There are plenty of inkjet printers on the market with many different designs and capabilities and this is a great thing because when going shopping for one there's plenty to choose from. But then again, it's definitely harder to pick a certain one out of the whole bunch. So how do you choose the best photo inkjet printer for your own needs? Well, it's important to follow a couple of guidelines and give a few questions a bit of thought before you go out shopping.

The best place to start is establishing what you're going to need it for. If you only print photos you might be interested in a standalone photo printer with higher photo quality and a higher number of inks. If you're buying it for a home office then you may be better off choosing a multifunction printer (like a Canon Pixma MP490) that offers copying, printing, scanning and decent quality photo printing as well.

If you're a professional always on the go that needs to print out photos at certain fairs and events a compact portable photo printer with a optional battery like the Epson PictureMate Zoom (PM 290) is exactly what you're looking for. Whichever printer it is stick to the features you actually need.


Print speed is also a pretty important detail. If you're using the printer in an office and expect it to throw out a high number of prints in a short amount of time you may be better off choosing a laser printer. But some of the new inkjets also offer good printing speeds (especially for draft mode text).

Some main advantages of inkjets are : low initial price tag, support for many types of media to print on, technology that allows you to refill ink cartridges with no problem at all if you don't want to pay more on originals (even though quality does have to suffer a lot – consider yourself warned). If you have over two computers in the household and would like to use the printer for all of them, some sort of networking capabilities like Ethernet or wireless may be useful. This is rarely important outside an office however, because it's easy to share a printer even through USB.

As a general idea, brand may also play an important part in choosing the best photo inkjet printer. Right now the most commonly sold brands in the US are Canon, Epson, HP and Lexmark.


Special needs were obviously not included in what was mentioned above. Users that would like to print photos at larger formats should be looking for a large format printer that allows it. A good thing to also study is the maintenance cost after purchase. Some models of printers have very expensive consumables. This means that you may pay $50 at the beginning to purchase the printer and then discover that replacing the ink for it may cost you as much as buying a new printer. Carefully study that before you make a selection.

Most people need printers for home, because it's sometimes pretty useful to print out various documents, reports or pictures (for the amateur photographers). Some people have offices at home, and in that case it's not recommended but mandatory to own a printer

But what printer should you chose? The two main technologies of printers are inkjet and laser. But what is so special about inkjet vs laser printer and vice versa? In this article we're going to explore what's good and bad about inkjets and lasers. Let's start with inkjets

The great part about the inkjet technology is that it's pretty cheap nowadays. Entry-level inkjet printers can be found for under $50 if you take your time to consider the options. Inkjets are also pretty varied as features. If you want a color all-in-one for a home office, you can find an inkjet printer to offer that. The same can be said about photo printers. Generally smaller than lasers they can easily fit on your desk.

Print speed is actually debatable. The general belief is that inkjets are slower than lasers. Some of them are. But comparing devices of similar prices you may notice that in some cases inkjets are faster. This is an area where you'll have to carefully study the specific model of printer you're interested in and decide whether it's fast enough for your own needs. What's not so great about inkjets is that their consumables cost a lot.

In fact, most of the time a simple rule applies, the less you payed on the printer, the more the consumables will cost you. The ink is also a problem for some users. First off because it has a slower dry time. Secondly because if you don't use the printer for a longer period of time the ink will get clogged or dry. Laser printers shine when it comes to cost efficiency after purchase. The initial cost may be more expensive but once you've bought it you'll get pretty low costs per copy. They are also very reliable and can handle insane volumes of printing a month.

Most laser printers have fast printing speeds and can achieve crisp, high quality text with ease. If you aren't bothered by the high initial price and how huge they are (requiring a whole corner of the room sometimes) then color lasers don't really have any bad points.

Inkjet printers are really recommended for users who are very interested in printing photographs. They work well as home printers and inkjet all-in-ones will suit just about any need an user with low volume printing requirements has. Lasers will do better in an office environment for multiple reasons. Home users don't need that much efficiency, such large printing volume capabilities and also don't have enough space to house such a large device. When thinking whether to buy an Inkjet vs Laser printer what it comes down to is your own personal needs to make a choice.

Last time anyone checked it was laser printers that were on the bulky side, offering a million features in just one device and breaking down your desk. Inkjet printers came in smaller sizes and didn’t create such a problem as space. I can think of quite a few all-in-one inkjets that still manage to offer a relatively small form factor. Well, it’s clearly not the case with the Epson B-500DN color business ink jet printer that competes with color laser printers both in functionality and size.



This particular Epson printer is advertised by the company as being affordable to maintain. On top of that, it’s said to offer print speeds that are as good as in the case of lasers and much better color printing quality.



This is one printer where you could say that design clearly doesn’t matter. Being kind you could say that it looks rather odd. Leaving kindness aside the general impression it gives you is that of a big black plastic brick. The prominent area on the left houses the four ink cartridges this printer uses to work. The ink cartridges are Epson’s own Durabrite pigmented inks and offer good quality for an inkjet printer. But whatever the manufacturer may claim, they don’t measure up to laser quality, at least for text and graphics. When talking about photo printing however, the tables are turned and you’ll get great quality and vivid photographs. Also, as Epson claims, the maintenance costs are really low. You can find black cartridges in three different capacities on the market that last for 3000, 4000 or 8000 pages. The color ones are available in 3500 or 7000 sheet varieties. Using the high capacity ones you’ll get to save a lot of money. Paper capacity on this printer is more than reasonable. You’ll find a paper cassette on the front that can hold up to 500 sheets of regular paper. Under that there’s another feed tray (you’ll find it hidden under a cover) which will allow another 100 sheets.

