Club Printer

There are quite a few small photo printers on the market that are easy to carry around and offer high quality photos. But one of the most interesting choices is a printer from Dell called Wasabi (yes, like the Japanese condiment) that’s offered in several colors, including pink. See, Dell thought that by giving it a name that makes you think of something hot, it could attract or at least confuse more customers.

The best thing about the Wasabi PZ310 mobile printer is clearly the design. As you first look at it, you may be somewhat puzzled and ask yourself what this device is. It might be an MP3 player, or perhaps an external hard drive. After some serious thought you’ll finally discover that the transparent plastic rectangle with faux-chrome accents is in fact a printer. It comes in black, blue or pink.

The Wasabi PZ310 is one of the few printers on the market that use no ink. This is because they use the ZINK tehnology (aka Zero Ink) to produce photographs. Another such printer is the PoGo, offered by Polaroid. The deal with these printers is that, compared to other portable photo printers, they are much smaller (which means that you could potentially carry one in your pocked the whole time) and they’ll require about 60 seconds for the user to take a picture and print it out on paper.

That’s pretty amazing, especially in these times when people want everything done asap, even if their life clearly does not depend on it. As the Pogo, this small photo printer also offers printing through PictBridge or Bluetooth and needs to be connected to a compatible digital camera or mobile phone. What the PoGo doesn’t offer though (at least to our knowledge so far) is the ability of cooperating properly with a computer. Since Dell is a company who manufactures laptops – even though the Wasabi didn’t work brilliantly upon release – they are seriously working on providing good drivers for every available operating system. It’s true that it only works connected through Bluetooth, but if you must use it with a computer, you’ll be pleased to know that it at least works that way.

Something users may not like is that the Wasabi PZ310 limits you to 2 by 3 inch prints, as if 4 by 6 wasn’t already too small for some people. But then again, this is the only way manufacturers can keep a printer measuring 0.9 by 4.8 by 2.9 inches and weighing 8 ounces. Zink technology (no ink used at all) works in a rather bizarre way.

The technology embeds dye crystals in the actual photo paper and with the help of heat produced by the printhead in the Wasabi, it activates the color in those crystals. Because there’s no need for ink cartridges, making the printer work is extremely simple. You just open the input tray cover, insert the paper and start the printer. And the most important thing is, this is new technology and the design of the printer is great, hence it’s a must buy for most gadget enthusiasts.

Lexmark is best known for their affordable all-in-one printers that offer decent quality as well as a low price tag. This type of device is what sells best, as customers of higher quality printers are in most cases determined to buy from more popular names like HP or Canon. However, Lexmark does obviously have a Professional high-end range.  The Platinum Pro 905 for example, is aimed at the professional that still wants to save a bit of money when purchasing a color multifunction printer.

Now most office users may prefer a laser printer. This is because the maintenance cost of a laser is said to be way under the one of an inkjet. Lately this has changed, as at least consumables will get you to around the same costs. Toners may be more expensive but they are higher capacity so overall you’ll spend more money less often. What inkjets shine in, however, is photo print and color quality.

Lexmark tried their best to come up with a high quality printer that at the same time is as affordable or more so than a laser. This all-in-one color inkjet offers the possibility of equipping a 105XL black ink cartridge instead of a 100XL. The 105XL costs about ¼ of what the latter does. The cost per black page you end up with is actually below the one of lasers.

When considering a Platinum Pro 905 what you’ll be getting is printing, scanning, copying and fax machine. For all it features, the printer’s size is average, at 12.1 x 18.31 x 15.42 inches. The darker, more serious design, with round edges makes this printer look professional and blend in an office environment very well.

The color ink jet printer features a 4.3 inch display that’s bright and extremely to read. On the LCD you’ll find a button that Lexmark calls ‘SmartSolutions’ which can be programmed for one-touch execution of a series of actions. The Platinum Pro 950 comes with a few presets but this feature is being offered specifically for the user to make special ones for that particular office’s needs.

One of the good points of this printer is definitely paper capacity. There are two 150-sheet input trays. The top tray can store photo paper. To further sustain it’s office qualities the printer also features a duplexer, which will allow printing on both sides of a paper and an automatic document feeder with a 50 page capacity. Quality of the prints is good towards very good, regardless of the type of media used. The speed is however slower than in the case of most competitors and the Platinum Pro 905 will reach around 6 pages per minute on default settings for plain text.

As a conclusion, the Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 is an all-in-one color ink jet printer with plenty of useful features that can handle an office perfectly. Because it provides great flexibility there are few tasks that it won’t manage to do properly. Monochrome print costs are highly affordable, but otherwise this printer isn’t cheap at all. Of course, as always high-end printers don’t come with cheap price tags.

