42 ms·

> While laser printers do the big printing jobs in commercial settings, the inkjet printer has become the printer most of us use at home and at the office. I d

> While laser printers do the big printing jobs in commercial settings, the inkjet printer has become the printer most of us use at home and at the office. I don't know who "most of us" is, but I had to check the year it was published because this is so wrong for everyone I know, home or office. Black and white laser printers are price competitive with color inkjet printers in the short and long term for home or small office use. Most people don't need color, or if they do, inkjet is slow and low quality and more expensive than retail print shops for things like photos or full page flyers.

sys_64738 3y ago
I got a couple of laser printers for 50 bucks and when they ran out of ink I just toss them and get another. Inkjet printers are rubbish.
- DaSHacka 3y ago
  Are the inkjet or laser printers rubbish in this scenario? Sounds like you're constantly replacing the laser ones
  - sys_64738 3y ago
    No they’re pretty good but I don’t print much anymore. Dell laser printer is eight years old and still using original toner cartridge.
- lupire 3y ago
  Laser printers don't have ink, and almost never run out of toner, and the toner is cheap. Why on earth would you toss them?
  - sys_64738 3y ago
    Toss is probably the wrong word. Added to the e-Waste pile in my basement.
kstrauser 3y ago
I splurged on a color laser. It's brilliant and cheap for printing color documents. It's also really bad at printing photos. Know what's great for printing photos? The Walgreens up the block. It prints them waaaaayyyy more cheaply and nicely than any inkjet I've ever owned. The 2 times a year I want to frame and hang up a nice photo, I upload it to them and then walk over an hour later to pick it up. There's no plausible reason I'd ever buy an inkjet again.
- lloydatkinson 3y ago
  > It's also really bad at printing photos. Yours in particular or generally laser printers? If the last one, that sounds surprising
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - joecool1029 3y ago
    > If the last one, that sounds surprising Is it? Soho color laser printers are calibrated and designed to print color documents, not photos. They use CMYK (4) colors and inkjets designed for photos use 6 or more. It's possible to do photos with it but generally the laser printers most people have are not really designed for high quality photo (where a cheaper inkjet would be), they will show banding and be less color accurate.
    - lupire 3y ago
      Inkjets use 6 colors? I've never seen that at consumer retail. I see 3 color plus black.
      - joecool1029 3y ago
        They can, yes. Here's a HP doc on 5 color ones with photo cartridge that are fairly common: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01839024 https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01839024 Light cyan and light magenta are usually the additional colors added https://www.macworld.com/article/152010/6inkhetprinters.html https://www.macworld.com/article/152010/6inkhetprinters.html There are 7 color printers from Epson that add a dilute black.
tombert 3y ago
Yeah, I sort of swore a blood oath that I would never buy another ink jet printer 10 years ago because one of my color cartridges dried up, and it wouldn't let me even print black and white, despite the fact that the black and white cartridge appeared to be fine. Replacing the color cartridge was like $70. Instead of fixing this problem, I threw the ink jet away, and found a used Samsung ML-2010 on ebay for $60. It prints documents just fine, the only things I ever bother printing are forms that I have to sign. Now I have a 15 year old HP office printer, also only black and white, and I genuinely like it. If I ever need to print color for whatever reason, I'll walk to one of the print shops a few blocks from me. It's not worth keeping a full color printer in my house that will work exactly once.
- II2II 3y ago
  After avoiding inkjet printers for some 30 years, I purchased a colour inkjet printer after comparing the cost per page to a colour laser. Granted, I went for a tank based (rather than cartridge based) printer. Will I be happy with the decision 10 years down the road (which is the age of my current laser printer)? I have no idea. But the point is that you can avoid the cartridge based inkjets and get something where you refill the colours according to your needs. I also suspect that some of the applications mentioned in the article aren't using the built-to-a-price-point inkjet printers. Quality varies. Sometimes you have to check the reviews and pay a bit more for that quality.
  - tombert 3y ago
    Which model did you get?
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      I don't know if this is what they purchased, but EcoTank is a good term to search for if you want an inkjet that won't charge you an arm and a leg for proprietary cartridges. The basic idea is that instead of swappable cartridges, they just have ink tanks that you top up from a squirt bottle. These bottles are cheaper than any cartridge while containing like ten times the amount of ink.
lmm 3y ago
If you just want to occasionally print out concert tickets / photocopy id documents / etc., half-assing it by getting a that only does black and white is the worst of both worlds - better to either save the space by not owning a printer at all, or avoid ever having to go to a print shop by having a printer that can do colour when you need it. If you're actually printing out a lot of documents then yeah laser makes sense, but I've never understood the HN home laser dogma.
- tverbeure 3y ago
  I almost never print, but when I do I don't want to struggle with an inkjet printer that has dried up nozzles. A $140 Brother laser printer will pretty much work for the rest of your life.
  - Liftyee 3y ago
    This anecdotally holds up, at least for Brother laser printers made in the 2010's. Over a decade later it's still working perfectly. Granted I do have to nudge a mechanical part back into place every year, but the service manual is so good that maintenance is near-trivial.
  - lmm 3y ago
    I've been using inkjets for decades and never had this "dried up nozzles" problem, shrug.
    - lupire 3y ago
      Do you print at least weekly?
      - lmm 3y ago
        No. I print when I need to, and there have been stretches of at least several months when I haven't printed anything.
- xmprt 3y ago
CharlesW 3y ago
> I don't know who "most of us" is… Meaning, ~75% of us (see pages 14-16): https://o1.rtcdn.net/uploads/2022/04/Issue123EN2205-V4.pdf https://o1.rtcdn.net/uploads/2022/04/Issue123EN2205-V4.pdf
- lupire 3y ago
  The article says that 75% of pages printed in home/office desktop is laser (the blue segment of the pie). I suspect most of us printer owners own inkjets, but people who print a lot of pages use laser, while inkjets are decorative after terrible experience with the first cartridge.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > The article says that 75% of pages printed in home/office desktop is laser (the blue segment of the pie). Thank you, you're right — this supports the parent commenter's point for the combined business and home markets. I wasn't able to find any data on the breakdown for the home market specifically, but based on my social circle I'd guess COVID/remote work significantly increased home laser purchases. > …while inkjets are decorative after terrible experience with the first cartridge. Having bought an inkjet after a two-decade "only laser/LED" rule, tank/CISS ink is making inkjets nice again. Still, I wouldn't recommend an inkjet if you (1) never intend to print photos/images or (2) regularly go more than a month without printing.

