreoCookie]

* Samsung has a real Linux installer and Linux support for pretty much all of their printers (though, in my case I did not use it, see below).
Most people don't use Linux and don't care.

* The 550N came with a built in ethernet card
Most people use USB and don't care.

* It speaks PS level 3 (this is why I did not need their installer, as it speeks native PS).
Most people don't know what that is and don't care. They just click print and don't care how it gets from the screen to the paper. That's how it should be.

* It has a builtin duplexer
Most people don't care.

* the CPU is 266 MHz and it has 128 MB of RAM
Again. Who cares as long as it prints I don't care if it's driven by Chipmunks.

* It is exceptionally quiet
Good point. So is my Canon inkjet.

* Setting it up with CUPS took about 15 seconds. Much easier that when my father visited and needed to print something from Windows (Windows wanted the install CD for drivers, which he had not brought with him, so we had to hunt down drivers on the net).
You have to install the Windows drivers to use it from Windows? Well that sucks.

I'm glad you're happy with your printer. Nothing you listed makes it better than an inkjet for the vast majority of people, and it's much more expensive for the low volume printing that most people do.

Re:Here is the easy answer

[pete-classic]

You have to install the Windows drivers to use it from Windows? Well that sucks.

I agree. Why on earth do you have to monkey around with some driver cd for a PostScript printer?

Oh, were you being factious? Do you think modem drivers are a good idea, too?

-Peter

Re:Here is the easy answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people are idiots, why would I want to do what they do?

Just buy new printers

[Cutie Pi]

There are now many ink jet printers on the market that cost $49, which is cheaper than the ink replacement cost.

One way to stick it the manufacturers would be to throw away the printer after it runs out of ink, and buy a new one. This would wreck their business model, since they typically sell the printers at a loss.

I bet if enough people started doing this, the manufacturers would relent on ink cartridge prices.

Re:Just buy new printers

[swatthatfly]

Sure, throw it in the garbage. After all it will magically dissapear, leaving no poisonous residues behind, that can infiltrate your drinking water and contaminate the soil. I hope when you buy it, you drive to the store in your SUV, and leave the engine running with the AC on. All irony asside, I think there is a un upside to the high cost of inkjet. People that pay a lot of money for ink, have a tendency to waste less paper, because it hurts their pocket everytime they send a page out.

Do you need an inkjet or laser

[nuggz]

I print out about 50 pages/yr.
I want colour.
I want a printer at home.
At $1/page, it's still cheaper to buy an inkjet then a laser printer.

Re:Do you need an inkjet or laser

[swv3752]

At only 50 pages, you are almost better to just print at Kinkos.

Short guide to buying an ink jet

[Walles]

Step one: Don't.

--------

It's really no harder than that.

Buy a laser instead. IME lasers are hassle free and the toner lasts forever.

Contrast this with ink jet printers that clog if you don't use them every day, and that need new ink all the time.

If you want trouble, buy an ink jet. If you want printouts, buy a laser.

Don't knock inkjet.

[antifood]

I am seeing alot of comments on how inkjet printers "suck", and that laser is the way to go. Well I am sorry, this is not always the case. Sometimes people need quality, and by quality I mean something a laser printer are incapable of providing. I have yet to see a laser printer that can provide the quality of say... even an Epson stylus 2200. I mean sure, if all you're doing is printing 72 dpi webpages, by all means get a cheap laser printer. But don't snuff off inkjet because you're not taking advantage of it's true worth: print quality. Now as far as inkjet printers go, I am a huge fan of the 4000 7600 9600 stylus lines (they have recently upgraded these using another tone of gray, but I haven't used them yet). Throw in a good RIP, like Colorbyte's Imageprint and you have some absolutely stunning prints. Now of course these printers are... considerably more expensive than what most folks are willing to spend on a printer, but they are out there and they print beautifully. So ya, high end? Epson definitely.

Most worthless buying guide ever?

[gregvr]

I mean, come on. There was almost no useful information in that guide whatsoever

I am incredibly surprised that they didn't even remotely talk about things that people are actually confused about-- like whether or not you can replace the ink TANKS without replacing the ink cartidge. Or how long a ink cartidge lasts when NOT printing.

My problem was always that I would not print for 3-4 weeks, then go to print and find out that the head had dried out.

Finally went to laser and haven't been happier.

Color?

[brunes69]

Correct me if I am wrong, but none of these are color lasers. Even the cheapest color laser will run you at least $400 AFAIK.

Even the infrequent printer like me likes to be able to print off a color picture once in awhile. And a color map is much easier to follow than a B+W one.

Re:The article says nothing anyway.

[CapnGib]

Why the hell is /. linking to articles on CoolTechZone anyway? Everything there seems like it was written by seventh graders. Haven't we learned anything from the is-it-wrong-to-love-microsoft "story"?

Could An Article Be Less Informative?

[fmaxwell]

Sorry, but this article wasn't "News for Nerds." It was fluff for technophobes.

Touting Pictbridge, card readers, and little tiny color screens, because "you need not bother booting up your PC every time you want to take a print out"?! That's great for granny who feels threatened by her PC, but for us "nerds", the thought of printing a picture without any processing (denoising, unsharp masking, exposure correction, etc.) is pretty heinous. Besides, most of us have our PCs on all of the time anyway.

The rest of the article was just as intellectually hollow:

Ink cost is a concern. No kidding?

Longer warranties are better than shorter ones and on-site service is better than having to ship the printer out for service. That's news.

Bigger input and output trays are more convenient. More insight from the tech wizards at CoolTechZone...

"Duplex printing enables you to print on both sides of a page." You don't say?

I sure am glad that I have that kind of insightful commentary to guide me -- should I ever want to buy a slow printer that costs more per page than my laser printer and can't do photo-quality printing of color images.