When comparing Input Mono vs Google Roboto Mono, the Slant community recommends Input Mono for most people. In the question“What are the best fonts to use in a terminal emulator?” Input Mono is ranked 9th while Google Roboto Mono is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Input Mono is:
Many letter-forms are available in Input Mono, the width and line-height of which are changeable. There are also non-monospaced sans and sans-serif forms available.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Customizable
Many letter-forms are available in Input Mono, the width and line-height of which are changeable. There are also non-monospaced sans and sans-serif forms available.
Pro Great on small-sized, high-resolution screens
Input Mono is designed to look good on HiDPI and low-resolution screens of variable zoom levels.
Pro Free for private use
Pro Large punctuation
The punctuation symbols are larger than in other traditional fonts, making for greater visibility.
Pro Non-monospaced sibling fonts
In addition to the monospaced variant, the Input family of fonts includes serif and non-serif proportional font families.
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
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