We will not cover here all desorption/ionization sources (some recent contributions about internal energies can be found in the following references: ), but only those involving laser desorption at atmospheric pressure followed by pick-up by electrospray droplets. The following sources were directly compared with ESI: atmospheric-pressure mid-infrared laser ablation ESI (LAESI®) , infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (IR-MALDESI) , femtosecond 800-nm laser ESI (LEMS) , and 355-nm UV laser ablation-liquid vortex capture ESI (LA-LVC) . In brief, the survival yield method confirms that the softness of these methods is like that of ESI (from 97% to 113%, always with largely overlapping distributions). The only exception is when femtosecond 800nm laser ESI is performed on dried benzylpyridinium salts (dry-LEMS, 139 %) instead of on wetted samples (liquid-LEMS, same as ESI).