Club Printer

First thing that comes to mind when you see the PictureMate 500 is a toaster. This would most likely make the user believe that we’re talking about a dye-sublimation printer. But we’re not. This photo printer makes perfect use of the inkjet technology. Epson is one of the most important manufacturers of photo inkjet printers and has yet to disappoint their consumers with a device.

Having said that, we start off somewhat knowing that the PictureMate 500 is most likely a high quality printer. Due to its design and the fact that it features a handle as well as a relatively small size and form factor, this PictureMate offers good portability as well. Sadly a rechargeable battery pack is optional and you’ll have to purchase one if you’re planning to take this printer along on trips. The optional lithium-ion battery inserts on the back of the printer.

One bad point of the previous PictureMate model was the lack of LCD screen which made previewing photos imposible. Since the 500 is meant to also be a traveling companion for a digital camera Epson finally included a 2.4 inch color LCD screen right on top of the device. Just in front of the LCD you’ll find a few buttons for navigating the on-screen menu, selecting or canceling print jobs. Users will be able to print straight from a memory card. They’ll find the memory card slots hidden under a fold-down panel on the front of the printer.

Due to PrintBridge technology, printing straight from a compatible digital camera or camera mobile phone is also possible. The feed tray is located on the back of the printer and folds out. It can hold a maximum of 20 photo sheets at a time. Also on the back you’ll find the USB port that you’ll use to hook up this printer to your PC.

One great thing about the PictureMate 500 is that it offers six-color printing. Most of the competing devices released on the market in the same period of time generally offer three, or four as a maximum.  There’s only one cartridge though (running the full width of the device) that features all the six colors of ink (magenta, cyan, yellow, light cyan, light magenta, black). Because it features only one cartridge and allows only one print size (4 by 6 inch) the driver  for the 500 is very simple and to the point. Printing speeds are a bit on the slow side for this 4 x 6 photo printer. Directly from a memory card it will take about 75 seconds for a photo to come out while from PC printing will take about 100 seconds or so.

As a conclusion, the PictureMate 500 is a great device for its price and brings to the market a great design that will thrill photography enthusiasts. If you’re willing to settle for a 4 x 6 photo printer as your only size of media to print on and fond of the idea that you can print from camera, memory card, mobile phone or PC, then keep this among your possible choices.

Because of its name HP’s Photosmart 8750 Professional Photo Printer leads you to believe that it’s a device dedicated to the professional photographers out there. In reality the printer is situated more in between professional photography printing and amateur printing and its target market is the advanced amateur photographer that wants a close to professional photo quality device.

Like many other photo dedicated devices, Photosmart 8750 offers a lot of versatility when it comes to the device you’re printing from. Its user will be able to print directly from memory cards (the printer supports CompactFlash, Microdrive, Secure Digital, MMC, Memory Stick and xD memory cards), a digital camera (through the PictBridge port), USB via computer or wirelessly (through an optional Bluetooth adapter). If you decide to take a look along the back side of the Photosmart 8750 you’ll discover Ethernet. By simply connecting it to your router (or switch) you’ll be able to use the printer in a workgroup and all the users will be able to access both the printer and the memory card slots.

The Photosmart 8750 makes use of three distinct ink cartridges that include HP Vivera inks. The special Vivera inks are designed to produce brilliant colors that replicate real life colors as much as possible. They provide exceptional resistance throughout time if combined with HP’s special Premium Plus Photo paper. As for the actual inks included with the printer, you’ll get a HP101 photo inkjet, HP 102 gray photo inkjet and a tri-color HP97. This offers the user high quality nine-ink color printing and realistic photographs. For regular text printing you can replace the HP 102 with a black-only optional cartridge. The HP inkjet cartridges feature both the ink and the printhead. Each time you purchase a new one you’ll also get a brand new inkjet.

As opposed to other professional photo printers, you won’t discover a large color LCD on its control panel, but a monochrome one that can’t be used for previewing imagery, but just for navigation and settings. But to help you out, the printer has a ‘thumbnail index sheet’ feature that allows you to pick the images you want to print without the help of a PC. This can be done by selecting the assigned number of the image from the index sheet.

What makes this printer come very close to being a professional device is a smart driver that supports Adobe RGB, sRGB and controls ink saturation, brightness or tone. While it may seem relatively bulky and takes up quite a bit of desk space, it does allow the printing of larger format photographs (up to 13 by 19 inches borderless prints).

The printer is relatively easy to use, has a wide variety of media card slots as well as built in networking and is a pretty good option for a user that loves photography and would like to purchase a nearly professional photo printer that produces vibrant, time-resistant prints.

