Looking for the fastest Inkjet printer - only needed to print text

[PrinterLP]

I'm looking for the fastest inkjet printer out there. I'm going to use this printer to print text (only covering about 20%-70% of a sheet) on medium card stock. I am currently using a Canon Pixma iP6220D, which is running at Best quality around 2-3 ppm. I already use a laser printer, which is much faster, but I need an inkjet in order to do certain textures of cards that aren't ok to run on the more delicate laser printers.
So far, in my search, I've found some HPs that claim to print 36 ppm in draft mode, but when put into Best Quality mode, that speed drops to around 3-5 ppm.
My other avenues on this quest have led me to a Riso HC 5500, which claims to be a lot faster (120 ppm) but is around $25,000
I'm hoping to find something for a few hundred dollars that will be able to quickly print 5 x 7 -- 8.5 x 11 sheets of medium weight card stock (approx. 110 lb) with 50% text coverage. Goal is anything that can do more than 6-8 ppm.
I feel like I've exhausted my web searching possibilities and would appreciate any help at all. I spoke with an HP salesperson who told me that the Inkjet 2800 would be my fastest and best bet, but that it can only print 4 pages per minute. Yikes!
Thanks in advance for your help!!!

 

[KnightCrawler]

The iP6220D is a terrible choice since it's a dedicated photo printer. I'd recommend the Canon IP4500 or HP Officejet Pro K5400. Both have been tested to do 8+ pages according to CNET.

 

[Trigger 37]

PrinterLP,... I, and many of the other masters of this web site will only recommend Canon printers,... never any HP printers. The canon printers can be maintained, fixed, and repaired. You can actually buy parts from Canon for your printers. Try that from HP. There are several Canon printers that print up to 22-25 ppm, starting with the i560, and any Canon printer that uses the Large black BCI-3e ink cart. Mostly Canon makes two kinds of printers. They are either fast and have good photo qualiity or they are the top of the line photo quality and have a small black ink cart that is a BCI-6blk. My old Canon i560 would do 22 ppm in fast black and the quality was excellent. I remember the time my Daughter was here just for the end of the year and she had a Government Grant to get submitted before the first of the year. We printed the entire Grant proposal on my i560 just as fast as it would go. It worked wonderfully. She was quite impressed.

Go the the Canon Web site listed below and check out as many of the printers you would like to for performance. Any of them will last forwever.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=SupportIndexAct

Once you are here, just look at the iSeries printers. YOu should also check out the iPixima printers for those that have the larger BCI-3e black ink cart. This is a clue that they will be fast.

 

[lolopr1]

Take a look to the new epson R280
Black text up to 37 ppm
Color text up to 38 ppm
4" x 6" photo in as fast as 11 seconds
See note 2
2 Pages per minute (ppm) speed measured after first page, based on black text and color text patterns in Draft Mode on plain paper. Color photo in Draft Mode on Premium Photo Paper Glossy measured from start of paper feed. Additional print time will vary based on system configuration, software application and page complexity.


The best thing about the new Epson printers is that you can buy Refillable Cartridges on eBay for around $35 a set. Good Luck

 

[Tin Ho]

Epson printers are usually not as fast as Canon. They have much fewer nozzles (less resolution). When printing in higher resolution and higher quality they are really like dogs. Canon printers that have nigh number of nozzle count are the best text printers. They are screamingly fast even at higher resolution and higher quality. Check out ip4300 if you still can find out. Ip4500 is currently all over every computer store. It is said to be the same printer as ip4300 but has newer firmware. It has all the advantages as trigger 37 said. Don't fall into an Epson. It could be your worst decision in buying a printer for fast text printing.

 

[lolopr1]

PrinterLP,... I, and many of the other masters of this web site will only recommend Canon printers,... never any HP printers.

Tin Ho, It has all the advantages as trigger 37 said. Don't fall into an Epson.????:/

I think was HP no Epson, but all comes down to taste and savings, another thing is that you can't compare two completely different printhead technologies. Because each nozzle in Epson's MicroPiezo print heads can produce 5 different ink droplet sizes, Epson print heads do not have to have additional nozzles dedicated to each specific droplet size like manufacturers who use thermal print head technology. Epson's MicroPiezo technology reduces print head costs and increase print speed. For example, the R260 and R380 printers can produce a 4x6 borderless print in their default photo speed in as fast as 32 seconds. By comparison, the HP PS7160 & HP PS7360 takes 88 seconds in their default photo speed; and the Canon iP67000 takes 47 seconds in their default photo speed. Like I said all comes down to taste and savings I use both Canon (ip6600) and Espon (R380) they are both great printers but with the Epson R380 you can buy Refillable cartridges that allow you to save time and money since Epson cartridges are spongeless you don't have to replace or clean the cartridges.
Don't matter which printer do you choose the trick here is to save money and get the job done right. Good Luck.

 

[fotofreek]

The fastest B/W printers are lasers, hands down. I recently purchased a new laser printer. My requirements were that I wanted to print on envelopes and fairly stiff card stock as well as the usual paper stock. I wanted an aux paper tray to accept a stack of paper to be printed, and I required a straight paper path with a tray to catch printer output. I went to the nearest store that had several laser printers of various manufacturers available for demo purposes. I started with the least expensive unit that had the paper handling I required and kept moving up until I got to the unit that printed on the paper samples I brought to the store. The unit that would do what I needed is the HP P3005 laserjet. On line, it is available for $450 US or more. I bought it from Adorama for $499 as I had previous purchases from them that were OK.

