I’m sure you’ve been hearing for years about this or that new business-class inkjet device that was ready to go toe-to-toe with lasers in the office. For almost twenty years, inkjet folks have been crowing that they’re about to bring to market some new whiz-bang technology that would more than meet the demands of business users and leave poor electrophotographic machines high and dry. Of course, the hardware that followed fell well short of the mark.
But all that is changing, gentle reader. There have been some truly promising business-class inkjet machines to hit the market over the past couple of years. And the trend continues. Brother, Epson, and HP have all introduced important new products in the past six months or so that might just be able to compete effectively with electrophotographic machines. While some of these machines may show more promise than others, it can’t be denied that momentum is growing for office machines based on inkjet technology. Are we seeing the dawning of a new era? Well, maybe.
The Problem with Inkjet
There’s a lot of talk about the stubborn so-called “laser biases” that exists in the market, which prevents business-class inkjets from ever succeeding. Inherent in this term is the notion that ignorant office users can’t overcome their misconceived prejudices against inkjet and will forever prefer toner to ink when it comes to putting marks on paper. The truth is, up until only recently, inkjet was inferior to electrophotography for office users in many ways. Inkjet technology was slower, less robust, and often more expensive to operate than toner-based equipment. And, of equal (or maybe more!) importance, the channel didn’t want to sell cheapo inkjets when they could sell laser machines for more money and beefier margins.
Let’s review a few of the past problems that resulted in the “laser biases.” First, until only recently, most inkjet machines and their output simply could not withstand the rigors of the office. Unlike some recent introductions, most earlier inkjet machines lacked some combination of adequate speed, connectivity options, or duty cycle to accommodate a group of office workers. Worse yet, instead of the pigmented inks found in many of today’s office inkjets, the older units employed dye-based inks, which would smear when exposed to moisture or to a highlighter. And, the consumables were often expensive and had to be replaced often, which is abhorrent to any self-respecting, skinflint office manager.
There are various reasons why the older units relied on dye-based inks. It’s difficult, for example, to jet pigmented inks and achieve the speeds and print quality of a laser device. Unlike dyes, which are essentially molecules, pigments are small particles that can clog print head nozzles. And, with pigmented inks, the colorant tends to sit at the surface of a substrate so it takes longer to dry and is prone to smearing when pages are being output at higher speeds. One of the problems that continues to prevent wider acceptance of office machines based on Memjet engines is the technology can only operate with a dye-based ink set.
Another problem hampering older inkjets was their slow print speeds. The machines featured print heads that shuttled back and forth across a page and that throttled back the speeds they could achieve. The light source and drum configuration used in electrophotographic devices gave the technology a pronounced speed advantage over inkjet.
Hardware manufacturers understood that deploying inkjet print heads configured in a stationary array, which was wide enough to cover the width of a page, could overcome the speed disadvantage. With a fixed page wide array, media could be imaged as it passed by the print head rather than pass the print head across the media. A page wide array is expensive to produce, however. Moreover, the arrays would be susceptible to image quality problems like banding, should some of the nozzles fail to fire or become clogged with ink. The likelihood of such a problem was high because a page-wide array would have thousands—or even tens of thousands—of nozzles and some would inevitably fail over time.
Despite its shortcomings, hardware manufacturers recognized early on that inkjet technology had a lot to offer in an office environment. It might even be superior to laser. In an office environment, where a device sits idle at regular intervals, inkjet is a more efficient technology because it does not require fuser units to warm up and print stations to engage each time it’s used. Instead of imaging drums, transfer belts, fuser units, and the like, inkjet just has print heads and their attendant ink supplies. Granted, if the device isn’t used for long periods, the efficiency is lessened because the ink supply system must be primed, which results in a certain amount of ink loss. Regardless, the cost of some lost maintenance ink is far less than fuser replacement and other maintenance costs associated with laser machines.
As efficient as inkjet technology might be, the thought of losing maintenance revenue was not a welcome one for office equipment dealers. Maintenance contracts are lucrative and dealers are loath to lose them. Inkjet machines also carry much smaller price tags than electrophotographic devices and the margins were much skinnier. Overall, inkjet units offer dealers a much lower revenue opportunity than lasers do, so it’s easy to understand why the channel’s response to selling inkjet machines has been at best cool if not downright hostile.
HP: Try, Try Again
By the early 2000s, various companies including Canon, Epson, HP, and Lexmark were dabbling in office inkjets. By that time, however, HP was already out in front of the pack and had already broken significant ground technologically. In 1993, for example, the firm released the DeskJet 1200C, which was marketed as a far less expensive alternative to costly office color devices. It had a pigmented black ink with an optical density that allowed it to claim an image quality comparable to laser when rendering black and white output. In 1998, HP released its 2000C Professional series, which was also marketed as a cheaper alternative for business users to own and operate than office color laser machines. Although both machines were technically advanced, they were not well received by office users because presumably of their inherent “laser bias.”
