Our flex or UV article walks through how to think about the decision. This one skips the reasoning and puts the two technologies next to each other, spec by spec, for anyone who already knows roughly what they need and wants the comparison in one table rather than spread across paragraphs.
Eco-solvent and UV flatbed, side by side
| Spec | Eco-solvent | UV flatbed |
|---|---|---|
| Best suited to | Vinyl, banners, backlit film, roll media | Acrylic, ACP, glass, wood, tiles, phone cases, plus roll media |
| Cure method | Evaporation, ink dries over time | Instant UV cure |
| Odour | Lower than standard solvent, but still present | None, no solvent smell |
| Ink channels | CMYK | CMYK plus a separate white channel, consumed at its own rate |
| Typical pricing model | By the square foot | By the piece |
| Typical customer | Signage shops, event organisers, bulk deadline orders | Retail and interior work, promotional items, one-off objects |
| Wear parts and spares | Held in Prayagraj and Varanasi | Held in Prayagraj and Varanasi |
What the table does not tell you
A spec table is a starting point, not a decision, because the row that actually decides this is not on it: what your customers are already asking for and you are currently turning down. A flex shop that keeps getting asked for acrylic signage or promotional pieces is leaving that revenue on the table every time it says no, no matter how clean the eco-solvent column looks on paper. A shop doing occasional rigid work on a slow, borrowed UV setup is losing more time per job than the work is worth. Read the table for the surfaces and running mechanics, then answer that question before either column wins. Our full comparison walks through how to work that out properly.
Ink, media and spares for either machine
Eco-solvent's ink line behaves like any solvent machine: consumption scales directly with square footage, roughly the same one-litre-per-1,000-square-foot rule that applies across the solvent range, so it is the easiest running cost to forecast once you know your monthly volume. UV's ink line is shaped differently because of the white channel: it runs separately from CMYK and at its own rate, so a job that is white-heavy costs more per piece than one that is not, in a way a flex quote never has to account for. Whichever column you land on, both are stocked the same way: held in Prayagraj and Varanasi rather than ordered in when a job is already waiting. See the full ink and media range for what is on the shelf right now, and how service and warranty actually work once the machine is running.
Compare the two on your own job
The clearest way to compare eco-solvent and UV is not another spec row, it is sending us the exact job you are currently quoting, or currently turning down, and asking us to run it on both. If it is a banner or backlit job, eco-solvent will show you the finish at production speed. If it is acrylic, ACP or a one-off object, the UV flatbed will show you whether the piece pricing actually pays back against what a flex quote would have charged for the same work. See the full machine lineup, including the UV flatbed configuration, and book a call to talk through that job rather than guess from a table.