For navigation you’ll get to use the simple control panel that features a very hard to read two-line display. The five control buttons are arranged in a diamond like shape, whereas right next to them you’ll find two additional buttons for on/off and paper feeding.  Connectivity is limited to USB and Ethernet which are both found on the back of the printer.

There’s not much to be said about the Epson B-500DN color business ink jet printer aside from this. It’s a business inkjet printer that does come pretty close as quality and speed to a laser. It comes with a similar price tag too. And if you seem to think that the price you pay initially is high, well, you end up saving a lot throughout using this printer. This was rarely the case with inkjets which generally cost a bucket full if you keep using them. The print quality is good and photo quality is great. This is the main reason why you’d want to settle for this instead of a laser. The only inconvenience to the B500DN is that it’s rather loud when printing and some users may grow to be annoyed with this.

As soon as a certain type of technology is perfected, the next step for manufacturers is to take the said technology and shrink it to fit a smaller device. How small their devices will become and when they plan to stop, nobody knows exactly. The problem with this kind of thinking is that, at least at first, to fit such technology into a much smaller shell than initially planed means to give up some of the quality, or sometimes all of it.



This is a pretty good rule for netbooks, the small notebooks that are flooding the market as well as for portable printers. Although mobile printers often mean slower printing speeds and not such good photo quality, Canon's printers often managed to be an exception to this rule.

These Canon photo printers were among the first mobile printers released with a 9600 dpi resolution. It continues a long linage of popular inkjet printers, and the direct 'successor' to the IP90v. The Pixma IP100 has a silver matte finish outer shell, complimented by glossy black panels on the side. Its design was borrowed almost completely from its predecessor, the IP90v.

Both the paper tray and the front lid fold up conveniently and the printer becomes easily portable in a matter of seconds. Since it weighs 4.4 pounds, it can be considered a bit heavier than most of the devices of this type; but it makes this up by a slightly more compact form factor and measures 12.7 x 7.2 x 2.4 inches. The input tray can hold 50 sheets of paper, and sizes supported include 2 by 3, 4 by 6, 5 by 7 and 8 by 10 inch.

Aside from printing straight from a PC, the IP100 also offers a PictBridge port that will allow direct printing from any compatible digital camera. Sadly there is no memory card slot or Wifi. A Bluetooth adapter can be bought separately, however, which will let you print sans wires from either a mobile phone or laptop. For these Canon photo printers an enhanced 5 ink system was used.

This system is meant to maximize print quality for both photos and documents. The 5 inks include a photo black ink for rich contrast and good photo printing. A separate Pigment black can be used for sharp text and office documents. Documents are printed at good quality. But it's the photo quality that really impresses. Photos look vivid and detailed even on larger paper.

Now it's commonly known that portable photo printers have embarrassing print speeds. It's not the case here. The IP100 can print out a 4 by 6 inch photo in about 50 seconds and a 8 by 10 inch in a bit over two minutes and a half. While it's not mind-blowing and you'll still find it slow as wait time, it's considerably better than most other portable photo printers. Finally, the IP100 retails for about $250. It's greatest disadvantage is the lack of a memory card slot. Other than that it offers great quality, portability and speed.

The Hp Officejet Pro K8600dn wide format color inkjet printer offers wide-format prints on tabloid media. Its target audience is the small office environment and it comes with a decently affordable price tag. The best you can get when it comes to office printers is a fast device that doesn’t cost much to maintain and print. This is what HP is trying to offer with the K8600dn, mixed with some useful networking and wide format printing straight from a user’s PC.



For a long time color laser printers were the best for office use because they offered high capacity, crisp text printing and had a good price per print. Nowadays inkjets are starting to be more competitive, and offer lower printing costs. The speed of inkjet has also improved and the technology is extremely good when it comes to printing imagery and photographs. The same can’t be said about lasers.

The quality of the K8600dn is very competitive. It manages to produce crisp text that’s very similar to the one produced by a laser printer while the photos printed by it look natural and good quality. This HP printers uses four-color printing and is equipped with tanks that load behind the door you’ll find on the front of the printer.

There are two print heads, one for black and yellow and the other for magenta and cyan. The tanks are high capacity and will last somewhere in between 830 and 1070 prints (for standard capacity) or 1510 to 2500 pages (high-yield). Speeds are satisfying for a small office and the HP K8600dn can produce up to 35 pages per minute in draft (both color and mono) or 13 pages per minute in quality that can be compared to the one of laser printers.

Office printers need to also offer good paper capacity. In the case of the K8600dn you’ll be getting a 250 input tray. The lid of the input tray serves as an output tray and has a capacity of 150 sheets. Also featured is an automatic duplexer that allows cost and time saving by printing on both sides of paper. The K8600dn can handle a wide variety of media types and sizes. The list includes envelopes, transparencies, photo paper, cards and others. Connecting this printer can be done through high speed USB 2.0. Standard connectivity also includes HP Jetdirect Fast Ethernet embedded Print server and you can optionally make use of HP Jetdirect external print servers.

Finally, the HP Officejet Pro K8600dn wide format color inkjet printer is not the most affordable of the bunch and most offices will find some of its features a bit too much, as they only need the more basic printing capabilities. The quality is pretty good but unfortunately not as good as a high-end color laser (that you’d most likely be able to get for around the same price). On top of that some users may be inconvenienced by the way you need to load paper with this printer. Raising the tray and struggling with it every time you need to refresh paper is somewhat annoying.