After investing some $1.4 billion and five years of research, HP released its Scalable Print Technology (SPT) in 2005. Using SPT, print heads are fabricated from a single piece of silicon using a photolithographic process. The technology allows more nozzles to be packed onto a head so it can support higher print speeds. SPT heads can also be ganged together to create arrays of different sizes including arrays long enough to span a page. To date, a variety of machines including desktop units and wide-format devices have been released featuring SPT heads. Among the first fruits of the technology were the Edgeline MFPs. The CM8050 printed black-and-white and color documents at up to 57 pages per minute and the CM8060 was a 71-ppm device. The machines achieved their blistering fast print speeds thanks to their page-wide arrays. Alas, like the 2000C, the Edgeline units were destined for the ash heap, in part because HP’s channel partners never fully embraced the value proposition the machines offered.
Despite its less-than-stellar history in the space, last year HP released its groundbreaking Officejet Pro X (OPX) series of desktop business-class inkjets. The line includes the Officejet Pro X476 and X576 MFPs as well as the Officejet Pro X451 and X551 single-function printers. Featuring a fixed print head that spans the width of a page, the OPX 500 series units achieve a top end speed of 70 ppm in the general office mode and the OPX 400 units print at up to 55 pages per minute. The array in the OPX devices is designed to last the life of the machine and contains 42,240 nozzles that are capable of producing 6-picoliter ink droplets. The OPX units employ a sophisticated optical sensor system that monitors and calibrates the page-wide array to prevent any banding issues should nozzles fail. The sensor makes adjustments while printing and can substitute a nozzle should it fail or perform maintenance on the fly to recover it.
HP promotes the OPX machines as capable of printing at up to twice the speed of a laser device and at half the cost. Prices range from $449 for the base model OPX 400 print-only unit to $799 for the top-of-the-line Officejet Pro X576dw MFP. The operating costs for the machines are impressive. It costs a mere 1.3 cents to print a page using the high-yield HP 970 XL black ink tank and a color page costs 6.75 cents with the CMY HP 971 XL tanks installed. Representatives for the company have repeatedly boasted that the market reception of the OPX line has been nothing short of overwhelming. CEO Meg Whitman has mentioned the brisk sales of the machines during various recent analyst conference calls and has credited the line for turning HP’s inkjet business around, boosting both inkjet revenue and inkjet shipments for the past couple of quarters.
At the end of March, HP released its most recent business-class inkjet units in the new Officejet Enterprise X (OEX) series. While the OPX line is geared for small- to medium-sized businesses, the OEX units are geared for the enterprise workgroups that range from 5 to 15 users. The new line includes the Officejet Enterprise Color X555 single-function printers and Officejet Enterprise Color MFP X585 MFPs. The OEX machines match the top-end 70-ppm print speed of the OPX 500 devices.
The new line of enterprise-class inkjet machines from HP feature a tweaked version of the page-wide array used in the Officejet Pro X series. The array has an identical 42,240-nozzle count and is capable of jetting 6-picoliter ink droplets. Features found exclusively on the OEX machines include an 8-inch capacitive touch screen and a workgroup-class scanner and ADF on the Officejet Enterprise Color MFP X585 series. All of the models ship with a hardware integration pocket; FutureSmart capabilities; a 320 GB encrypted hard drive (standard on all models except the Officejet Enterprise Color X555dn); and support for HP Open Extensibility Platform (OXP), providing users with access to 150 workflow, management, and security solutions. While the inks employed in the OEX are virtually identical to the OPX, the cartridges are different as are the costs and yields. As a result, it costs only 1.09 cents to print a black and white page with an Officejet Enterprise X device and 5.5 cents to print a color page.
HP Is Not Alone – Epson and Brother Heat Up the Market
Just before the launch of the new Officejet Enterprise X series, Epson stole some of HP’s thunder by unveiling a bevy of new inkjet units at its Future of Business Printing event in Vienna, Austria on March 19, 2014. The launch included some 18 new inkjet devices that use Epson’s new PrecisionCore print heads. Three of the new machines employ an interesting new consumable: CMYK ink bags dubbed the Replaceable Ink Pack System (RIPS), which can deliver up to 75,000 pages per set of bags.
Included among Epson’s latest business-class units is the WorkForce Pro WF-8000 series of A3 devices. This line is designed for SMBs, large enterprises, and public organizations. The WF-8000 series features four models (WF-8590DWF, WF-8090DW, WF-8510DWF, and WF-8010DW), which Epson claims offer “fast print speeds and business features, including PIN release control for confidential, secure printing, and Gigabit network connectivity.” The A4 WorkForce Pro WF-5600 series also contains four models (WF-5690DWF, WF-5190DW, WF-5620DWF, WF- 5110DW) that are aimed at the same target markets as the WF-8000 series. Epson says these devices offer up to 50 percent lower CPP and up to 80 percent lower energy consumption than competitive color lasers. Pricing for the line, which is currently available only in Europe, ranges from £178.80 or about $300 to £442.80, which is about $750.
