Basic _______ are inexpensive, but the print quality is low and the images tend to fade over time.

Summary: Difference Between Thermal Printer and Dot Matrix Printer is that an image is generated in thermal printer by pushing electrically heated pins against heat-sensitive paper. While Dot-matrix printer produce printed images, they produce image when tine wire pins on a print head mechanism strike an inked ribbon.

Thermal Printer

An image is generated in thermal printer by pushing electrically heated pins against heat-sensitive paper. Standard thermal printers are inexpensive but the print quality in them is low and images tend to fade after some time. Self-service gas pumps usually use built-in low-quality thermal printer to give us gas receipts. Many retail and grocery stores and point-of-sale terminals also prints purchase receipts on thermal paper.

But some thermal printers have high quality printing technology and they can print much faster rates than laser printers and ink-jet printers. Dye-sublimation printer also known as digital photo printer use heat to transfer colored dye to coated paper. Different professional applications that require high quality image, such as photography studios, security identifications systems and medical labs use dye-sublimation printers. There high-end printers print images in a wide range of sizes and cost thousands of dollars.

Dye-sublimation printers when used by home user or small business user, they typically print images in one or two sizes and they are much slower than the professional printers.  You can compare these lower-end dye-sublimation printers to a photo printer in cost and they are based on ink-jet printers.

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.