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 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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Right on top of the printer you’ll discover a 2.4 inch LCD screen that swivels allowing for multiple viewing angles depending on what’s more comfortable for its user. For control you’ll be getting four directional (arrow) keys, an OK button and a back button. Aside from the aforementioned ones you’ll also be getting print and one-touch red-eye-removal buttons.

The input tray is situated on the back of the printer and can handle as many as 25 sheets of photo paper whereas the output tray is right in the front. Also on the front you will find a USB port and the memory card slots. There is a very high number of memory cards the printer supports including Compact Flash, Memory Stick, SD, MMC, xD and variations.

The printer uses a single cartridge (tri-color) with pigment ink and can handle quite a few sizes of paper of up to 4 by 8 inch (which is a somewhat atypical format). Upon it’s release on the market this printer also introduced two new technologies to the public, Lexmark’s Evercolor II ink technology and Perfect Finish Photo paper. The Evercolor ink is, as mentioned before, a pigment based ink that promises a quicker dry time as well as prints that are waterproof.

P350 is pretty versatile as printing and can offer direct prints from a memory card, compatible digital camera, PC or even Bluetooth devices (provided you buy a Bluetooth adapter separately). At the moment of release P350 was one of the most affordable Lexmark photo printers around. While this doesn’t make it the highest quality printer and it’s printing speed is rather on the slow side compared to competition it remains a satisfying choice. Only clear inconvenience is the lack of a battery pack (optional or included) because it makes the device feel less portable.

This particular printer is a bit larger than your average, measuring 3.1 x 13.1 x 7.3 inches and weighing 2.8 pounds. Its design is nice and reminds you of how most digital cameras look. On top of the printer you will find a 3.5 inch LCD screen, which is rather low-resolution but will do decently as functionality. You may notice pixels when previewing a photo to print out, but you’ll get the general idea of what you’re printing so one can’t complain that much aside from esthetics. The navigating menu is pretty simple and straight forward (maybe too much so) and you’ll use a set of dedicated buttons for going forward, backward in the menu and making selections.

As many other similar devices, the Easy Share 500 Kodak photo printers also offer versatility. The Easy Share 500’s users will be able to print directly from memory card, a compatible PictBridge digital camera or camera phone or straight from the PC. Also added is built-in Bluetooth for printing from any compatible device, which is somewhat rare as most printers only offer Bluetooth via an optional (separately purchased) adapter.

The 8-in-1 Card Reader, found right on the front of the device can handle most types of memory cards including Compact Flash, MultiMedia Card, xD, Memory Stick, Secure Digital, Magic Gate and others. If you think you need yet another alternative you can purchase separately a 802.11b card that will allow your printer to connect to a network wirelessly as well as to any WiFi powered device.So you can basically print from any device that can store pictures through just about any technology that’s currently available on the market. That doesn’t sound bad for a printer that retails for under $200.

Some nice features these Kodak photo printers have to offer include the PerfectTouch technology that makes pictures more realistic and bright or red-eye-reduction at the touch of a button. The Kodak 500 is ideal for users who want a mini kiosk that works without a PC and can be brought along just about anywhere. They’ll be limited as photo size to 4 by 6 inches (maximum, but 3 x 4 inch with borders, 2×3 inch and 1.3 x 2 inch mini photos can also be printed) but will have all the options in the world when it comes to devices that can be used to print from.

The similarities end at the Ethernet port (which is featured in the B9180 only). The B9180 can also handle thicker media than its brother (up to 1.5mm) and has a status display on the front size.

These features were dropped by HP with the idea of cost efficiency in mind. Users who don’t need networking won’t have to pay a higher price for the device. For a long period of time Epson was the ‘king’ manufacturer and produced some of the best photo printers when it comes to pigment ink. Since HP stepped up to produce such devices as well, and pretty good quality to boot, competition boosted the development of new technology a bit.

Just to keep things clear Hp’s B8850 targets the advanced amateur photographer (or photographers that don’t have networking requirements from a printer). Its price is more affordable than products from the competition or even HP’s line. The B8850 is somewhat dependent of a PC. It can work as a standalone but the front LCD display only shows a limited amount of info.  If you’re planning to keep it hooked to the same PC you’ll find that the software it comes with makes up for this little inconvenience and inform you on how low the ink levels are, among other things.

As mentioned before the B8850 uses the same print head cartridges and Vivera pigment ink, eight as number, as the B9180. Just like its older brother it offers excellent quality color prints. It features a simpler closed loop calibration system that works by printing a page with individual color blocks.

It then automatically pulls the page back into the printer where a sensor will scan each color block and measure things like color density. It will then compare the results with the factory calibration settings and decide if they are the same. In case there is a difference from factory settings, the printer will adjust itself as necessary to make sure it provides consistent color.Overall the HP Photosmart Pro B8850 is one of the best photo printers for advanced amateur photographers and will do well on the desk of a professional as well.

Along with the printer you’ll get to make use of some pretty new and awesome technologies such as the UltraChrome Hi-Gloss pigment ink or Radiance Technology (that’s meant to maximize the color gamut and at the same time optimize print quality). UltraChrome Hi-Gloss ink was a huge evolution for photography printing, offering a wider color gamut with consistency, a smooth gloss finish as well as natural skin tones.

On top of the cyan, magenta and yellow inks that consumers are used to getting, this printer also features options for matte black, red, orange, photo black as well as gloss optimizer. With this set of eight inks, there is obviously a huge number of combinations you can achieve. To establish which combination you should use to get exactly the colors you need for a certain image, Epson has provided a technology called Look Up Table which decides how much of each color is used for a print job. Because of all this exciting new technology the result is printing with reduced graininess, a wide color gamut and very high quality.

The printer can support a wide variety of media, like glossy, matter of fine art paper, with sizes of up to A3+.  Borderless printing can be achieved at a resolution of up to 5760 x 1440 dpi. There is no built in Ethernet, but this printer is hardly the type that needs to be used in an office. You’ll have to make do with 2 USB ports that you can find on the back of the device, thus allowing two computers to be connected at the same time. There’s also the option to print straight from a PictBridge compatible digital camera and you’ll find a separate USB port for that right on the front of the printer (for easy access).

The Epson Stylus photo R1900 is one good photo quality printers and a viable choice for users who are looking to produce photos with a superior gloss finish. The prints are also smudge, fade and water resistant as well as vibrant and gallery-quality. Due to support of roll paper, panorama printing is also possible as well as CD or DVD printing.