This is a wall mountable wireless printer designed by Ransmeier & Floyd. It can sit on a surface or hang on the wall and displays printouts like a picture in a frame. Considering how flat screen displays and wireless laptops have evolved it seems weird this is the first flat-printer concept I’ve ever seen. Read more »
If you want a simple but functional laser printer, there are several models under £100, but Samsung ML-3050 is an entry-level printer that has several features that you might expect only further up the price-bands.
The ML-3050 is quite a nippy little machine, which produced our five-page text document in 23 seconds and mixed text and graphics pages, again five of them, in just 19 seconds. This gives it a true top speed of nearly 16ppm which, while a good way short of the quoted 28ppm, it still very respectable for a printer costing under £100. Even the photographic print only took 14 seconds, a graphics print speed of 4.3ppm.
The conclusion is that Samsung ML-3050’s print speed is impressive and print quality is better than from some machines costing considerably more. While Samsung will have to watch the price of its consumables, which now come close to the cost of the printers themselves, the ML-3050 is very good value for quality mono printing. Read more »
Check out this new Silverbrook Memjet prototype 60 ppm inkjet printer that does 60 color prints per minute! That is 3 times faster than most $5000 to $1000 color laser printers. A $200 desktop printer with a color printing speed of 60 A4 pages per minute is just one of the revolutionary new devices promised by Silverbrook Research, a company which holds more than 1400 patents, but has never released a product. Read more »
HP’s Vivera inks and scaleable print technology have together improved the print quality and reduced the cost of the company’s ink-jet printers. The HP Photosmart D7160 is one of the latest beneficiaries and has a couple of other good features as well. Selling at around $170, it’s surprising to see the range of facilities available.
The quality of prints produced by this machine is generally good. Text comes out dense and black, though with some feathering into the paper. Colour block graphics are clean and solid, with good gradations of tone.
HP Photosmart D7160’s photo prints at best quality and on HPs Advanced Photo paper were very good, with exceptionally smooth transitions from shade to shade, high levels of detail and natural, well-reproduced colours. Prints on HPs Premium Plus glossy paper were a little grainy, though you have to look closely to see this. Read more »
Finding a multi-function machine, complete with network connection, fax and an auto-document feeder (ADF) for around $200 (plus VAT) is a rarity, so this new Brother MFC-5460CN is interesting, straight out of the box.
Brother claims print speeds of up to 30ppm for black and 25ppm for colour print and these figures are frankly silly. Under test we saw typical speeds of 2.2ppm to 2.7ppm, less than a tenth of the numbers quoted. This is not a quick machine and you may well be left waiting for print jobs to finish.
The Brother MFC-5460CN is a good choice for anybody on a tight budget, as it offers many features you don’t normally see together on a machine at this price point. While neither print quality nor speed are anything to write home about, for day-to-day printing, copying, scanning and faxing, all the essentials and some of the extras are there. Read more »
Lexmark has a lot of all-in-ones in its stable, but the newly launched Lexmark X9350 is the best equipped of the lot. Designed to be a top-end home or home-office device, it should be able to handle a wide cross-section of printing tasks.
There’s a good suite of application software provided with this all-in-one, including ABBEY FineReader OCR and the Presto PageManager document manager. There’s also Lexmark’s Productivity Suite, which includes basic photo management and editing.
Print speeds aren’t impressive, with our five-page test taking just under a minute to complete and the text and graphics print taking over two minutes. Just over 2ppm for colour print is slow, less than half Lexmark’s claim.
The conclusion is that the Lexmark X9350 has all the bells and whistles of a top-of-the-range multi-function: duplex print, wireless, network and USB connections, LCD display, fax and auto document feed. All this works well, but the fundamentals, like print speed and photo quality, are still not up with its rivals. If you can live with these shortcomings, the machine is a delight to use. Read more »
The Epson Stylus DX series has specialised in creating relatively cheap and efficient All-in-Ones that will appeal principally to small and home business users who are working to tight budgets.
The main difference with the Epson Stylus DX7000F is that you now have a fax capability alongside the printing, copying and scanning functions. The colour 33.6Kbps fax includes an Answer Mode that can be easily changed between Auto Answer and Manual - the latter will avoid disruption to your printing - and it includes auto-redial plus a 60-address speed dial memory.
Epson has improved the DX All-in-One range with the Espon Stylus DX7000F,by adding a fax capability, and the software, memory card slots and price make this a very attractive proposition, only let down by fast ink usage and the loss of the handy LCD control monitor. Read more »
Ok, now it’s time for some fun:) Here’s a nice Lexmark video commercial that I found on YouTube. Enjoy!
HP’s printing division has been busy of late. The end result is that it now has one of the most comprehensive multifunction printing portfolios available. The LaserJet 3035 range is the latest to join this extended family. The HP M3035xs MFP on review is aimed at small workgroups, comprising up to eight workers, looking for mono printing, copying, duplexing and faxing, as well as colour scanning.
For sheer versatility, the HP M3035xs MFP scores highly because there’s little it can’t do. The price you pay is average print quality for graphics and photos, but as a general office printing gopher it has a lot going for it. Read more »
If you have a small to medium sized business that needs an efficient, fast and good quality workhorse of a printer, then you could do a lot worse than Epson’s latest AcuLaser C3800N.
When a printer comes in a box that needs dismantling around it and two people to lift it, you know you’re getting something substantial (the base unit weighs 25.8kg). Yet despite the weight, it’s remarkably compact, with user-friendly controls, and is one of the quietest printers in its class; in standby mode it’s silent.
Solid yet compact, the Epson AcuLaser C3800N is a powerful, speedy, high volume printer for small to medium sized businesses. It has a friendly interface and controls allied to a comforting emphasis on security. Read more »