Although the machines are based on a new print head technology, it doesn’t appear that they use a fixed print head. Ranging from 20 ppm using the ISO standards to 34 ppm in draft black and 30 ppm in color, the speeds for the WF-5600 units indicate that it is based on a print head that shuttles across the page when printing. Unfortunately, Epson had not released product specifications or pricing for the WorkForce Pro WF-8000 family as I was writing this piece.
The most interesting machines to me were the units that can accommodate the bags of ink. The so-called WorkForce Pro RIPS series is made up of both A3 and A4 devices and includes the WF-R8590DTWF, WF-R5690DTWF, and WF-R5190DTW. From their names, I assume that these models are essentially versions of the WF-8590DWF, WF-5690DWF, and WF-5190DW listed above, but with additional paper input (hence the T). This, however, is a guess and I have not seen product specifications for these devices. The R in the model numbers indicates support for the RIPS consumables system described above. The WorkForce Pro RIPS series will be available from select print service partners under MPS contracts.
Brother International rolled out its high-speed A4 monochrome HL-S7000 series in the United States last October. Unlike the Epson units, the Brother machines feature the firm’s Cold Process Print System and the SmartArray page-wide array. The S7000 family prints black and white pages at speeds up to 100 ppm and is designed for high-volume office users with a maximum monthly duty 
cycle at 275,000 pages. The S7000 units are available in five flavors ranging from the DN base model, which has a standard input capacity of 600 sheets, to the top line DNXL, which is configured with 3 additional input trays to accommodate up to 2,100 sheets and also features a stacker and stabilizer. For some reason, even at this late date Brother has not released list pricing for the line. However, poking around online, it appears the price of the base unit starts at $2,459.99 (plus a shipping-and-handling fee) and runs well north of $3,000.
The HL-S70000DN uses a rather unique cartridge that contains black pigmented ink, a pre-coating material, and an optimizer. Presumably this combination of pre-coating material, ink, and optimizer is necessary to allow the HL-S7000DN to print at the unit’s rated speeds, without ink transfer or smearing, on everyday office paper. Each S7000 ships with a 10,000-page starter cartridge, and HC05BK replacement SKU has a whopping 30,000-page yield. Like the machines themselves, consumables pricing was not available from Brother, but I found the cartridge sells at CDW for $201.99, which would give the S7000 family a per page cost of about 0.67 cents.
The Jury Is Out
Looking over all of the above machines, one should feel encouraged about the future of ink in the office. But the outcome is not guaranteed. In addition to the much ballyhooed “laser bias,” the channel has shown a real reluctance to push inkjet for the reasons I mentioned before. Those opinions, too, may be changing, however.
The advent of managed print services and other programs that allow end users to purchase pages rather than hardware may make inkjet more attractive to dealers than lasers. The hardware itself (the S7000 notwithstanding) is less expensive to acquire and deploy for the dealer and with super high-yield ink tanks, and the per-page costs are looking mighty attractive these days. And, as I mentioned, inkjet offers low and even no maintenance cost. I think that the combination of low acquisition and operating costs may be enough to sway dealers to deploy more ink. If all the end user is looking for is high-quality output at a reasonable price, inkjet just may become a no brainer for the channel.
But I still have a few lingering reservations. First, output from inkjets look different than laser output especially on color jobs. At an analyst event last year, I had the opportunity to compare output from an HP OPX machine side-by-side output from a lower-end Color LaserJet and found the color laser output superior. The gloss of the color toner just looked better. And it felt better. Applying heat and pressure during the fusing process is not dissimilar to what paper undergoes during the cast coating process. As a result, the output from a laser device appears more uniform and smooth. Well, in my humble opinion, it does.
I also wonder about the Epson and Brother machines. For the Epson units, it’s way too early to judge them because we don’t have pricing. With those huge ink bags, it’s quite possible that the WorkForce Pro RIPS line is destined to be the darlings of the dealers when it comes to MPS. But how much does it cost to purchase the units and the consumables? I also wonder if the machines are actually fast enough to support an office workgroup. Too bad that they do not have a page-wide array. In the back of my mind, I also can’t help thinking that the sound of the print head shuttling back and forth may push customers and dealers back to lasers. The big question around the Brother machine, of course, is that hefty acquisition cost. The per-page costs look awfully attractive but will the S7000 lose some of its luster when potential buyers see that $3,000 price tag? Sticker shock is not easy to overcome.
With all that said, I’m more bullish about ink in the office than I’ve ever been. It looks like inkjet hardware manufacturers are making huge gains in adjusting the price/performance ratio, and once they get that right; I think the “laser bias” will quickly become a thing of the past.