Regardless of what you need a printer for (home, small office or maybe even photo printing) the most convenient type at this moment would be the all in one color printers. On top of its obvious printer capabilities the user will also be getting, in the same price tag, copying, scanning and in most cases faxing capabilities too. The benefits to this are obvious.

The first of them is space saving. Adding a copier, printer, scanner and fax machine to the same room obviously takes up a lot of space. Furthermore the user is constantly stuck moving around between the devices depending on what features they mean to use. The last argument is obviously cost efficiency. An all-in-one printer will surely be more affordable than purchasing all of the standalone devices and will eat up less money for maintenance too.

So it’s really no surprise that most manufacturers are in a hurry to offer many multifunction models. They come in various prices, with better features and a nicer design. Since the demand for them is also very high, companies like Canon release such devices to the market rather often. Towards the more affordable end of the scale is the Pixma MP490 all-in-one printer. But don’t let its lower price fool you; it still comes with a nice set of features.

The MP490 all-in-one printer is part of a mini-series of printers that share the same design. The case is made up of light gray and black and comes with rounded edges. The MP490 measures 450 x 335 x 155 mm and weighs 5.5 kg so can be considered a reasonably light device with a decent footprint. Keeping the printer rather small obviously means a little bit of compromise. Low paper capacity of 100 sheets and no networking capabilities makes the MP490 best suited for a home office with low printing needs.

It may also work well on the desk of some students for occasional printing of reports, copying of documents and scanning. The MP490 can print directly from memory cards or PictBridge compatible digital cameras. Memory card types it supports include SD, xD Picture Card, Memory Stick Pro Duo and Compact Flash.

So, what’s the catch and why does this printer cost under a hundred dollars? Aside from the extra features that you’re not getting (one could mention a duplexer, wireless support or ADF) because you’ve decided that you don’t need them, the price of ink somehow makes up in the long run for the affordable initial price.

This means that the cost of consumables is rather high and the mother company may be making more money off selling ink than the actual printer. Overall these all in one color printers are a great buy if you don’t print very often or expect high speeds. It’s small, lightweight, easy to set up and produces good quality photo prints so it’s an ideal candidate for a small office environment, assuming, of course the user is prepared to spend slightly more on replacing the ink than some of the competing devices would require.

When the term ‘Polaroid’ is mentioned most people will jump right to thinking about the popular cameras that snap a picture and then print it out in a matter of seconds. Polaroid started out, in reality as the name for the material, a type of synthetic plastic sheet that could polarize light. The material was used in various devices including LCD screens, microscopes or sunglasses.

The Polaroid camera takes its name after the creating company, Polaroid. It has a self-developing film and is also known as an instant camera.  Polaroid as a company makes much more than cameras. They’ve long been top producers of sun glasses for example. Among other things, they are now also making printers. Back in the day when Polaroid cameras were popular it was extremely easy to shot a photo and ‘print’ it out.

Nowadays shooting the actual photo is much easier and you’ll get digital cameras with cutting edge features doing almost anything for you. But the actual printing is hard to do because sometimes it requires you to return home to your photo printer. In the previous years many manufacturers succeeded in coming up with a more viable option and released a series of portable photo printers to the market. Since Polaroid was renown on the market for offering photos in an instant, they too released such a device, called PoGo.

First thing to be said is that the Polaroid PoGo mobile color printer wasn’t designed to work very well with a PC. A better choice of words is that it doesn’t work with a PC at all and it comes with no software. Its purpose is to be a companion to a digital camera. It can connect to one via a port mounted on the side or through a Bluetooth connection (which also works with mobile phones, for example).

What makes this tiny printer remarkable is that it uses no ink. Being based on ZINK Imaging’s technology (ZINK meaning zero ink) the Pogo doesn’t use ink, ribbons or films but some special ZINK paper that comes coated with three layers of transparent crystals. With the help of a thermal print head, pulses are sent through the layers, the appropriate set of crystals is heated and the color print comes out.

This Polaroid printer is very easy to carry around. The shell of the device comes in black and silver (with a design that reminds you of a digital camera) and features a USB port on the side for connectivity. You’ll also find three indicator leds on the shell that inform the user regarding the power status or charging of the printer. Installing this printer can be considered easy as all you have to do is insert the 10 sheets of paper the device comes with in the designated slot. Then clip the lid shut and you’re ready to print. According to Polaroid the printer takes about a minute to print a photo. And they seem to be telling the truth as that is exactly the printing speed the PoGo offers.

