This review discusses the state-of-the-art status and future prospects of color ink jet printers. It is argued that among the nonimpact printers, the ink jet printers are best suited for color printing. Drop-on-demand ink jet printing is coming up fast and may soon prevail the market of inexpensive multicolor printers, because of its practical combination of reasonable cost and performance. With further development to increase reliability and cut manufacturing cost, the continuous-jet printer, especially the microdot ink jet printer, should have no rival for depicting large amounts of information with near photographic resolution. Other important aspects briefly mentioned in designing color printers are the more difficult task of formulating inks and associated paper with suitable chromatic and archival characteristics.