Printers for Every Purpose
Different inkjets for different folks: We evaluate 15 models for quality, speed, and ink costs, from snapshot specialists to office workhorses.Dan Littman
Dan Littman is a contributing editor and Eric Butterfield is an associate editor for PC World.
Inkjet printers have evolved: Though all-purpose models are still going strong, newer types now fill specialized niches and do particular tasks well. For this story, in addition to examining general-purpose and photo-optimized inkjets--which we review regularly in the Top 100--we looked at a handful of very small mobile printers that are designed to be taken on the road, as well as at snapshot printers built to churn out photo prints no larger than 4 by 6 inches. In each category we evaluated the printers' speed, print quality, features, and ink costs to help you find your perfect match.
The Inkjet Smorgasbord: A Variety of Printers Compared (chart)
General-Purpose Printers
If you print documents, drawings, and Web pages as often as you print photos, a garden-variety inkjet printer is for you. But don't feel like you're compromising on print quality by going general-purpose: Some of the models in this category produced great-looking photographs in addition to fine text. They tend to be fast at generating text pages and less speedy at printing glossy photos. On the whole, their ink costs for color graphics are lower than those of photo printers, too.
Editor's Pick: Snappy print speeds, separate black inks for text and graphics, and fine print quality make the Canon i860 the best all-around choice.
Canon i455 Desktop Photo Printer
Canon i455 Desktop Photo Printer: Bargain price, attractive photos.
Though "photo printer" is part of its name, we group Canon's $80 i455 with general-purpose printers, for two reasons: First, it uses four inks, rather than the six or seven that most photo printers employ. Second, it does a fine job with text and plain-paper graphics, as well as with photos. In PC World's photo printing tests, the i455 printed top-quality glossies in both gray scale and color. The gray-scale photos showed good detail and smooth shading, and the superbly detailed color photos possessed natural-looking textures and colors.
The i455 printed text at 5.3 pages per minute and produced crisp letterforms. It printed narrow parallel lines distinctly, a rarity among inkjet models. The i455's paper trays are unusually sturdy. On the downside, the i455 has no memory card slots, and no LCD. But it does have a port for connecting to a PictBridge-enabled camera.
Upshot: For very good all-purpose printing plus great photo output, the i455 is a bargain--as long as you don't need memory card slots.
General-Purpose Printers (Continued)
Canon i860 Desktop Photo Printer
Canon i860: Fast speeds, high quality, low price.
Canon's i860 uses five inks: cyan, magenta, yellow, and two kinds of black--a photo black for graphics and a pigment-based black mostly for text. The dual blacks pay off: Letters look dark but very clean at big and small type sizes. The i860 holds all five ink tanks at once, and prints fine-looking glossy photos. Gray-scale prints showed sharp detail and realistic shading, and color glossies accurately reproduced colors and textures. The $150 i860 is quick, too: It printed text at 6.8 ppm and color graphics on plain paper at 2.3 ppm.
Canon includes a cartridge for snapshot-size paper, and offers an $80 duplexer option. The i860 forgoes media card slots in favor of a PictBridge port on the front; and the back has USB and parallel ports. On top of everything else, ink costs were low: 8.3 cents per page of color plus black.
Upshot: The i860 generates high-quality prints, but it lacks media card slots.
HP Business Inkjet 2300
HP Business Inkjet 2300: Low ink costs, but so-so graphics print quality.
The HP Business Inkjet 2300 is tailored for office use, with a paper capacity of 400 sheets and workgroup-oriented options, but it can't keep up with the low-cost color laser printers that it competes with in price.
Its graphics speeds were fairly impressive, but its print quality was less so. The printer tore through graphics at 2.2 ppm--significantly faster than the 1.4-ppm average for this group. Text speed was close to the average, at 5.4 ppm, but about 1.5 ppm slower than the speed of two other general-purpose printers in this roundup.
The 2300 printed blacker, cleaner letterforms than most other inkjets we tested, but comparably priced color lasers we've evaluated produce similar output and print much faster. The 2300 printed our test document of narrow parallel lines better than most inkjets. The 2300's graphics and photos, however, were disappointing.