As a conclusion, the Polaroid PoGo mobile color printer will limit you to 2 by 3 inch photos which can be too little for some, and the quality is still far from impressive. This is because the technology used is still being perfected. Because of its affordable price, however, it might be worth buying to play with until ZINK becomes better.

It’s decided, portable photo printers and digital cameras are now buddies. Some users would rather just get home with their digi cams, upload photos to their computer, share them on the Internet and store them on Cds/DVDs/USB sticks. But there’s just something about photos printed on paper that makes them special, in a way more valuable. It’s probably that you can touch them, see them, add them to albums and share them with special people.

While you can do that through e-mail or web albums, for the passionate photographer it’s just not the same. This is why, I guess, photo printers have become so popular; especially portable ones that you can take along anywhere. For some photographers nothing is better in the world than sitting under a tree shooting a perfect picture of the sun going down and being able to print it right there and then.

The HP Photosmart A620 includes quite a few nice and interesting features. This portable photo printer does much more than print photos on the go. You’ll be provided with a whole bunch of features to edit them as well. A function called scribble allows the user to draw on a photo by using the included stylus.

You can obviously customize the line thickness as well as the caller and at the simple touch of the erase button you can remove whatever you don’t like from what you drew. Caption will allow you to add a title to the photo (and users can select from 6 colors and 5 possible fonts). The clip art feature turns your photo into exactly what the name suggests, a clip art.

With the help of ‘album’ you can select your favorite photos and transform them into an album page while ‘design gallery’ will allow you to use different effects on a photo including black & white, sepia, antique or other. As usual, you’ll also be getting frames, with a ton of categories to chose from. To work with all this you’ll get a 4.8 inch touch screen that’s great for previewing pictures as well.

Installing the hp a620 photo printers is easy. You’ll just have to run the software installer. If you want to use the printer with your home PC you’ll have to get yourself an USB cable (since it’s not included) and connect the two devices. Since the printer offers compatibility for multiple memory cards (including CompactFlash Type I and II, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, Secure Digital, MultiMediaCard, Secure MultiMediaCard, xD-Picture Card, Mini SD ) you can also print directly off a card as well.

The HP Photosmart A620 fortunately doesn’t limit you to just one size of media, like many other portable printers on the market. Its user will be able to print photos in 4 by 6, 4 by 8, 4 by 12 (panorama) or 5 by 7 inch paper. You may find better models on the market at the current time, but the HP photo printers A620 remain a good choice for the photo enthusiast.

Lexmark is known for its affordable and convenient printers. The type of device Lexmark seems to specialize in would be the 4-in-1 multifunction with low maintenance cost and a low initial price tag. In the case of the X6650 you’ll be getting a copier, scanner, faxing machine, printer and WiFi all for around $130. This particular printer is a part of the Home and Student Series. of Lexmark color printers. It also has a twin brother, the X6675 that belongs to the Small Office Pro Series and comes with a longer warranty period.

Add to that an automatic document feeder with a capacity of 25 sheets that ensures easy copying and faxing of multiple pages without having to manually put the sheets of paper into the scanner, PictBridge that allows printing directly from a compatible digital camera and two memory card slots on the front of the device (supporting SD, xD, Compact Flash, MMC and MemoryStick cards) and you can say you got yourself a deal.

The design of the printer was kept nice and simple and you won’t have to be a scientist to figure out what every button does, or to set the printer up when you receive it. It will take a user probably under a minute to insert the two ink cartridges in their designated places. As soon as that is done the printer will ask for paper so that it can print an alignment page.

Before someone considers purchasing this device, mostly because of its extremely convenient price, they must be aware of the fact that low prices usually involve some sort of compromise on quality, speed, functionality or sometimes maintenance cost for the future.

There are several such compromises to be made in the case of these Lexmark color printers. One of them is versatility when it comes to wired connectivity. Its user will be limited for using this printer on a single PC with the help of a USB 2.0 connection. There is no Ethernet port on it so through wires it won’t work as a workgroup printer. The list of ‘what you won’t be getting’ also includes the duplexer (so if you want to print on both sides of the paper you’ll have to do it manually). Instead of a color display you’ll be getting a small two-line display that works just for setting things up and not for previewing photos.

The printer makes perfect use of the two ink cartridge system and is equipped with a black and a tri-color cartridge (cyan, magenta, yellow). To get better quality for photo printing you do however have the option of switching the black cartridge for an extra tri-color photo cartridge that switches you to six-color printing. Obviously no user expects to buy exceptional quality and the speed of light from a printer that costs less than $150 and offers several functions, including faxing which is usually expensive. In fact, the Lexmark X6650 should look and act cheap, but it manages to offer average. Which is obviously more than you’re paying for.

