Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Photo Printers vs. All Purpose Printers

Oct 26, 2010 7:01AM PDT

I'm thinking about buying a new printer. In the stores they have "home and office" printers and "photo" printers. Do photo printers provide better quality when printing out photos? Is the quality difference enough that if most of my printing is photos that I should choose it over the home and offic printer? Thanks.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
and then...of the 2 types of "photo printer"...
Oct 26, 2010 8:02AM PDT

there's the dot-matrix and the dye. The dye one are like regular photograph. Great looking but more expensive per print. The difference between the other 2 dot matrix is the number of colors to make the print (which means more shade).

Almost forget; there's laser printer...can't make any comment about that (never own/use one).

- Collapse -
It depends on your usage...
Oct 26, 2010 10:31PM PDT

If the printer will do generally more in photo than plain printing, get the photo printer. The main reason is generally, it will be readily accept the photo grade inks supplied. These in turn are more "archival ready ink". Overall, the quality of photo printing better and more demanding thus can be slower, but even that is greatly improved over similar older models. A typical AIO printer will do OK and even look good, but these don't accept photo grade inks. Even, if you find one, its just another option laden printer. If that works for you, get it. The whole process of inkjet printing consumes alot of ink, so be prepared to pay for original inks. Should you decide to buy 3rd party ink, consider them over the long run to be lesser grade and/or reliable, but that depends on the vendors, there's always the chance that cheap is cheap saying becomes true.

IMHO, if you really need photos as in to *keep*, get the photo printer. Considering the cost of a cheap printer for typical output and then swap the photo ptr. when you need it.

tada -----Willy Happy

- Collapse -
My memories is slowly going...
Oct 27, 2010 1:38AM PDT

"inkjet" is what I had in mind. "dot matrix"..OMG!