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Comment by Liftyee | Hacker News Reader

Home inkjet printers are only ideal for a niche usecase where you print lots of photos regularly (to the point where you need your own printer over a photo printing service). Their only advantage over laser printers is higher image quality.

If you don't print frequently, the ink nozzles clog up (and you inevitably use a bunch of ink trying to fix them). For infrequent document printing, a laser printer will Just Print whether it's been sitting unused for an hour or a month. If you occasionally need some photos printed, using one of the myriad services will be better than replacing the inevitably gunked up ink cartridges.

If you print a lot of documents, the laser printer easily outstrips the speed of an inkjet. You'll also run up huge ink fees since the cost per page of ink tends to be higher than toner.

Therefore, the only reason you should get an inkjet printer is if you often need high quality colour prints (photos).

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I have an Epson inkjet, similar to this model:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/epson-workforce-pro-wf-7840-wir...

1) Surprisingly, the running costs, with generic ink, are the same as a laser.

2) The text quality is fine. The image quality is better than a laser. Photos are great.

3) It can do larger formats (up to 13x19), copies, duplex, etc. The cost is literally a fraction of a similar laser. A large format laser is $$$. This one is $250 right now.

4) The speed is similar to a basic laser, but slower than a nice laser. It's rated at 12PPM color and 25PPM mono. It's slower, but it's fast enough.

I used to share your opinion, but ink has come a long ways. Something like this is super-versatile, since it does literally everything for $250.

Just don't get HP.

I had an Epson inkjet and I only used it maybe once a month, and I had to change the ink cartridges every other time I used it, despite attempts at maintenance. I've now a laser printer for a couple years and am now only just running low on toner. Don't buy inkjet.

It depends on the model.

At the time I was buying mine, Epson marketed the WorkForce Series as the ones which didn't rip you off on ink, and WorkForce Pro, I believe, was even better.

Read reviews for printing costs, and adjust for the cost of generic ink. That's even true for lasers now; it's rare, but I've seen models designed to rip you off on toner too.

I just got the EcoTank one and it doesn’t use cartridges AND I can see the ink level. For my use cases it ticks all the boxes.

The EcoTank draws a lot of power constantly, and can not be left off for long times or that ink will ruin everything.

It has the problem the GP was talking about, increased to complete new levels.

Not in my experience. Have had one for several years, switch it on when I need and turn off for weeks at a time. Runs perfectly and total cost of ownership is already lower than the mid-range pro HP printer I had before.

Also laser printers draw a lot of power constantly, you may be confused here. The toner needs to be kept warm.

The problem for GP and for me too is inkjets needs a couples of cleaning and test prints after a drop of IPA on K, C, LC, LM and M ink drawing port each time I'd use it. That won't happen with lasers at all.

Having both color laser and inkjet, color laser printers can dry out parts inside that can make the operation not work well.

Scheduling a print via RIP service on port 9100 is a way to keep printheads working

I print no more than a few times per year, but those times I do print it'd be really annoying not to be able to print. Inkjet simply doesn't work for that kind of use case, you have to be printing somewhat regularly for it to make any sense. Highly irregular printing patterns like this are better served by laser, because the toner doesn't go bad just because you haven't printed this month.

> Just don't get HP.

The real pro-tips are always in the comments.

Actually not a pro tip anymore.

> Just don't get HP.

I've had a cheapish HP Smart Tank for several years, filled it with 3rd party ink, it goes weeks without use and had no problems.

Just as an overview I recently researched for a new printer but of all the reviews, HP comes out last by a mile. I think the smartprint was mentioned a lot, then Canon (especially the low budget ones) , Epson/Brother are kind of tiered.

> Just don't get HP.

The CEO of HP said there is a risk of viruses being transmitted in the ink cartridges:

https://www.wired.com/story/hp-ceo-ink-cartridge-hackers-dyn...

He says you should always buy their special guaranteed virus free ink, but in my opinion it's much easier and safer to avoid the printers completely. You never know when you buy ink online if it's genuine - you could "catch a virus" at any time. It's almost certainly nonsense, but you can't be too careful.

None of those 4 points are dealbreakers. The deal-breaker is "do the nozzles fail to perform if not used regularly?"

how is Cups support?

Fine. I use a https://www.epson.com.au/products/ecotank/ET-4750.asp with Cups. It just works. Surprising the Linux scanner software they provide also works, if a little clunky.

The heads don't clog on these printers, although perhaps they do need to be continuously powered to pull that trick off. As the sibling comment said, they are cheap to run, and as reliable as a laser. I gather all manufacturers have similar models that work just as well, including HP.

Be warned that since you aren't being ripped off for the ink you will be asked to pay the real cost of the printer. The cost is comparable to a laser, but much higher then their "we are going to gouge you on ink" cousins they will be sitting beside on the store shelf.

The standard Ubuntu document scanner app also justwerks with the Epson printer/scanner my dad has, surprisingly. I'm not even sure how.