In our page yield tests, the 2300 turned in the lowest cost per page for black alone (2.1 cents) and for color plus black (7.7 cents).
Upshot: Though HP's Business Inkjet 2300 generates output quickly and is built for high-volume use, its print quality didn't impress us.
HP Deskjet 9650
HP Deskjet 9650: High ink costs, but big prints and great photos.
Priced at $399, the HP Deskjet 9650 has a wide carriage that can handle paper 13 inches across and up to 4 feet long--and its paper-feeding smarts don't stop there. The input tray holds 150 sheets of paper, so you won't have to refill it constantly. A slot in the back draws in heavy stock and feeds it through the printer without bending it.
One inconvenience: You have to swap the 9650's black and photo cartridges, depending on what you're printing. The 9650 has neither a PictBridge port nor memory card slots.
In our page yield tests, printing plain black on the Deskjet 9650 cost a steep 5.1 cents per page (the average cost for general-purpose models in this review was 4.3 cents). For color plus black, this printer was among the most expensive models tested, at 13.8 cents per page.
The 9650 doesn't break any speed records: It printed text at an unimpressive 4.1 ppm, and generated graphics (not photos) at 0.9 ppm, a bit below average for this group. On plain paper, text looked black and clean in headlines but a little choppy in smaller type sizes--a state of affairs that better-quality inkjet paper didn't significantly improve. Color prints on plain paper showed sharp detail and relatively good color. With photo inks on glossy paper, the 9650's prints of gray-scale photos exhibited uncanny depth despite having a somewhat scratchy texture, and color photos came out in sharp focus with realistic colors, though some detail disappeared in shadow areas.
Upshot: The wide-format Deskjet 9650 delivers consistently good print quality on many kinds of documents. This printer is no speed demon, however, and its cost-per-page numbers are quite high.
Lexmark Z816 Color Jetprinter
Lexmark Z816: Fast at text, but ink is costly and print quality is mediocre.
The $100 z816 printed text pages faster than any other inkjet we've tested recently, at 6.9 ppm. On the other hand, it produced color graphics at a below-average 0.9 ppm; and glossy photos took an unacceptable 6 minutes and 40 seconds each. The Z816's text showed a slight sawtooth pattern along the edges of letters at all type sizes. Color graphics had a somewhat muted, foggy look, but with reasonably attractive detail and lighting. (When we used better-quality inkjet paper, color quality improved a lot, but text quality didn't change much.) Color glossies were the Z816's strong suit, with fine detail, smooth shading, and vibrant colors.
Like its predecessors, the Z816 uses three ink cartridges--containing black, standard three-color, and photo inks--but it holds only two at a time. As a result, you sometimes have to swap cartridges to match your print job. Using Lexmark's standard-capacity cartridges, the Z816 racked up the highest per-page ink costs of any printer we reviewed: 7.7 cents for black alone and a total cost of 15.8 cents for combined black and color. Lexmark's high-capacity cartridges made prints significantly less expensive in the same tests.
Upshot: The Z816 lags behind other printers in output quality and has a steep cost per page, but it prints text fast and the unit itself is inexpensive.
Mobile Printers
If you spend little time behind a desk but have to print often, a tiny portable printer might be the tool you need. Both models we tested are lightweight and fold up to about the size of a textbook. They can communicate via Bluetooth wireless, and can run on batteries or plug into your car's power adapter. Both incurred higher ink costs than the average desktop inkjet, by a couple of cents per page. Of the two models we evaluated, the HP Deskjet 450wbt generated more-attractive color graphics, whereas Canon's i80 printed crisper line art. The Canon model printed more quickly across the board.
Editor's Pick: Despite its slower performance, HP's Deskjet 450wbt is our portable pick for its richer features and superior print quality.
Canon i80 Color Bubble Jet Printer
Canon i80 Bubble Jet: Impressive performance and print quality for a portable printer.