HP is the producer of some of the most convenient printers on the market. Doesn’t matter if you’re looking for an office printer, a home printer, a professional photo printer, it’s very likely that HP has already designed and is selling the perfect printer for your needs. Like many other manufacturers, HP too has specific product lines and the devices in each line all tend to look just about the same. Improvement usually means a couple of extra features or slight modifications when it comes to design. However, there is one printer that doesn’t look like any other HP product. This is the Photosmart A826.

First thing that a potential buyer needs to know about HP’s Photosmart A826 home photo printer is that, while the device is small as size, it doesn’t mean that you can take it around on your trips. In fact, this particular printer measures 14.7 x 15.1 x 10.4 inches and is somewhat larger than most compact printers on the market. The design doesn’t imply portability at all. There’s no handle to carry it around with and no battery pack either included or optional.

The idea behind this design is simple. A826 HP home photo printers are meant to sit on your desk and serve as a personal photo kiosk. The design is more than odd. The A826 actually resembles a miniature photo kiosk. It features a 7 inch touch screen display which serves for all of the navigation. The printer ships with a stylus for people who prefer not to use their fingers and smudge the display.

Right as you flip down the front cover (serving as a paper output tray) you’ll discover the four memory card slots it features and a PictBridge USB port. The menu you get on the screen is highly intuitive and you’ll be able to make quite a lot of adjustments to photos (remove effects or add them, modify the size of photos, check ink levels etc).

HP Photosmart A826 has a tri-ink system (the usual three colors, magenta, cyan and yellow) but no black (which is made out of the three previous colors combined). Since black is processed it obviously lacks the depth and quality that actual black ink would provide. Quality of the prints is however good towards great, despite the less intense blacks. One great thing about the A826 is that it works just fine without a PC. You can print photos straight from a PictBridge compatible device (digi cam, mobile phone) or even wirelessly if you purchase an optional USB Bluetooth adapter.

HP’s Photosmart A826 home photo printers can handle 4 by 6 inch or 5 by 7 inch media. Paper can be inserted through the top (you’ll see a small hatch there). Its paper holding capacity is of about 100 sheets. As a contrast to most other photo printers, the paper is fully contained within the shell of the A826 which also protects against dust. As a conclusion if a personal home photo kiosk is what you have in mind this little photo printer is a great choice. A print will keep you waiting a bit under a minute and the price of the printer isn’t that bad either.

The inkjet technology means exactly what it’s name states, a jet of ink (very tiny drops) that are sprayed on paper. It can work on almost any type of media and isn’t very resistant over time. Humidity, sun-light and other factors may deteriorate your print pretty fast. It’s true that manufacturers are working to provide longer lasting inkjet prints, but for now they didn’t manage to produce a better result.

The dye-sublimation technology uses heat to transfer dye onto paper. The dye, specifically made for those printers, turns from solid straight to gas state without ever achieving a liquid state. They use a ribbon with a core at each end of the roll, that each has dyes. After transferring colors to paper (through heat) most printers also produce a final protective layer that is meant to guard against moisture, scratches etc. It’s somewhat of a challenge to chose whats best from inkjet or dye sub photo printers.

So, advantages to inkjet printers include the wide variety of media that you can use, in a wide variety of sizes (including non-paper media like cloth, CD’s etc). This is where dye-sub printers don’t do so well. Most of them are limited to 4 by 6 inch prints and you’ll generally have to purchase photo paper. Same goes for the ribbons. Paper and ink are usually sold together in a kit and the cost of consumables is generally higher in the case of dye-sublimation printers. Then again, so is the quality.

The advantage to a dye-sublimation printer is that it has a 16 million color gamut and produces extremely high quality prints. The last coat the printer applies makes the photos be much more resistant over time and also waterproof. Photos produced through the dye-sublimation technology are usually guaranteed to last the same for a high number of years.

As a contrast, even in the case of an 8-ink inkjet, you’ll find it hard to achieve the same kind of quality a dye-sub has to offer. Because of dithering (those little tiny drops of ink printed right next to eachother) you will also be able to see them if you’re looking very closely or through a magnifying glass. Sure, very few users will take the time to use a magnifying class to check out their printed photos, but unfortunately even with a bare eye you can tell that the image is made out of very little dots.

Now, when you are considering whether to buy an inkjet or dye sub photo printer also consider the fact that dye-sub means you’ll only be able to print photos. Inkjets however, even good photo ones, might also offer extra features like scanning and copying, perhaps even faxing. You’ll also use them for various meaningless documents you have to print out (grocery lists, letters, e-mails to name but a few) and you can stick just about any type of paper at any time in them without having to worry if your special photo paper runs low. Choose a dye-sublimating photo printer if you want a compact very high quality device to take along with your digital camera because for that they are amazing.