Epson’s Stylus line was developed to deliver the best print quality possible. The company is well known on the market and perhaps provides some of the best printers for any type of user and environment, from office printers to compact photo printers that serve as great buddies for your digital camera and allow you to print wherever your feet manage to take you. An older Stylus model, the Epson 1290 also offered high quality printing. But it had several issues including ink leakage. Before moving up to a new model, Epson managed to improve the 1290 and solve most of its problems. It’s follow up model, the Stylus Photo 1400 is a printer that has very little problems and provides high quality printing for a very affordable price.

Most printers in the 13 inch Stylus Photo series include pigment-based inks. These inks have the advantage of lasting longer than the dye-based type. This is why it appears somewhat odd that Epson decided to used dye-based Hi-Definition Claria inks in the case of the 1400. But the manufacturer also explains this decision and claims that the lifetime of prints produced with this ink is of up to 98 years (behind glass) and possibly even longer if kept in dark storage. The photos 1280 chugged out were guaranteed for much less. They would maintain their qualities for 26 years behind glass.

While you can’t consider it slow, the Stylus Photo 1400 doesn’t really compare to some of the inkjets offered by Canon or HP. It will take you about 2 minutes to print a high-quality letter-size page and a minute for a 4 by 6 photograph. The conclusion is that it’s not the best choice for people who are impatient or constantly in a hurry. Other users will however be completely satisfied.

The sleek and shiny black design with silver accents of the Stylus Photo 1400 makes it blend well in modern homes. However it’s not one of the small printers out there as it measures 24.2 x 12.4 x 8.8 inches and gets even bigger when you open it up for use. It’s inks are loaded from the top and the 1400 includes six ink cartridges (magenta, light magenta, cyan, light cyan, yellow and black). The media you can use ranges from 4 by 6 to 13 by 44 inches and can be as thick as 0.11 mm. Your only printing options are somewhat limited in the case of these epson stylus photo printers. PictBridge is supported thanks to a USB port on the front of the printer and you’ll be able to print directly from any compatible digital camera. There’s no memory card slot however and the only other option for printing is through the old but reliable USB. Epson also includes the ability to print on CD’s and DVD’s and you’ll find a slot for that right on the front of the printer.

As a conclusion these epson stylus photo printers are well built, well designed and provides good quality prints. As downside it’s rather slow and lacks a memory card slot as well as any type of networking feature.

Back in the day when it was released, the Canon S9000 color printer was an amazing large format printing device. The Canon BubbleJet S9000 was introduced to the market at the start of the year 2002. This was a time when it was hard to get a good device for photo printing unless you were a professional and prepared to spend a large amount of money. Because more users were interested in a device that supported larger media, Canon built this printer to offer A3 printing.

It produces high quality photo prints at a faster speed that most of its rivals. The drying of the ink is also significantly better due to a finer spraying of ink.

As for design, the S9000 is rather stylish, features a gray and silver casing and should fit quite well on any size of desk. Setting this printer up is as easy as it gets and you’ll even get a big instruction manual to make it even easier. The Canon S9000 color printer comes with six ink tanks that you’ll have to unwrap and stick into the print head cartridge. Then you’ll install the cartridge in the actual printer, connect the USB cable to the back of the printer as well as the PC and install the software. Within one-two minutes your printer will be installed and ready to work. Another good point of the S9000 is that it is a pretty quiet printer.

The main strength of this printer is printing speed. Compared to models released and available on the market in the same period of time, it’s extremely fast. It can in some cases print A3 quicker than its competitors print in A4. Printing quality is very impressive and well worth the money you are paying for it. As mentioned before the printer uses six-color ink and will achieve maximum resolutions of 2400 x 1200 dpi. The print head has 3,072 nozzles and is part of Canon’s Advanced MicroFine Droplet technology. It offers a lot of versatility when it comes to media size and can print on 4 by 6 up to 13 by 19 inch paper. With a 100 sheet paper feeder, you won’t run out of paper very fast, especially if you’re keeping this device for photo printing (which is what it’s best at). Media types include glossy paper, photo paper, high-gloss photo paper, transparencies, envelopes and more.

As an extra convenience the printer ships with a complete bundle of software that includes PhotoRecord, Image Browser or ZoomBrowser (depending on if you’re using Mac or PC0 and PhotoStitch. Software helps a lot for editing your images and will make the end result look more vivid and bright. The separate cartridges allow easy replacement and since you won’t have to replace them all at the same time you’ll end up saving some money. So if the printer’s price tag seems affordable to you, there isn’t really a good reason to avoid this printer. There are a lot of good parts to it and it’s high printing speeds will keep most users satisfied.

