I had one in 1991 and for several years, it was quite loud. I couldn't use it when the baby was sleeping in the other room or it would wake her up. Super solid printer.
I’m no expert. But from what I’ve been told, the TI suffered three flaws that were more significant than the 8-bit bus: 1) Double interpreted BASIC. 2) Lack of a lot of third party support. This one was a shame given it was from the direction of TI themselves. 3) A grudge from Commodore. TI started a price war with Commodore in the calculator days and Commodore never let them forget it in the home computer days.