7 Evolving printer technology

While some people love to hate printers, there’s no denying the big players are doing their utmost to make it exciting again. HP is bringing out inkjet printers that feature fewer moving parts than in years past, and Canon is following Epson’s lead by developing its own printers that use tanks of ink rather than traditional cartridges.

HP’s innovation is by far the more exciting of the two, at least from a technical perspective. The company has developed a new kind of print head called PageWide technology that sits completely across the width of the paper. This print head is peppered with ink nozzles that spray ink where it’s needed, and because these are arranged across the width of the page, the print head doesn’t need to move to get the ink where it needs to be.

The absence of moving print head parts means much less wear and tear on the printer, and thus much higher reliability and lower maintenance costs – two things that businesses that print a lot will no doubt appreciate. But that’s not all – the print quality remains as good as HP has become known for, so PageWide tech is an all-round win.

Canon, meanwhile, is joining Epson in addressing consumers’ biggest gripe about modern-day printers – the cost of ink. By adopting a conceptually-similar “ink tank” system to Epson’s in the company’s PIXMA range, Canon is allowing its customers to buy ink by the bottle. And because bottles hold a lot more ink than cartridges do and people can get a lot more pages printed for their cash, the per-page cost of printing with PIXMA printers has dropped like a stone.

As the move to different printing technologies is clearly catching on, it’s something to keep an eye out for from other vendors as 2017 progresses. In the meantime, feel free to adopt any of the existing printers that use these new technologies and enjoy the cost savings they represent while the rest of the industry rushes to keep up.

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