When comparing Google Roboto Mono vs Inconsolata, the Slant community recommends Google Roboto Mono for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Google Roboto Mono is ranked 26th while Inconsolata is ranked 52nd. The most important reason people chose Google Roboto Mono is:
Roboto Mono has a very clean and beautiful design.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Looks really beautiful
Roboto Mono has a very clean and beautiful design.
Pro Clean and legible
Roboto Mono is crystal clear which makes it a good choice for reading code without your eyes getting tired.
Pro The right thickness
It's neither too thin, too fat, nor too condensed. Roboto Mono is just right.
Pro All variants available
Both bold and italics look great in Roboto Mono.
Pro Distinctive uppercase vs lowercase characters
The median line is placed relatively low. This makes reading mix-cased words (eg. hashes) easier.
Pro Readable, elegant and cute
It's very readable, elegant and cute. Almost indistinguishable with SF Mono at small point sizes. It looks great even as a display font.
Pro Makes for an excellent font for terminal
Roboto Mono looks particularly well on iterm2.
Pro Released under the lenient Apache License
Pro Powerline Patched version works well
This is the only font that works well and looks good with agnoster theme and powerline for bash/zsh.

Pro Looks great on HiDPI
Looks good at 14pt and lower, but looks great at 20pt and higher, making it an excellent font for higher resolutions
Pro Characters readable even at small sizes
The characters in Inconsolata have a slightly "wide" appearance that aids in readability, especially at small font sizes.
Pro Excellent readability
Very clear, distinct characters with decent spacing make Inconsolata very readable.
Pro Efficient scalability
Inconsolata scales well without loss of readability.
Pro Slashed zero characters are distinguishable from capital "O" and "Q" characters
Inconsolata-g screws this up by replacing the slashed zero with a dotted zero. A dotted zero is better than a zero with nothing in it, but worse than a slashed zero.
Pro Open source
It's an open source font, meaning it's freely available.
Pro No visible character breaks
Inconsolata renders lines in TUIs without visible character breaks; apparently unlike Inconsolata-g.
Pro Widely available
Inconsolata is available in the package managers of almost every open source OS.
Cons

Con Curly braces aren't very distinctive
The curly braces are too close to parentheses, which can harm readability for programming.
Con Not recognized as monospace font
Windows does not recognize the font as monospaced. Cannot be used as terminal font.
Con Sublime Text doesn't show italic version
font face "Roboto Mono" has different widths for italic characters, disabling to prevent text reflow
Con Arched braces
Too much arched braces, decreases clarity, touching characters almost.
