Inkjet vs. dye sublimation printers

Where could I find a good article on the pros and cons? Many thanks, SNC

actually it's fairly easy to summarise:

inkjets use small dots of solid ink colours to make up each pixel - whereas a dyesub will print pixels of a continuous tone, so each pixel will be the precise colour you specified. so in quality terms a 300dpi dyesub might beat a 1000dpi inkjet, because each injket dot is a spot of one of the ink colours, whilst each dyesub pixel is a pixel of that precise colour. So you're not comparing like with like. i.e. dyesub is continuous tone, whereas inkjet is dithered - you can see this if you look really closely

inkjet running costs are usually far lower than dye subs - as you usually need special paper for dyesubs, and a dyesub usually gets through a sheet each of RGB transfer material per print. of course for best results with inkjet, you use special paper too - but you'll find the running costs for dyesub are usually far higher. but this varies on a printer by printer basis.

the advantages of dyesub used to be that you didn't get any banding. but you don't get any banding with modern inkjets these days either.

you may find it cheaper to get them printed professionally though, as neither has low running costs - particularly when you factor in the printer cost...

oh and running costs on the dyesub will be the same, regardless of page coverage - whereas with inkjets the more of the paper you cover with ink, the more expensive the print.

Thank you Lan for this fast response. I have a Canon inkjet i965 printer now which suits my needs -trouble free printing up to A4 but I'm running out of ink and can't buy any cartridges where I'm living now. Neither can I have color prints done professionally -BW yes, and very cheap. Was wondering whether an 'update' would make sense. I'll wait.

can you refill them? most canon carts are fairly refillable - worth a try at least!

Nah, not available.