posted
So, here I am, asking another tech question. This time its for my wife though!
She just got a job where part of her duties are to design brochures, etc etc. She convinced the place that the Adobe Creative Suite is important to have, but now she's trying to recommend a printer to them. The printer they have now evidently sucks bad enough that her brilliant design work looks like something a five year old made in Word.
So, she asked me to ask Hatrack (I speak quite highly of you peeps) for a recommendation. Is there a significant quality difference between laser printers and Inkjet printers, especially in terms of color? I'm not sure how much cost is a barrier, but lets just assume that its not a huge one.
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
There is an enormous difference in quality, depending on budget.
When she designs brochures, is she doing so with the intention of having an off-site company professional print them based on a CMYK profile she's included with the file? Does she frequently print things in-house and expect to be able to use the in-house prints as color references and/or finished product?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I can only speak from my own [limited] experience, but here at work our $250 Brother all-in-one ink jet produces color prints that are comparable to our $15,000+ Sharp MX-2700 color laser printer, which are comparable to color prints from my own HP all-in-one ink jet at home.
The biggest difference* is the speed of the laser printer (about 10x faster) and the durability of the ink: the ink jet prints will smudge if rubbed (at least until the ink fully cures), or bleed and run if they get wet; laser prints will not.
*Actually, the biggest difference is price. For the price of our Sharp machine and one set of toner cartridges (4 @ about $70 each), I could drown in ink jet printers and spare cartridges.
Posts: 692 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Well, to be fair, the Sharp MX-2700 is a MFP that sacrifices print quality for speed and various other functions (like duplexing, multiple paper trays, scanning, etc.) It doesn't cost $15,000 because it's supposed to print vastly better than your Brother all-in-one. And HP makes truly, truly crappy inkjets when it comes to color reproduction. So your sentence is: "this midrange all-in-one business bulk laser printer produces color copies equivalent in copy to this bad personal all-in-one inkjet and this low-cost personal all-in-one laser printer."
First off, with very rare exceptions, "all-in-one" can be freely swapped for the word "low-quality" without any loss of meaning. *grin* This is less true of expensive business printers, but it's worth keeping in mind that expensive business printers generally put a low priority on color reproduction in particular, because that specific printer requirement is way at the bottom of a list of things expected of an office printer.
I don't want to get into "I'm a turtleneck-wearing, Starbucks-drinking designer type, and you know nothing! Nut-think!" arguments, here, but I've been in those arguments. Designers care a great deal about certain elements of print quality which are sadly overlooked by most office laser printer manufacturers -- except in high-end or dedicated "photo" models.
To be honest, I have found that many pros still insist on a low-end dye sub printer over a laser simply because it's very hard for most laser printers to maintain a consistent color plane. Even worse, speed is the enemy of a quality color laser; the faster the laser, the less likely the color reproduction is going to be accurate and consistent.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Oh, I know. I just wanted to jump in because I've heard a lot of people who haven't run into color reproduction problems with lasers say, "Oh, no, color lasers do a fine job" -- and, indeed, for business printing, I'll be the first to admit that they've gotten much better over the last decade and are now certainly acceptable for most purposes.
But if Dr. Strangelove's wife is looking for a printer that can give her reliable, full-color and full-coverage prototypes of her pre-press brochures, most lasers won't meet that need until she gets up into the "very pricey" category. Many lasers still have a lot of problems laying down consistent gradients on the same document, even.
On the other hand, depending on the duty cycle expected, laser printers are going to be much cheaper over the long run. A dye sub printer under $400 will produce better brochures than a laser over $1200, but the cost of dye will be ruinous if you're printing often. (On the other hand, dye sub printers waste dye even if the image is blank, meaning that even though dye carts are more expensive than ink, it's possible that a dye sub printer doing full-coverage brochures will cost slightly less over the long run than an inkjet doing the same thing. Maybe.)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I guess I didn't explicitly state that the high dollar laser printer was no better than the cheap ink jet, but that's what I meant to convey in my post.
I'm just a drafter/designer so my printing needs favor sharp straight lines over anything else anyway.
...
And now I'll duck out. Posts: 692 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
We recently got a Sharp MX-3100N in our office, and its color is terrible. The tech guys have come in and fiddled with it and insist that it's properly calibrated and all that, but some of the colors are coming out rather skewed and muted. Our cheap, aging HP LaserJet 2605 produces much more accurate and consistent color, but even it has its issues.
Unfortunately, I don't have any good recommendations.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
When printing on inkjet, the important this is not the quality of the printer, but the quality of the PAPER.
If you get cheap paper, or even some expensive heavy stock paper, the ink will bleed in to the fabric of the page and the colors will blend and lose their sharpness.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Laser quality is better. Inkjets apparently have thiotimoline in the ink, because they seem to run out of ink even before you put the cartridges in.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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When it comes to color reproduction, this is not true. There are some lasers that rival inkjets and dye subs for color reproduction, but they are not inexpensive.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I second everything Tom has said. Nighthawk is right, too. With ink, the quality of paper makes a tremendous difference. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a more important concern than the quality of the printer, though.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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(Hopefully my wife will pop on under my name at some point today and respond. Thanks for the help so far!)
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Something Tom touched on made think... Is she going to be using the printer for pre-press proofs & mock ups, or is she planning on actually printing the whole run with it in-house. I know it's probably obvious, but it's definitely better to hire out the print work.
I am sure that she'll be able to settle on a printer that will reproduce color accurately enough, just bear in mind that it's quite possible to have some colors that are out-of-gamut. This is especially true if the printer only runs CMYK. Many these days have additional colors like Light Cyan, Light Magenta, Orange, Green & others.
Also, if color reproduction is very important, she should have it properly profiled.
Posts: 369 | Registered: Apr 2007
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