Question Why does anyone ever use inkjet printers?

[The Sauce]

I am closing in on 50 years old. I have had dozens of printers in my life. Every, yes every, inkjet has been an utter disappointment. Let me point out the shortfalls:

- Sloppy, smeary print
- clogged print heads
- noisy
- slow
- expensive proprietary ink cartrisges
- constant forced firmware updates to fight "generic" ink
- ink prints fade
- require expensive, thick paper to combat smearing

I now have an inexpensive Dell color laser. Prints are perfect every time on whatever paper I use. Cheap toner. Fast and quiet. Not being snarky - I really just don't understand how they sell these things.

 

[Mr Evil]

Inkjets typically have lower initial cost. The average person will look no further than that.

p.s. Inkjet printers aren't noisy; dot-matrix printers were noisy!

 

[bfun_x1]

I remember when we used to call them Bubble Jet printers. I guess some still are. Anyway, I switched to a Dell color laser and it's mostly better but it's also more complicated. I've had to pull the manual out a few times because the menu options are extensive. In the first month I kept getting out of toner errors despite having plenty of toner. Turns out I needed to set the high elevation option.

 

[FeuerFrei]

If a set of replacement ink cartridges costs $110, people may well opt to get a new inkjet printer for $48 more than the cartridge set. And the new printer comes with "a year's supply of ink."

 

[Gt403cyl]

I just use a non color laser, I only ever need to print wiring diagrams.

Not sure about now but it used to be that if you bought a cheap printer the cartridges were expensive and if you bought an expensive printer the cartridges were cheap....

 

[allisolm]

I am closing in on 50 years old. I have had dozens of printers in my life. Every, yes every, inkjet has been an utter disappointment. Let me point out the shortfalls:

- Sloppy, smeary print
- clogged print heads
- noisy
- slow
- expensive proprietary ink cartrisges
- constant forced firmware updates to fight "generic" ink
- ink prints fade
- require expensive, thick paper to combat smearing

I now have an inexpensive Dell color laser. Prints are perfect every time on whatever paper I use. Cheap toner. Fast and quiet. Not being snarky - I really just don't understand how they sell these things.

I have a Brother MFC j410w and have never experienced sloppy smeary print or clogged print heads. I don't know about noisy or slow. It doesn't bother me and I can't hear it printing from the next room.I pay about $6 for 2 complete sets of generic ink cartridges and they work fine. I've never noticed any firmware updates, let alone ones to fight generic ink - if there have been ones for that, they have failed miserably. I have pages printed from it years ago and nothing has faded. I use regular copy paper with no problems.

My husband has an HP printer, nowever, that refuses to work with any ink except HP original cartridges. He has taken to using my printer lately.

 

[Muadib]

My Canon printer died after using 3rd party ink. I tried the ink cleaning thing, but all it did was waste ink. This time around I bought an Epson inkjet AIO. It wasn't cheap, but it comes with extra ink, that should last around 2 years. I can only hope that's true.

 

[WilliamM2]

I always pick my printer by first looking to see if cheap generic ink is available. I've had three printers in the last 20 years. All Canon, and all lasted 9-10 years using generic ink. My current Canon is only a year old, but hopefully will do just as well.

 

[PingSpike]

I feel like most people think they need to print color way more than they actually do and inkjets are cheap.

We usually just print photos by that mail service and use a B&W laser for everything else.

 

[shortylickens]

if you got lots of crap in your outlet the initial startup of a laser can actually trip your circuit breaker.

 

[dlerious]

I bought an inkjet for printing on CD/DVD - high end Epson. Photos were great on photo paper, even put under running water to check for smearing. Clogged printheads were a problem if I didn't use it often enough and wasting ink when charging a new cartridge was a pain. I have a few HP B&W lasers that are great for B&W work. I've been looking at color lasers (and Xerox) for a while, waiting for prices to come down.

 

[Ketchup]

It depends on what you print and how much you print. I have always been a fan of printers with a closed cartridge, which are getting harder to find, even from HP. Color Laser has only recently become close to being considered "afforfable" , and if you wanted to add AIO to that, you are still looking at $300+. I am glad you found a printer that you like OP, but others like me who don't print a lot are very happy with a good inkjet AIO - we don't print a lot and spend $30/year on ink tops.

 

[corkyg]

I have both a laser and a inkjet. When it comes to color photos, my preference is the inkjet because I personally do not care for the irregular surface shine produced by the laser. I have had no problems with either printer.

 

[13Gigatons]

I just don't get the inkjet hate. I bought two Canon inkjet printers 15 years ago and they both still work. I've used good refill ink and they still print a beautiful photo. I do take care of them though. I guess if you abuse or neglect any mechanical device it will break down.

 

[mindless1]

You wrote cheap toner but what is the cost per page and what is the photo quality like? I know they have gotten better in recent years but it was not too long ago that you had to spend a lot of money on a color laser to get photorealistic results.

[rant]I have one I affectionately call a boat anchor that takes 4, > $200 color cartridges. When it prints black and white, it coats the color drums too and wastes the color toner. I did not realize this until the printer told me it needed over $800 worth of carts soon.

I contacted a friend who worked for a certain company that starts with an "L" and ends with exmark and gave him **** for recommending this printer to me and they sent me a round of replacement carts free, but I will never buy that brand again. They even went out of their way to microchip the display panel board in a way that it is married to the printer, you can't pull a perfectly good board out of a new printer and put it in one that had the board fail.

That very thing happened to mine so I desoldered the prom from the old board onto a new board to get it to work, which was annoying but saved me over $100 because that L company charges an arm and a leg for factory parts since they have locked out all other avenues for parts.[/rant]

Anyway I now almost exclusively use a Brother B&W laser AIO and couldn't be happier. If I need color I'll go to Kinkos or wherever.