Most customers who are shopping for a printer have a hard time deciding whether to go for an inkjet or a laser. Most salesmen aren’t much help either since almost every time they will suggest the most expensive product. When choosing an office printer there are many details you need to study. First off all you must establish what features you need. For example you might not need faxing features but a duplexer may come in handy.

There are good points and bad points to both laser vs inkjet printers but there are also some ‘rules’ that aren’t as true as you may think. For one, they say laser printers are as a rule faster than inkjets. This is rarely true nowadays. When you’ll have to print complex color documents and require larger paper coverage then yes, lasers are generally faster. For laser printers there isn’t much difference between printing draft or high quality, printing a whole page or just text.

For inkjets however, the more coverage you have and the better the quality, the higher the printing time. If you’re just interested in mono and color documents with low paper coverage both technologies will do about as well. Thus, lasers have constant performance. Inkjets are slower on photos and graphics but generally faster at draft quality text. Laser printers also have warm up times and when you’re printing rarely you’ll have to include that time in the printing time as well. It can sometimes be annoying to wait 20-30 seconds for a page to start printing.

Printing costs tend to be higher for inkjets. This is strictly because ink cartridges can become clogged when you’re using the printer less often. To clean the cartridge more ink is used. Apart from printing cost is about the same. It used to be higher in the case of inkjets a few years ago, before inkjets started using separate tanks of ink, but now it’s not the case anymore. Toners for lasers have a higher capacity but also a higher cost and overall you will reach the same maintenance price.

A big difference regards the size of the devices. Laser color printers are almost always very bulky. Inkjets are much smaller and most of them won’t take up your whole desk whereas lasers might even need to be seated on the floor. Then again, laser printers offer more paper storage capacity. So if you’re printing needs are massive, it’s better to chose a large printer and not be bothered with changing replacing paper every one or two hours.

Even now lasers excel text printing. They produce sharp, crisp high quality prints. The table is turned when it comes to photo printing where lasers don’t do so well, but inkjets shine. You can even get special photo cartridges for inkjet printers that will further improve quality. Unfortunately no one printer can offer everything and both inkjet and laser printers have qualities and flaws. Before choosing a laser vs inkjet printer you must seriously consider what your office really needs out of such a device.

Up to a point tri-ink printing was enough for most users. But not photographers are starting to want better quality and more vivid prints. This is why most photo enthusiasts won’t settle for anything less than the light shades that are only offered by printers that come with light cyan and magenta inks. In an attempt to suit their customers’ needs perfectly most manufacturers have switched to offering six-ink printing.

As a result Epson introduced the Stylus Photo P50 that features six individual ink cartridges, high quality photo printing and a reasonable purchase price. The design of these Epson photo printers is nice and they will easily blend in any type of home be it more modern or traditional. For extra convenience the printer ships with Epson’s Easy Photo Print software that provides easy optimization for photos (including red-eye removal). With the help of this printer you’ll also be able to personalize CD/DVDs by printing directly on them.

You’ll find the CD/DVD tray right on the front side of the printer. Still on the front you will find a flap that folds out to provide an output tray while the input tray can be discovered right on top of the P50. The P50 doesn’t offer any top of the line exciting features or any other functionality except for printing. While there are plenty of all-in-ones on the market that provide high quality photo printing, standalone printers still do a good job and are preferred by some users.

But the problem with the P50 is that it doesn’t even offer better photo features. It doesn’t come with memory card slots, there’s no PictBridge compatibility or even a LCD screen. So when considering whether to buy this printer you’ll need to know that it limits you to printing only from your PC. Printing from memory cards as well as many digital cameras is completely out of the question. And even from the PC you’ll only be able to print through a USB connection as there are absolutely no networking features, wireless or wired.

Like many other Epson photo printers, the P50 also uses a piezo-electric print head and plug-in cartridges, but compared to some older models it offers six inks (magenta, cyan, yellow, black, light magenta, light cyan).  While the two light inks are supposed to be for enhancement purposes and provide more quality to prints, apparently they are very heavily used and some of the Epson Stylus Photo P50’s owners may discover that they run out much faster than their non-light counterparts.

Printing speed is satisfactory. In draft mode you’ll achieve about 25 pages per minute while if you want better quality prints you’ll slowly go down to speeds of around 8 pages per minute or less. When it comes to photo printing, a print will keep you waiting for a much longer time. Speed varies based on size and quality but expect times between 30-40 seconds and over four minutes for a photograph to print out.