​Inkjets vs Lasers: Can An Inkjet Printer Compete With A Laser Printer?

When it comes to printers, laser and inkjet printers both tend to have their own specialities. Laser printers are more known for their speed and quality of text. Inkjet printers are usually known for being able to print high quality photos at a pretty reasonable price.

In 2014, Epson and HP both released a new line of inkjet printers that set out to prove that they can provide the best of inkjet and laser printers within one device. Since that time, there has been a test conducted to compare the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 with the HP Officejet Pro 8620. Well, the results are in and you are now invited to review them with us now.

First set-up and initiation

HP:

• Really easy set-up for a stylish printer that isn’t too big or small.
• Aligning brand new cartridges causes the printer to shake very noticeably.
• After about a 3 minute set-up period, everything was ready to go.

Epson:

• Has a slightly more complicated set-up process and the printer has a more retro look and feel even though it also includes the use of a touch screen.
• Though the printer doesn’t shake while aligning new cartridges, it is noticeably louder.
• Took over 10 minutes from the time of inserting the cartridges before the printer was initialised.

Installation and networking

HP:

• Fast installation of HP drivers to the computer from the CD provided.
• Adding the printer to the computer network via touch screen was simple and easy.
• The entire set-up from start to finish was around 10 minutes.

Epson:

• Extreme difficulty experienced with trying to find a method of connecting the printer with the computer network even with multiple methods provided.
• Installation software tends to have complications and stalling issues.
• Entire set-up from start to finish could go well over an hour for a beginner.

The Print-Off

Black and White Text

Testing the two printers with a 7 page document of all the same fonts and other information in them, these were the results in terms of speed.

Speed

Quality

Both documents looked great, but the quality from Epson was clearly the best on this test. It appears that having documents that require a lot of font changes causes the HP print quality to become a bit blurry at times in comparison.

Colour Text

Using a similar document as in the black and white test, colours were added at a very generous amount to try to push them to their max in a colour printing test. These were the results:

Speed

Quality

Epson wins this category without a doubt. There were lots of errors and inconsistencies throughout the documents printed from the HP printer. Though neither printer did a perfect job with a lot of highlighted text, pages from Epson were far clearer than those from HP.

At the end of it all, both printers had relatively good results considering the strain of the testing that was put on them. However, if there’s a need to say which printer did the best, it would have to be Epson in this case. Therefore, if you’re looking for one of the best inkjet printers that can also provide close to laser quality results, take a look at the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 for sure.

Overall Results

Inkjet has really come a long way in recent years, and produced some amazing quality.  When images from the Inkjet printers were printed on photo paper there was no comparison, the inkjets absolutely dominate.  But When it came to producing crisp text the laser did win out.  

The Epson Workforce was the better of the 2 in our testing but both produced great results.  Bottom line is that if you need to use a inkjet printer you can still get great quality, but if you mainly produce text documents and don't mind the longer time to the first page printed then laser is a great option.