Here are some images of how this printer prints with only dye
inks. All tests made on the same sheet of paper. The paper is plain
run-of-the-mill universal office paper, the brand is Chamex. Font size is 12pt.
This is with the printer configured for plain paper, standard quality,
using dye ink in the pigment ink tank. It looks ragged, unsharp, and
less black than it should be. It seems that ink lands pretty much anywhere in the wider neighborhood of where it should!
This is setting the printer to matte photo paper, standard quality.
It's the very same dye ink, but printed out of the nozzles intended for
dye ink. The printer uses much more ink in this configuration,
resulting in a blacker image - but also it's very much sharper to the
eye!
Here it's set to plain paper again, but in high quality setting. It's
sharper then the first print, probably because more droplets of finer
size are used.
And now it's set to matte photo paper, high quality. It looks equally black as the other photo paper print, but sharper.
And now it's set to plain paper, standard quality, duplex printing. I'm
not sure which black tank it uses here, but ir clearly uses a lot of
color ink. To the eye this print looks gray instead of black, and
blurry too!
Unfortunately I cannot put a test print of the Hobbicolors ink here,
because right now I have no cartridge filled with it, and I don't want
to flush one out just for the test. And older prints I have, with that
ink, are on a different brand of paper, so the comparison would
incorrect. But all prints I ever did with that ink looked very black
and also very sharp, without that fuzziness my printer produces when
using dye ink in the pigment black tank.
And this is the 20 year old HP printer, using dye ink bought nearly 20
years ago, configured for standard quality. The ink droplets are much
coarser than those of the modern Canon printer, of course, and there is
a lot of overspray which is probably due to the fact that I'm still
using the original, supposedly disposable print head built into the
original cartridge! After 20 years of use, it might be a little worn.
But the blackness is excellent, and I might try that old ink in my Canon!
That's it for now.