Success with printing on textured card stock depends on 1) a straight paper path, 2) sufficient paper handling capability for card stock which includes the gap through which the paper passes, and 3) the heat level of the fuser that sets the toner. Until I got to the P3005, the toner wouldn't fuse onto envelopes and card stock with the cheaper units. Locally, in San Francisco, the only P3005 units that were in stock at any store were "loaded" models that were network ready, etc. That is why I had to buy online. I know that this cost is higher than you wished to spend, but you won't substantially increase your speed of output til you consider such an option. Your card stock may work just fine in a cheaper laser printer, but you won't know until you try it.

By the way, some inkjets don't do well with card stock and envelopes either! Whichever one you decide to buy, if they don't have a demo model to try in the store, be sure to buy it where they have a liberal return policy if it doesn't work out.

 

[Tin Ho]

Yes, I fogot about lasers. They are the way to go for B&W text. They are fairly reliable too. Toner replacement is a little tricky to find the right one though. Inkjet is really best in color printing.

Piezo print heads are far more expensive to manufacture than thermo bubble-jet print heads. They are also much more difficult to increase nozzle density. To compare the speed of printing between Epson and Canon don't look at advertised numbers. Print at highest quality and compare. I have used Epsons for text before. When you print really small text it becomes clear that Epson is really behind Canon. I will never use Epson for text again.

 

[PrinterLP]

Thanks to all for your responses so far!!
I'm going to have to find somewhere to check out demos.

Like I said, I currently have a Canon Pixma iP6220D doing the card stock that I hope to do with my new printer, but the speed is barely 2-4 ppm and it's killing me.

I have a few laser printers that work very quickly, but I need an inkjet to supplement.

Trigger - the Canon i560 you mentioned at 22 ppm sounds like my dream come true. I'm going to hop on to their site and look at specs, then maybe see if anyone local has it in stock to demo.

Thanks to all for your input - I WELCOME anything you may still have to offer.
Again, a million thanks!

 

[Trigger 37]

PrinterLP,....I'm sorry but I had to LOL.... There haven't been any i560 for 3 years. The only place you can find one is now and then on ebay. I just sold my last one on eBay for $130 plus $25 shipping. Of course it was totally refurbished and had a new printhead which is pretty expensive, and it came with my Repair Manual and all the Canon Documentation including both the Service Manual and the Parts Catalog. If I'm lucky I get one or two a year and then they have to be refurbished.

The i560 is not the only good printer. The iP3000 has the same ink carts and the same performance at 22ppm black fast text. The iP4000 and the ip5000 again have the BCI-3e black ink cart but are rated as 25ppm black fast text. Canon's printer models begin to jump around and when they introduced the iP4200 it came with the newer CLi-8 and PGI-5 ink carts that have the chips and it is rated at 29PPM B-F-T. Of course these are "Chipped" ink carts, but that is beginning to not bother a lot of people anymore. For example, I just used my iP6600d till the ink got low and then refilled each ink cart as it got low. I never let it run out. Pretty soon Canon ink monitor told me the ink cart must be empty since it has counted the ink drops and there is no way any could be left. Actully it just tells you the ink carts are out and must be replaced and then warns you about filling them with unauthorized ink,.etc. So I use their stop/reset routine to shut down their ink monitor and continue to watch them myself, as I have always done anyway, and refill then as they need it. This is not a problem for people that refill. Now if you are the type of person that would never refill an ink cart, you can buy new Canon ink carts for about $80 per set, or you can buy remanufactured ink carts for about $40 a set, or you could buy some other compatible ink carts full of ink but without chips and try and transfer the chips from your old Canon ink carts to your new ink carts,which the printer will reject until you shut down the ink monitor.

So you have all kinds of choices. The iP6220 printer is about the worst choice you could have made... It has one ink cart for black and one ink cart that has C,M,Y, Pc, Pm, and the ink cart is not that big so the volume of ink can't be more than 5ml per color which doesn't last very long. This guy only has 384 nozzles per color and that is what makes it so slow, especially if you print at the highest resolution. Run a print test on you card stock and print with a quality of 1, then 2, and then 3 and see what the speed difference it, and check the quality. On card stock I bet you will be hard pressed to see a lot of difference in 1 and 3 but a lot of speed difference.

If you are printing color images on card stock you can forget the 22+ ppm speed as this is only for "Fast Black Test" and this uses the Pigment based ink cart BCI-3e. When you print in any mode other that black fast text, all your images will be produced via the color ink carts, even the black text. It will use all 3 colors , CMY to make black. and of course that is done with Dye ink which is not water resistant.

Give us a description of what you are actually printing on card stock and maybe we can provide a more intelligent answer. By the way, I'm in the process of refurbishing a couple of iP4200 printers and modifying the ink carts for refilling. These printer will come with my Repair Manual and all the other stuff. It will be a couple of weeks as I have a couple of other printers that are ahead of this in the que.