The way technology is evolving we’ll soon have computing, printing, faxing and internet in our pockets. Some companies already brag about offering that, while it’s true that in reality all they are offering is a smarter mobile phone, for example. But this is the general trend of the market, shrinking powerful technology so that it can easily be carried along.

The same can be said for printing. Long gone are the days when your printer would only produce mono prints and take up half of your room. Now you can just pick it up by the handle, drop it on the back seat of your car, and print the photos you’ve just taken on a field of flowers in the middle of nowhere.

If you’re looking for a rather simple, compact and good quality printer for 4 by 6 prints then you’ll have yourself an epson vs canon photo printers dilemma to solve. Specifically for that type of user, Canon developed the Selphy compact photo printer line, that is meant to give you the freedom to print high quality photos at any location, straight from a compatible Memory card, digi cam or mobile phone.

They also tried to keep the design of the printers as fun, colorful and family oriented as possible. The whole range uses dye-sublimation thermal transfer printing. Epson’s PictureMate range is a bit more serious than the competition. The design, while still ultraportable is a bit more similar to you regular desk printer. The technology used for PictureMates is inkjet. These tiny Epson printers also have a variety of great features to offer and they’ve been awarded editor’s choice, compact printer of the year and so on.

So which would be a good choice between the two ranges? First off, Canon’s little photo printers use the dye-sublimation technology whereas the Picturemates from Epson are inkjets. So if you’re thinking epson vs canon photo printers, you’ll be thinking dye-sublimation versus inkjet as well. Dye-Sublimation means you can leave the printer around, unused, for a long period of time and it won’t clog.

The same can’t be said for inkjets which do clog if not used at a reasonable interval of time. Canon’s dye-sub printers produce photos that have a clear laminate layer over the ink. The result is rugged, water-proof and highly resistant over time prints. The technology used is the most important thing to consider when picking from canon vs epson.

Aside from that, each model comes with it’s own specific features. What they all have in common is that they can all print directly from a digital camera through PictBridge technology, from memory cards (all models support most types of cards) and they all produce quality prints. The size of both Selphy and Picturemate printers is more than great and you can easily take any of them along on trips.

Selphy’s usually include a batter, whereas for Epson’s PictureMate printers you’ll have to purchase both the battery and the adapter separately. Selphy printers offer more than one print size, while PictureMate printers usually only offer 4 by 6 inch photo printing. With all these considerations, hopefully it will be easier for any user to pick either Canon or Epson, based on what they need from a portable printer.

Standalone printers are slowly starting to disappear from the market. This is because the prices on multifunction devices have gone down by a lot. When a user goes out shopping with $100 in their pocket, it’s only normal that they’d want to get as much as possible for that money spent. When you can get printing, copying and scanning for a price, somehow you wouldn’t pay the same price for a standalone, even if you never ever use those features. So why on earth would you want to buy such a simple device?

Well, first of all, a standalone printer is significantly smaller as size than an all-in-one. HP’s Deskjet D4360 proves this with a size of 128 x 445 x 342 mm. This means you’ll have more space on your desk than if you’d have bought a multifunction. It’s easy to move it from one room to another, if you need to do it, as it only weighs 3.5 kg. And obviously, it is cheaper. Multifunction prices may have gone down, but the price of standalone printers has also gone down as a result. When a more popular product hits the market it’s only normal that older technologies and concepts become more affordable.

As mentioned before, the D4360 is just a printer. You won’t be able to scan, you won’t be able to copy and you definitely won’t be able to fax. Sometimes jack of all trades means master of none, which is generally the weak point of all-in-ones. So by this rule, this HP standalone printer should be great at the only thing it offers. Well, not so much.

HP does advertise it as printing laser quality text, and it does do good for an inkjet, but in reality for a very low price you can get a small laser printer that will produce much better quality and crispiness. Photo quality is also rather disappointing. It’s true that you expect great photo quality just from a popular photo printer that you’ll have to spend a lot on, but a ‘good’ level of quality would have been enough.

A price well under $100 also means you will not get any networking features. You’ll just have to make due with using it on USB. It also doesn’t feature PictBridge so printing from a digital camera will also require a PC. There is also no card reader on the HP Deskjet D4360 color inkjet printer. So no direct printing from anything..but for a PC, obviously. Printing speed is pretty good though, at 30 pages per minute in black or 23 pages per minute in color.

As a conclusion, with the HP Deskjet D4360 color inkjet printer you get exactly what you pay for, which is sadly, not much. Normally standalone printers (ones that have great printing quality) are worth spending money on. In the case of this one, for a few more bucks you’re much better off getting a small, affordable all-in-one that will give much better quality, printing speed and yes, many more features.