sys_64738 3y ago

I got a couple of laser printers for 50 bucks and when they ran out of ink I just toss them and get another. Inkjet printers are rubbish.

DaSHacka 3y ago
Are the inkjet or laser printers rubbish in this scenario? Sounds like you're constantly replacing the laser ones
- sys_64738 3y ago
  No they’re pretty good but I don’t print much anymore. Dell laser printer is eight years old and still using original toner cartridge.
lupire 3y ago
Laser printers don't have ink, and almost never run out of toner, and the toner is cheap. Why on earth would you toss them?
- sys_64738 3y ago
  Toss is probably the wrong word. Added to the e-Waste pile in my basement.

kstrauser 3y ago

I splurged on a color laser. It's brilliant and cheap for printing color documents. It's also really bad at printing photos. Know what's great for printing photos? The Walgreens up the block. It prints them waaaaayyyy more cheaply and nicely than any inkjet I've ever owned. The 2 times a year I want to frame and hang up a nice photo, I upload it to them and then walk over an hour later to pick it up. There's no plausible reason I'd ever buy an inkjet again.

lloydatkinson 3y ago
> It's also really bad at printing photos. Yours in particular or generally laser printers? If the last one, that sounds surprising
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- joecool1029 3y ago
  > If the last one, that sounds surprising Is it? Soho color laser printers are calibrated and designed to print color documents, not photos. They use CMYK (4) colors and inkjets designed for photos use 6 or more. It's possible to do photos with it but generally the laser printers most people have are not really designed for high quality photo (where a cheaper inkjet would be), they will show banding and be less color accurate.
  - lupire 3y ago
    Inkjets use 6 colors? I've never seen that at consumer retail. I see 3 color plus black.
    - joecool1029 3y ago
      They can, yes. Here's a HP doc on 5 color ones with photo cartridge that are fairly common: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01839024 https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01839024 Light cyan and light magenta are usually the additional colors added https://www.macworld.com/article/152010/6inkhetprinters.html https://www.macworld.com/article/152010/6inkhetprinters.html There are 7 color printers from Epson that add a dilute black.

