Difference Between Inkjet Printer and Dot Matrix Printer

Inkjet Printer vs Dot Matrix Printer

Summary: Difference Between Inkjet Printer and Dot Matrix Printer is that Ink-jet printer is a type of non-impact printer which sprays tiny drops of liquid ink onto a piece of paper to form graphics and characters. While Dot-matrix printer produce printed images, they produce image when tine wire pins on a print head mechanism strike an inked ribbon.

Inkjet Printer

Ink-jet printer is a type of non-impact printer which sprays tiny drops of liquid ink onto a piece of paper to form graphics and characters. They become very popular in color printers for use in home. They produce graphics and text in both black-and-white and can produce color text and graphics on different variety of papers. Reasonable ink-jet printer costs less than $100.

The quality of an ink-jet printer can be determined by its resolution. Printer resolution can be measured by measuring the number of dots per inch (dpi) a printer can print. Most printers can print 1200-4800 dpi. And the speed of an ink-jet printer is measured by number of pages per minute (ppm) it can print. The speed of most ink-jet printers is from 12-36 ppm but they print graphics and colors at a slower rate.

Print head mechanism used in ink-jet printer contains ink-filled cartridges, in which each cartridge has fifty to hundreds of small ink holes or nozzles. The ink is released through any of the nozzles to form desired image or character on paper. When the cartridge is out of ink you, the cartridge is simply replaced by new cartridge. Most ink-printers have two or more ink cartridges: one cartridge contains only black ink and other cartridges contain colors. The number of ink cartridge a printer require and the cost of the cartridge are two things you need to consider when purchasing a printer. Some buyers reduce the expense of cartridges by purchasing refilled or empty cartridges refilled by a third party vendor.

Dot Matrix Printer

Dot-matrix printer produce printed images, they produce image when tine wire pins on a print head mechanism strike an inked ribbon. The ribbon then pressed against the paper and it creates dots on a paper that form characters and graphics.

These printers mostly use continuous form paper in which thousands of sheets of paper are connected with each other from end to end. These pages have holes along the sided so it can help it feed the paper through printer. Their speed can be measured in cps (characters per second) and most dot-matrix printers are having speed of 375-1100 characters per second which also depends on the desired print quality.