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

[Manuchau]

I have 3 customers who have purchased the HP 6940 or 6980 models. Both have been discontinued right now, and prices have fallen drastically.

These printers are rated for 36ppm, and are two of the last HP models to use the large #96 black cartridge, which can be refilled easily for pennies.

I wouldn't recommend it for people who have to do a lot of colour work, but it is an inexpensive printer for fast, sharp black text printing. When you do buy a printer, let us know which choice you did make, and your level of satisfaction.

 

[fotofreek]

Tin Ho - After the first OEM carts that came with my i960 I've used MIS or Computer friends inks exclusively. I believe that both are Imaging Specialist (IS) inks. I just bought some IS inks from our forum participant, Mikling, but I haven't had a chance to use them yet. I've' tried several settings and found that the MIS inks work just fine with the i960 and my wife's ip5000 with the glossy photo setting on both printers. Beautiful color prints. Tweaking or a custom profile may help by a few percent, but the results I'm getting are equal to the appearance of lab prints in my estimation. The answer to the original poster is that I would absolutely refill with aftermarket inks as long as they are IS (MIS, Computer Friends, or Mikling), Formulabs, or Hobbicolors. I've set up a friend with Hobbicolor inks on his ip5000. I could be wrong, but I think the colors were just a little less vibrant. I've seen some forum members use the newer ink set for the chipped carts from hobbicolors as the magenta is slightly different and they like the vibrancy of the prints better.

 

[Tin Ho]

For PrinterLP and anyone who is interested , I just printed a page of text with default quality, plain paper and from the top paper tray. It took 6 seconds only. That's a full page of text and the quality is at a level if it were my resume it would be good enough. This is how fast ip4300 is in printing text. I don't think I will ever need to print at higher quality than that. This is why I think it is a very fast printer.

Fotofreek, I got a set of RC-52 ink from Weink a few years ago for my i960. After 6 months into using the ink there was fungus growing in the PC ink botlle. I then found that Weink suggested to filter the PC ink every 6 months. At that point I stopped using the ink. My impression of RC-52 ink was that it was IS ink. I found the Cyan to be a bit off from OEM Cyan. I could not get deep blue on my prints as OEM ink did. That difference was quite subtle on plain paper. My RC-52 ink bottles have IS ink part numbers on them which read like WJxxxx. That's how I identified them as IS inks. But it has been at least 3 years since I had RC-52 ink so things may be very different today.

 

[fotofreek]

Tin Ho I've had 'gunk" in ink that I've had for about a year. No straining for me, either. I buy in small quantities (2 oz) and am not reluctant to discard old ink as the price is so cheap compared to OEM. In the past I have had four sets of carts standing by, but I am going to stop that practice as I am sure that some of the refilled carts are older than they should be. I'll keep one or two carts on standby of each color and have a label on them to date refills and number of refills. I don't recall which colors have been the problem. It certainly hasn't been black or yellow.

 

[PrinterLP]

Well, we went ahead and purchased the Canon iP4500. It is definitely faster than our other Canon (iP 2200), though the quality of text printing is not quite as good. Even using the highest quality settings on the iP4500, it sometimes seems like there is too much ink being used and the text does not look as sharp and clear as it does when printing on the highest quality settings on the iP2200. Overall, though, I am pleased with the choice, as my main goal was to find an inkjet that could print text at a good speed.

Thanks again for all your help!

 

[Tin Ho]

That's surprising. I suggest that you make sure that you did set the ip4500 to plain paper. If you had set the medium type to other paper you would not be printing with the pigmented ink in the PGI5 cartridge. You would not get the best printing quality as a result.

 

[fotofreek]

For text printing on plain paper there is no need to set the printer to gray scale. This setting my actually default back to the dye-based inks instead of using the pigmented ink that is intended for text, plain paper printing.