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Ten... all-in-one inkjet photo printers

From darkroom to Lightroom

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Product Round-up Most inkjet all-in-ones are capable of printing passable photos, but some are geared up specifically with this in mind and feature memory card slots, high resolution printheads and wireless connectivity for printing from mobile devices. Some even have direct-print to DVDs and CDs as well as scanning from slides and negatives with separate trays for photo paper. Specifications also tend to offer higher resolution printing and scanning and more than four ink colours for improved accuracy, in higher-end models.

Manufacturer prices range from around £80 to £350, though of course you can get substantial discounts on these numbers, if you search around.

Brother MFC-J5910DW

RH Numbers

The first of two Brother all-in-ones offering A3 print. The larger print size can be useful for posters or newsletters. The printer has a wide-aspect touchscreen – which needs firm pressure – and includes a number pad, as it supports fax. Twin card slots and PictBridge mean you can connect a variety of devices.

Print speeds of up to 9.1ppm make it one of the fastest printers here and a duplex speed of 3.7ppm puts it mid-field. Print quality is better on photos than on plain paper and page costs are as low as Kodak’s, if you're a canny shopper, and separate print cartridges, too.

Brother MFC-J5910DW all-in-one inkjet photo printer

Reg Rating 70%
Price £215
More info Brother

Brother MFC-J6710DW

RH Numbers

A big brother to the other Brother, this device can scan and copy A3, as well as print it. It also has twin paper trays, so you can dedicate one to photo paper, if you want. It has another decent sized touchscreen for control and the same set of sockets for front panel data feed. Both printers can handle mobile device prints using Wi-Fi.

Both also have similar speeds for single and double-sided prints – though it didn’t manage quite the same speed on shorter text documents – and very similar print quality, which can be a bit ragged on plain paper. Same cartridges, too, so same print costs

Brother MFC-J6710DW all-in-one inkjet photo printer

Reg Rating 70%
Price £371
More info Apple

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Next page: Canon Pixma MG4150

differences

The differences are explained right at the start of the article. A photo printer generally has more than 4 inks, some offer CD/DVD printing and some have negative/slide scanners.

The truth of all this though is that printing photos at home is a waste of time and money. Online photo printing services can have the pictures out to you next day and they'll be better quality and cheaper than you can possibly achieve at home.

When my current printer dies or the ink becomes hard to find I'll be getting myself a laser, probably black and white, and all my photo printing will be done online.

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Would have liked to have seen some 'normal' inkjet all-in-ones as a comparison

Apart from the fancy pop-up LCD displays (are they needed when you've probably previewed the pic on a phone/camera/tablet/desktop already?), what's the difference between an colour inkjet photo printer and a "normal" colour inkjet printer?

It might have been nice to incude a few "non-photo" colour inkjets in the review, load them up with photo paper and see what sort of job they do. With the price of photo paper and inkjet cartridges already very high, I've got to question spending anything more than 100 quid on any sort of inkjet printer.

Me? I've got an HP colour all-in-one inkjet printer, but no somewhat pointless colour pop-up LCD on it. Price? 25 quid directly from hp.com - throw in some photo paper and it does a good enough job at printing photos. No printer here costs under 80 quid, the difference of which could go on buying a reasonable number of cartridges and photo paper.

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Re: When is £300>£499?

If you're price conscious (as you should be), then you'd be crazy to compare prices of the printers themselves and not spend at least twice the time comparing the cost of the ink. If you actually use a printer, the cost of the ink will swamp out the price of the printer itself several times over.

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