The Stylus NX515 Epson color printer is an affordable All-in-one that will fit perfectly in a home environment or maybe even a small office with low printing needs. While it’s not the kind of printer that you use heavily, it is a good option for a home multifunction printer. It will print, scan, copy (even without a PC attached). It will do all these things either wired or wireless-ly.

The design of this printer is extremely pleasant. It has an elegant black shell that ensures it will blend in almost any kind of home or office. The layout of the LCD, control buttons, input tray and card slots is also great and you notice what’s where from the very first moment you come across this printer.  On the left side of the NX515 you will find the 2.5 inch LCD that tilts and the control buttons right in front of it, including a power switch, photo, copy, memory card access and scan buttons plus the directional pad that’s used for navigating throughout the menu.

The NX515 is versatile when it comes to printing possibilities. It will work straight from a compatible digital camera (through the PictBridge USB port) or a memory card (types supported include Compact Flash, xD, SD, and Memory Stick Pro Duo).  You’ll even find a button on the printer that was included specifically for copying files from a memory card and printing them directly.  As for hooking it up to a PC, there are three versions, wired through USB 2.0 or Ethernet, of wireless through 802.11b/g WiFi. Setting up the printer is relatively simple and all drivers you’ll need are found on the CD the printer comes with.

This printer was probably the salesman’s favorite device at a point, because it’s exceptionally easy to recommend the NX515 for many types of users, the price tag is more than convenient and the general satisfaction of its users is high. All-in-one means it can copy, print or scan. One feature that’s not included is the fax machine. But this was a good idea because users that aren’t looking for an office power-horse won’t need that feature.  And they’ll obviously pay a lot less for a device without faxing capabilities.

The quality of prints is not exceptional for text, and especially not for photographs (that come out somewhat grainy).  But that’s if you compare it to products that are generally much more expensive. Overall it has a good price to performance ratio and one of the great Epson color printers on sale. As a conclusion this printer is great if you’re just looking for a regular device that gets almost anything done at a satisfactory quality. If you don’t compare the photos you printed to ones produced by a professional printer, you won’t be disappointed. The integrated scanner is great and can scan to e-mail and it has plenty of features to cover most users’ needs (like networking, free software for greeting cards and calendars).

Users that are looking for a portable photo printer to take along as a buddy for a digital photo camera currently have two good options, Canon’s Selphy line or PictureMate (the Epson photo printers line). Both companies offer great, small sized, high quality photo printers. Still, Epson seems to have gained some more customers lately. Epson must have studied the market really well when deciding to release their PictureMate line of printers, simply because they keep getting very good reviews from both the media and their customers.

One of their best models is the Charm (PM 225) that managed to be one of the best compact photo printers on the market. It also won various awards and was picked editor’s choice time and time again. Knowing the hype that follows this printer but not knowing what it offers, one can but wonder what all the fuss is about.

First of all let’s mention what’s probably the only inconvenient to the Charm. It limits you to printing only in the 4 by 6 inch photo format. Once a user has established that he/she isn’t bothered by this aspect, then the Charm starts looking like the best choice out on the market.

The design of the Epson Charm is somewhat odd. When closed you might easily mistake it for a candy or ice box. It’s not until you flip the top side that you discover it is actually a photo printer, equipped with a color tilt-able LCD screen that, although small, will come in handy plenty of times. As for speed, a 4 by 6 inch print requires about 54 seconds. This means it’s one of the best portable photo printers out there when it comes to speed, with Canon’s Selphy’s producing the same photograph in a bit over a minute. This difference in speed is most likely due to the technology used. Selphys are dye-sublimation printers whereas the Charm is an inkjet.

Like most other portable printers, The Charm offers a wide variety of printing options sans PC. It can print straight from a PictBridge compatible camera, memory card (it supports mini SD, Memory Stick Duo, MMC and Compact Flash), from a mobile phone or other Bluetooth powered device (if you chose to buy the optional Bluetooth adapter). The quality of the prints is really pleasing. Photos are clear, realistic and well balanced. It has actually been described as a perfect 10 in terms of quality. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise that maintenance cost is reasonable.

As a conclusion this is one of the Epson photo printers that is highly portable and a great buy. It’s very easy to use and produces some prints with excellent quality. It would have been nice if, like the Canon Selphy line, Epson would have included the battery and Bluetooth adapter so that the user didn’t have to purchase them separately. Still, it’s lovely to have them even as options. The battery will cost around $50 whereas the Bluetooth adapter is a bit cheaper at $40.

