HP Photosmart 5510
Another from HP's brown school of all-in-ones, this machine offers touch screen control from a 50mm display and the same ePrint and direct print services over wireless from mobiles as its cheaper sibling. Paper feeds from and to the front and it uses four separate ink cartridges for economy. SD and MemoryStick cards are supported.
HP claims 11ppm and 7.5ppm for black and colour print and I saw 9.2ppm and 4.6ppm; not far off and very good speeds for class. Print quality is also very good, with sharp blacks, bright colours and excellent photo prints. Ink costs are 2.2p for black and 6.6p for colour, both more than reasonable for a budget printer.
Reg Rating 90%
Price £70
More info HP
Kodak ESP 1.2
Kodak’s entry-level range of printers has been extended with this robust and functional all-in-one. The small, but useable, LCD screen is now front right, bordered by true touch buttons, which are positive to use. SD and MemoryStick slots cater for photo upload and there are twin ink cartridges, black and tri-colour. Kodak makes much of its remote and direct print software for mobile devices and this certainly adds value.
True print speeds, at 8.1ppm and 3.5ppm are among the best in this group and print quality is good throughout, with deep black and bright colours. Ink costs are very low, at 1.6p and 4.4p for black and colour pages, though the tri-colour cartridge can increase waste.
Reg Rating 80%
Price £69
More info Kodak
Next page: Kodak ESP 3.2
COMMENTS
Oh the choices
Color inkjet:
1 printer $50
1 set of ink cartridges $50
print 20 pages
Sorry, your ink is empty / dried out / got stolen by the goblins at night.
1 set of ink cartridges $50 ...
B/W laser printer:
1 printer $100
1 cartridge $50
prints 2,000 pages, no questions asked
So for the one time a year you absolutely have to print in color, here is a USB stick and a map to the copy shop for you.
You arent mentioning...
The software for ANY HP product and especially inkjet printers is complete total and utter crap. Common cause of horrific boot times, takes forever to install, puts a ton of un-needed services etc
Kodak isnt much better
Oh and Hp, Kodak and especially Lexmark, get used to being shafted for inak as there are no good alternatives.
Be wary of Epson printers
Be aware that Epson printers genuinely have a built-in service life. They will decide by themselves that they have printed X amount of pages and simply stop working saying that the waste ink pads are saturated. They aren't. The official fix is expensive. The unofficial fix still involves spending money to reset the printer
quote from Epson SX235W manual:
"If an error message appears indicating the printer’s ink pads are nearing the end of their service life, contact Epson support to replace them. The message will be displayed at regular intervals until the ink pads are replaced. When the printer’s ink pads are saturated, the printer stops and Epson support is required to continue printing."
http://support.epson-europe.com/onlineguides/en/sx230_sx235w_sx430w_sx435w/html/trble_1.htm
For the Epson Stylus Office BX305FW Plus the same info is on page 80 of the manual:
ftp://download.epson-europe.com/pub/download/3737/epson373717eu.pdf
Since the printer itself decides to do this there is no way to predict when it will happen.
Supported OS?
Any chance future reviews could include a rundown of the supported OS? Windows and Mac are most likely but indicating which items have decent Linux support would be very useful.
Regards,
Colin
They are all shit
And filled with hidden booby traps
Epson and canons nozzles block.
Kodak ink is cheap but rest of print mechanism dies.
HP expensive ink and insanely bloated and nagging drivers.
In short expect to be screwed one way or another.
