Comparative Test Eleven multifunction printers: Marker- and smeartest: Quality
What a bother, if some raindrops or a wet finger smear up a printed text. Much better, if the inks do not smudge or bleed.
To test the smudge-proof of a print, our lab uses the testfile (right side), printed on normal copy-paper and in normal print-quality (no change in the driver).
- Marker test: As soon as the testfile is printed, a line of text is highlighted with a marker. Intensity of smudge can be seen in the scans below.
- Droplet test: The lab applies a drop of water (50 µl) on a colored rhombus. After drying the area is scanned. The results can be seen below.
Canon, HP, Kodak, and Lexmark fail the marker test.
Brother and Epson provide perfect results.
With dye-inks bleeding occurs on normal copy paper. Epson and Kodak use pigmented inks. In spite of the water, colors stay where they belong.