 

[mindless1]

I have both a laser and a inkjet. When it comes to color photos, my preference is the inkjet because I personally do not care for the irregular surface shine produced by the laser. I have had no problems with either printer.

If you mean irregular because lighter areas have the matte paper finish showing through, you have to use glossy paper to get rid of that effect.

 

[corkyg]

Yes, that is what I mean. Glossy paper is ok for photos alone, but too expensive for combination documents. And, constantly changing papers in the printer is a PITA. Lets just call it a personal preference.

 

[Midwayman]

I have a color laser that's over a decade old, and some of the original color toner is in there and still work. Can't say I'd ever buy another inkjet. If you don't use them enough they dry out. If you use them a lot the ink is insanely expensive. Unless you really need to print color photos at home I don't see the point. For as rare as I need to do that, a service is a way better deal.

 

[bonehead123]

That "L" word should be forever banished from the earth.....

On my scale of 1 to 10, their stuff rates around NEGATIVE 2169

 

[piokos]

For simple scenarios (texts, graphs) a laser colour printer will be fine (although quite a bit more expensive).

But laser isn't good enough for high-quality graphics, renders and - most importantly - photography.

 

[mikeymikec]

I am closing in on 50 years old. I have had dozens of printers in my life. Every, yes every, inkjet has been an utter disappointment. Let me point out the shortfalls:

- Sloppy, smeary print

I'm not sure what you mean by this. For text, inkjets don't produce quite as perfectly rendered characters, but it's perfectly clear until you get to about 8pt font or below. In my line of work, I think I've seen smeared print once, and that's when a user printed on the wrong side of photo paper.

- clogged print heads

A drawback of inkjets without a doubt. However, provided you don't leave them in direct sunlight, you use them once a month consistently and you use the manufacturer's cartridges, you're very unlikely to experience problems in my experience.

- noisy

Compared to what? Lasers are damn noisy when they're printing. If I'm on the phone I'd rather neither were printing.

Also, I've just checked the specs of two reasonably modern printers I have here:

Brother DCP-9020CDW: 53dB (A) printing
Epson WF-3520: 38dB (A) printing

- slow

Lasers typically have longer warm-up times. If a user needs to print a few sheets every so often, then I doubt that any purpose would be served in going for a laser in this respect. If however they're printing many-page print jobs on a regular basis, then a laser is likely to deliver the goods in a more timely fashion.

- expensive proprietary ink cartrisges

Toner cartridges are also expensive. I've done the math, and purely based on the figures, a decent inkjet will be cheaper to run than a laser in many scenarios.

However, if a user is going through like a ream of paper every month, I believe that a decent laser is a lot more likely to last better, despite the fact that you'll also have to pay for replacement drums. Inkjet specs often have some very sketchy wording with regard to monthly yields.

- constant forced firmware updates to fight "generic" ink

I've never seen a forced firmware upgrade. Admittedly I make a point of uninstalling auto-update tools for printers because IMO if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

- ink prints fade

Ooookay? Maybe you should present a scenario where this is a problem and I'll present you with more common scenarios for which it isn't a problem?

- require expensive, thick paper to combat smearing

I have no idea what you're doing wrong here, but I assure you, it's you. I've been using cheap paper in printers all my life, no problems with smearing.

- edit - I've thought of one other scenario of smearing with inkjets - auto double-sided printing with heavy photo/graphics but without enough drying time set between sides. Me personally, I just avoid double-sided printing in such scenarios, but the delay between sides can be altered on the Epson print drivers so that more drying time is allowed before attempting to print on the other side of the paper. If not enough drying time is allowed, then the paper is still wet and wavy, then I've seen streaks of ink (though not smearing per se) resulting.

 

[mikeymikec]

The economy argument: Epson do a new-ish range called 'EcoTank' - the printer itself is a lot more expensive than the average inkjet (in the UK, a cheap inkjet is anywhere between about £25 and £100, whereas the EcoTank range I think start at about £200), but the price of a Epson bottle of ink for such an EcoTank is £11.27 and is quoted in the specs as having a yield of 7500 pages. To put that into perspective, a cheapo inkjet's high capacity black will normally do about 450 pages and cost about £15.

I've only got one customer with an EcoTank printer and because they're not that old yet, it's hard to say whether it's a good value proposition (e.g. a printer with cartridges that claim to do 7500 pages may never reach 7500 pages). I have to say though, I'm intrigued by it. The other thing to watch out for is that I've seen a much more expensive EcoTank with less features than a non-EcoTank inkjet, so just because it has the price tag, it doesn't mean it's just as good all-round.

While bearing in mind what I wrote in my previous post about high-yield printing and my inclination to go for lasers in those scenarios, the consumable cost for lasers quickly mount up, particularly for example that I have a second-hand Brother AIO colour laser printer here that had random speckles in the output, I ended up replacing the drum which only fixed the problem for a while. I've also had a customer's colour laser AIO start smoking after they installed compatibles, some kind of jam occurred, and paper started smouldering. They didn't want to trust the printer after that!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Cheap photo printing that looks way better than most lasers.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Meh, my MIL is still using an HP f4500 series, it's friggin ancient, she's on like >20k prints on the thing. Seems happy with it, although I've been trying to get her to buy a new one for a couple years now. The darn thing likes to drop off the wifi and be finicky when doing pd.

 

[slackerinabox]

I'm pretty happy with HP + instant ink. $9 a month and I never have to worry about ink (and roll over is great for light printing months), and the printheads are embedded into the ink so less concern about clogs. Since you're in the ecosystem, HP tends to take care of you if something goes wrong - years ago an hp failed and, since I was an instant ink customer, hp made an out of warranty swap with little hassle. I had a color laser but the occasional photo print looked awful.