Can inkjet printerscompete with laser printers in the office market?
For a long time, laser printers have been the leading choice for office use because they are perceived to be faster and cheaper. Home users, on the other hand, have preferred inkjet for its superior quality output. Today, with inkjet printers now delivering faster speeds along with superior color reproduction, the enterprise as well as theSME segment is taking a serious look atinkjet as a better alternative to laser printers.
Why are inkjet printers back in vogue in the office printer market? Cost-conscious businesses are finding that the new technology at the heart of Epson’s range of next generation inkjet printers delivers the superior performance and enhanced productivitythey value.
In terms of application, it has traditionally been said that each technology – inkjet and laser – has its own strengths. Laser printing has typically been preferred for black and white print jobs, particularly documents. Inkjet technology, on the other hand, has been recognised for delivering superior output in color, particularly for graphics and photographs.
However, in addition to brilliant colors, Epson’s new business inkjet printers produce laser-sharp text on a wide variety of mediathrough its Micro Piezo and PrecisionCore printheads, delivering professional quality results to meet the most demanding standards.Its pigment inks bring exceptional print quality with waterproof, smudge-proof and fade-resistant printouts.
Users can expect print resolution of 600 x 600 dpi for standard prints and up to 4,800 x 1,200 dpi for prints with special media, with no warm-up time and less than seven seconds for the first page-out.
Epson’s unique Micro Piezo and PrecisionCore printheads enable precise quantities of ink at exactly the right point on the paper. With the precise accuracy of ink droplets, image quality can achieve rich gradations and with almost no granulation.
The heart of the technology is a next-generation print chip, no thicker than a razor blade. The chip uses a 1-micron thin piezo actuator that acts like a pump to deposit ink with dramatic speed and precision. PrecisionCore printheads deliver professional output quality at high speed by precisely controlling the droplet shape and volume at a rate up to 50,000 times a second per nozzle.
Fast speeds that rival color laser
Output speed is often a determining factor for busy offices that need to produce multiple copies, fast.Laser technology has led this race –till now. Epson’s new inkjet range uses their revolutionary PrecisionCore printhead technology to deliver ISO print speeds of up to 24imagesper minute (ipm), fast enough tomatch the performance of rival laser systems. Users will also enjoy a shorter waiting time to use the printer –the difference in technology means that unlike laser printers, inkjets do not need to warm up first.
Businesses with large teams or specific applications requiring constant heavy output have typically preferred laser printers, which offer maximum monthly duty cycles ranging between 2,000 and 20,000 pages. Inkjets have been regarded as more suitable for small teams or departments with monthly workloads in the range of 1,500 to 5,000 pages. Epson’s new business inkjet range turns this conventional insight on its head, their business inkjet printers offer a remarkable maximum monthly duty cycle of up to 75,000 pages of uninterrupted high-quality print without the need to replace consumables.
There is the initial cost of acquisition. While laser printers have been more expensive than their inkjet equivalents at point of purchase, buyers havetended to opt for laser due to the perception that toner cartridges typically deliver more pages per cartridge, and that it costs less to run a laser printer in the long run.
Epson’s business inkjet printers have disrupted the traditional inkjet cartridge business to deliver truly astonishing performance in inkjet systems – their ink pack replacement systems for enterprise use let you print or copy up to 75,000 black and color pages without needing to replace consumables.