tombert 3y ago

Yeah, I sort of swore a blood oath that I would never buy another ink jet printer 10 years ago because one of my color cartridges dried up, and it wouldn't let me even print black and white, despite the fact that the black and white cartridge appeared to be fine. Replacing the color cartridge was like $70. Instead of fixing this problem, I threw the ink jet away, and found a used Samsung ML-2010 on ebay for $60. It prints documents just fine, the only things I ever bother printing are forms that I have to sign. Now I have a 15 year old HP office printer, also only black and white, and I genuinely like it. If I ever need to print color for whatever reason, I'll walk to one of the print shops a few blocks from me. It's not worth keeping a full color printer in my house that will work exactly once.

II2II 3y ago
After avoiding inkjet printers for some 30 years, I purchased a colour inkjet printer after comparing the cost per page to a colour laser. Granted, I went for a tank based (rather than cartridge based) printer. Will I be happy with the decision 10 years down the road (which is the age of my current laser printer)? I have no idea. But the point is that you can avoid the cartridge based inkjets and get something where you refill the colours according to your needs. I also suspect that some of the applications mentioned in the article aren't using the built-to-a-price-point inkjet printers. Quality varies. Sometimes you have to check the reviews and pay a bit more for that quality.
- tombert 3y ago
  Which model did you get?
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    I don't know if this is what they purchased, but EcoTank is a good term to search for if you want an inkjet that won't charge you an arm and a leg for proprietary cartridges. The basic idea is that instead of swappable cartridges, they just have ink tanks that you top up from a squirt bottle. These bottles are cheaper than any cartridge while containing like ten times the amount of ink.

lmm 3y ago

If you just want to occasionally print out concert tickets / photocopy id documents / etc., half-assing it by getting a that only does black and white is the worst of both worlds - better to either save the space by not owning a printer at all, or avoid ever having to go to a print shop by having a printer that can do colour when you need it. If you're actually printing out a lot of documents then yeah laser makes sense, but I've never understood the HN home laser dogma.

tverbeure 3y ago
I almost never print, but when I do I don't want to struggle with an inkjet printer that has dried up nozzles. A $140 Brother laser printer will pretty much work for the rest of your life.
- Liftyee 3y ago
  This anecdotally holds up, at least for Brother laser printers made in the 2010's. Over a decade later it's still working perfectly. Granted I do have to nudge a mechanical part back into place every year, but the service manual is so good that maintenance is near-trivial.
- lmm 3y ago
  I've been using inkjets for decades and never had this "dried up nozzles" problem, shrug.
  - lupire 3y ago
    Do you print at least weekly?
    - lmm 3y ago
      No. I print when I need to, and there have been stretches of at least several months when I haven't printed anything.
xmprt 3y ago

CharlesW 3y ago

> I don't know who "most of us" is… Meaning, ~75% of us (see pages 14-16): https://o1.rtcdn.net/uploads/2022/04/Issue123EN2205-V4.pdf https://o1.rtcdn.net/uploads/2022/04/Issue123EN2205-V4.pdf

lupire 3y ago
The article says that 75% of pages printed in home/office desktop is laser (the blue segment of the pie). I suspect most of us printer owners own inkjets, but people who print a lot of pages use laser, while inkjets are decorative after terrible experience with the first cartridge.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > The article says that 75% of pages printed in home/office desktop is laser (the blue segment of the pie). Thank you, you're right — this supports the parent commenter's point for the combined business and home markets. I wasn't able to find any data on the breakdown for the home market specifically, but based on my social circle I'd guess COVID/remote work significantly increased home laser purchases. > …while inkjets are decorative after terrible experience with the first cartridge. Having bought an inkjet after a two-decade "only laser/LED" rule, tank/CISS ink is making inkjets nice again. Still, I wouldn't recommend an inkjet if you (1) never intend to print photos/images or (2) regularly go more than a month without printing.