For printing, pretty much everything now works with IPP Everywhere, even if not certified. For scanning, SANE has built-in backends for most devices, and even a built-in as well as a third-party AirScan backend, which will again work with most newer devices.

I have a WF-4833 and CUPS/SANE support is really great. The only problem I've noticed is if you use two-sided scanning with the ADF, the odd pages will be upside down. You could probably fix it if you use SANE at the command line, but I've only ever used XSane, and had to manually flip the pages after scanning.

On mine, plug-and-play.

This is true if you're in a dry/mostly-dry climate. In Southeast Asia, a humid tropical climate, they have problems with toner clumping instead of ink drying, and I've noticed that inkjets (invariably with CIS/bulk ink systems installed) are far more popular than lasers.

I can confirm; in 11 years I haven't had a single issue with ink drying out, with very sporadic use of our printer.

I have also noticed lots of government offices that print a bunch of stuff all put an inkjet on almost every (rather than shared laser printers I'd been expecting to see), and I wondered why. Your explanation may be the key to that too.

You’re posting on an article about other things inkjet is used for and then you say the only thing you need a home inkjet printer for is for photos?

????

Photos is the last thing I’d buy an inkjet printer for. I’d be using a home inkjet to make circuit boards, temporary shirts, screen printing masks, transparencies, stickers, etc.

Oh, did you read the article :)

"Agilent developed a way to print strands of DNA from the four nucleic acid bases—cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A), and thymine (T)."

"Inkjet systems are particularly suited for printing drugs in the form of thin films, such as transdermal patches to be applied to the skin and buccal films to be held in the cheek, where drugs can pass directly to the bloodstream without first going through the digestive system."

These applications are from dedicated machines, not available at BestBuy. Though I would like to see a supplier selling conductive inks for circuit board prototyping, and just maybe a home system could be filled with DNA or medicines??

The article also gave an interesting overview of the micro-dosing technology using for example piezo-electrics.

> I’d be using a home inkjet to make circuit boards

I've heard of using Laser printers for this but not InkJet

Laser printers are used for the toner transfer method, where you print your etching mask on a glossy paper and then transfer it to a PCB with heat (laminator, or clothes iron)

Inkjet printers are used in a direct print to PCB (remember those inkjet printers that could print on CDs back in the day?)

> Photos is the last thing I’d buy an inkjet printer for.

Huh. Printing photos is one of the main areas where inkjets still blow lasers out of the water.

I think the "occasional printing will clog up nozzles" affects some printer models more than the others.

As a single data point, I used a Canon i9990 for many years. It had a very irregular use -- I would print a few 13x19 photos or a tiled panorama, or an occasional school picture of kids for the relatives. Then it would sit unused for days to months until the next job. And even with this supposedly abusive cycle it ran like new until it completely died one day.

I personally had worse luck with image printing services. Maybe the machines are off, maybe the fellow who runs it does not care, but more often than not there is something subtly wrong: either the color is off, or there is a smudge at the edge or some minor artifact. My 2c.

> Their only advantage over laser printers is higher image quality.

There is also the significantly lower price. Although,if you print a lot, you'll eventually make up the price difference in toner. If, like me, you only need to print rarely, it's probably better just to print at a library or FedEx or UPS store when needed. But there is probably somewhere in the middle where a decent inkjet is more economical, especially if you can get one that works with third party ink cartridges.

As others have noted, some printers (for instance Epson EcoTank) have printing costs that are pretty much on par with laser printers and almost no clogging issues. People usually don't take into account energy costs when buying laser printers (toner is typically kept warm from instant, no-preheating printing) and, crucially, laser printers are terrible for indoor air quality. I therefore reached the opposite conclusion as you…

> If you don't print frequently, the ink nozzles clog up

Not sure about other printers, but I use HP InkJet for a decade, never clogged up, sometimes sits unused for a month or more.

> If you don't print frequently, the ink nozzles clog up...

This was true before, but my 10 year old Deskjet 4515 doesn't do that, even if you don't print for a couple of months.

Being an InkAdvantage(TM) printer, cartridges are not expensive either, and while its color inks are dye based (not pigmented), the colors hold up very well even when they are not stored properly (frame the photo up and leave it there).

B&W laser printers are nice, and they're cheap on the long run, but color laser printers polish the paper a lot (4 drums + baking), and reading long papers on that shiny copy is not very comfortable. Pens' handling on that paper also changes after that much heat and processing. Inkjets and B&W lasers doesn't have that problem.

I use my B&W laser for more disposable documents, but for code and papers which contains graphics, I prefer my Inkjet very much.

Lastly, people think that ink is just colored water. It's not. Same is true for toner. They're complex technologies. Yes, cartridges sent for some markup, but ink and toner quality varies. Esp. if you want archival prints.

Unless you print a ton, cost is definitely an issue. I was excited when I got a free color laser that was fairly new, but it was over $200 just to replace the black; my inkjet and a dozen replacements is still cheaper than refilling the all the laser cartridges

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