The Samsung CLP-510N printer is a color laser that targets small office and home users. It comes with a resolution of up to 1200 x 1200 dpi and provides much appreciated network connectivity features. You could say that the CLP-510N is not only satisfying as print quality but that it kind of surprises you in a pleasant way as well, at least when it comes to color graphics. The text is not necessarily as sharp as one might expect but that’s just if you have high printing standards and needs from documents.

When you receive the printer you’ll get a very large and heavy box for which you’ll probably require some help to move around. Upon unpacking you’ll find the four toners for the CLP-510N in the colors you’ve probably gotten used to by now (black, cyan, magenta and yellow) as well as a bunch of manuals, software CD and the device itself.

Print speed is not extraordinary but will fit most users’ needs at up to 25 pages per minute in mono and 6 pages per minute in color. Duplexing speeds are of 11 ppm black & white and 6 ppm color. The duplexer is a great feature to have in an office printer. It allows printing on both sides of the paper without having to spend time and energy twisting and turning paper, re-inserting it and hoping you did it the right way.

It also saves paper as you’ll be printing on both sides of a sheet, instead of 2 distinct sheets of paper. Some users, like me, might be annoyed by the high first page out time, especially if printing is not done on a regular basis and heavily in your office. It doesn’t matter if a printer can produce 50 copies in a one minute interval, if you have to wait for it to warm up for what seems like an eternity, especially if you’re in the rush for printing one single page. Because of this, it’s nice to know that Samsung also worked on that and lowered the first page out time to 13 seconds for monochrome and 21 seconds for color.

Lower on the front you will find the paper tray with a capacity of 250 sheets of paper while on the right side you can also make use of a 100 sheet auxiliary feeder. As opposed to the more affordable CLP-510, the CLP-510N also comes with networking capabilities. The printer can be set up to work with almost any operating system including Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

As a conclusion, the Samsung CLP-510N printer is an inexpensive solution for any small office, that offers both duplexing and networking. The control panel and the layout of the printer might be a bit confusing, and the text quality could be a little better. Fot the navigation there is a simple solution though; you can print a menu map and stick it somewhere close to the printer to see which option is where in the menu.  Overall it’s one of the better printers out there on the market.

One thing Samsung seems to be pretty good at? Providing affordable laser printers, be it color or monochrome. They are actually doing better than other brands such as HP or Ricoh. Apparently, their theory that they should provide exactly what the consumer is looking for, followed by carefully studying what the consumer requires, is really paying off.

The starter cartridges it comes with will offer just about 2000 pages for black and 1500 pages for color. This means that if you have a small office you’ll end up changing them in the shortest time possible. If for some reason you’ve purchased this for home however, and you don’t need serious printing, the 2000 pages will do well for you. While the full cartridges will last for 7000 pages (mono) and 5000 pages (color) they are unreasonably expensive.

Samsung should have payed a bit more attention to what the consumer needs in this case, as they failed to provide networking, on a printer that targets small offices. This is sort of counter intuitive and will probably cut the target audience by at least half. They do come as an extra (both Ethernet and wireless) but one wonders why you’d have to spend more money to equip this with networking when you can buy a printer that provides that off the shelf.

Bottom line is, all you’ll be getting with the CLP-500 is USB 2.0 (no cable included so you have to buy your own). Setting up the printer is very easy though, as in the case of most Samsung products. Right after you purchase an USB cable, all you have to do is plug the printer in, and that’s about it.

Fully equipped with cartridges it will weigh a ‘mere’ 35 kg. When you consider where you’re going to be placing it also consider that it measures 51 x 47 x 40.5 cm. The Samsung CLP-500 printer could be called bulky but to some extent most color laser printers that were designed for office use are larger as size. As for paper capacity, you’ll be getting a 250 sheet output tray on the top of the device, and 250 sheet input tray. There’s also an extra 500 sheet input tray available for purchase for users that want to increase paper capacity. A multipurpose tray is on the right side of the printer but it will somewhat disapoint with it’s capacity of only 10 sheets of media. Media supported includes envelopes, labels or transparencies.

On the bright side the printer comes with a duplexer, so printing on both sides of the paper will be easy and convenient and you’ll be saving up on paper and time. Speed is pretty average, 20 pages per minute for monochrome and 5 pages per minute for printing color in A4. Quality is good towards great. The graphics quality is somewhat better than the text but both are satisfactory. So, if a user is looking for an affordable color laser printer that can produce good quality prints and also includes a duplexer, the Samsung CLP-500 printer is a very good idea. However, people that require a huge output of paper should look somewhere else, as running costs may become higher than the initial buying cost.