Comment by FDSGSG | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FDSGSG | Hacker News Reader

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> Is it possible to make a good inkjet printer?

I think so, in my experience Epson makes very good inkjet printers.

>Or is inkjet printing just an inherently bad technology?

I don't really know anything about the work that goes into developing and manufacturing these printers, but I'll never cease to be amazed by the precision and reliability at which a $700 inkjet printer can deposit 1.5 picoliter ink droplets onto the print medium.

Bad technology? I don't think so. What you can accomplish with modern inkjet printers for chump change is downright incredible.

> but these same manufacturers also make laser printers at similar price points that are much more reliable and do not have the same frustrating failure modes seemingly designed to keep you buying consumables

It's downright ridiculous to compare laser printers and inkjets, these have completely different use cases. Although these days laser printers generally do not offer advantages beyond speed and cost of operation, nice inkjets can produce crisper text at far smaller font sizes than laser printers.

Is that true? Nifty.

I don't pay much attention to printers. I'd always found that laser printers produced more readable text. Ink jets always seemed a little blurry. At least, in the ones that I'd looked at -- down-scale stuff for the home market.

I stopped using inkjets at all because I used them so rarely that the ink would dry up. When I need photo prints or colored prints, I send them out. My home printer is an elderly laser printer that just keeps chugging along and producing lovely, sharp text.

Good to know that the ink jets have gotten better, but my use case still probably means I won't own one.

I agree that Epson is among the best of the bunch, probably due to its precision piezoelectric inkheads. Brother has that too, though, and is reputedly even more precise. My epson suffers occasionally from the banding issue highlighted in the article. Dont know a good fix other than putting it through the wasteful clean cycle. Usually I just bear with it.

Of course the tremendous precision comes at some cost, but I think the fact that these machines are as reliable as they are is already incredible. The engineering challenges involved in managing the fluid dynamics of inks in order to reliably shoot out picoliter sized droplets with incredible precision must be massive.

> Brother has that too, though, and is reputedly even more precise

Really? I don't think Brother really offers products in this space. They have the Innobella line that can do 1.5pl droplets, the same as the Epson unit but with far less colors. However, none of the Brother printers supporting those cartridges seem to offer a very high DPI. The smaller drop size will primarily manifest as improved color reproduction, as blending becomes easier.

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