Canon's diminutive i80 is the smallest mobile printer we've seen in quite a while, and the least expensive--until you add a rechargeable battery ($100) or Bluetooth adapter ($80). We marveled at the i80's compact design: The upper half of the shell flips open to become a 30-sheet paper tray. The configuration that we tested weighs 4 pounds, plus 10 ounces for the AC adapter. The i80's snap-on battery and charging kit adds 1.5 pounds. The optional car charger costs $90. Canon estimates that a fully charged battery will last for 450 pages.
Black pages printed on the i80 cost 5.3 cents per page, and pages of color plus black cost 13.4 cents. The i80 printed text at a creditable 5.7 ppm. Its text looked strongly black, though a bit of splatter showed on large type. Color photos looked almost as good as those printed by photo printers, marred only by a slightly reddish cast.
Upshot: The i80 makes a good traveling companion, but we think that Canon should have included the battery in the package.
HP Deskjet 450wbt
HP Deskjet 450wbt: Graphics quality on a par with that of the best desktop printers.
If you have to print while you travel, you won't find a better printer than HP's $349 Deskjet 450wbt. The 450wbt runs on battery or AC power, and it weighs less than 5 pounds with its ink cartridges installed and its lithium ion battery attached. When closed, it is easy to carry. The tray holds 45 sheets. The model we tested came with Bluetooth installed; but the base model carries USB 2.0, parallel, and infrared ports, for $100 less.
The Deskjet 450wbt operated a bit more slowly than general-purpose inkjets. It printed text at 3.8 ppm, versus the test set average of 5.7 ppm. Text looked slightly grayish in places, but letters were well formed. It printed color graphics at 0.8 ppm. When we installed the optional $25 photo ink cartridge, the 450wbt turned out great glossy photos in both gray scale and color. Color glossies, though somewhat oversaturated, reproduced detail nicely. On line art, however, the 450wbt fared poorly: Narrow parallel lines bled together.
The 450wbt holds only two ink cartridges at a time. To switch between documents and photos, you'll have to swap cartridges.
Upshot: The HP 450wbt makes printing high-quality graphics on the go extremely convenient.
Photo Printers
The latest photo printers have some interesting innovations. Two printers we tested use inks we hadn't seen before: On top of the usual cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) inks, Canon's i9900 Photo Printer adds red and green, while Epson's Stylus Photo R800 adds red, blue, and a matte black. But the less expensive models--even the $99 Epson Stylus Photo R200--printed equally stunning glossy photos in color and in gray scale.
Editor's Pick: Wide paper capacity, amazing photo printing speed, and tremendous print quality make Canon's i9900 our top choice.
Canon i960 Photo Printer
Canon i960: Basic features, but quick to print great photos.
Though it lacks the extras found on many other photo printers--such as a control panel, an LCD, and media slots-- Canon's i960 provides a PictBridge port on its front panel along with two USB ports on the back, for sharing the printer without a network.
The i960's glossy photos showed superb detail and very realistic textures, though colors in several images were somewhat oversaturated; on plain paper, photos retained their detail but looked a little washed out. Text appeared solid black, with slightly choppy edges.
The $195 i960 churned out photos in a pleasantly prompt 71 seconds. The printer's text speed, however, fell somewhat below par, at 2.5 pages per minute. The i960 employs six separate ink tanks, which you can replace individually.
Upshot: If you're seeking a reasonably priced photo printer that can perform text duty, too, the i960 may be your best bet--assuming that you don't need media card slots or an LCD.
Canon i9900 Photo Printer
Canon i9900: Big prints and fast at photos, but high ink costs.
The i9900 Photo Printer is the first Canon model to add red and green inks to its palette, enabling it to reproduce a broader range of colors in photos. The $480 unit is also fast: It output our best-quality photo faster than any other printer we reviewed, in 61 seconds. The i9900 generated text at a respectable (but still unpleasantly slow) 3.1 ppm. At small font sizes, text showed some roughness, but color graphics on plain paper held surprisingly sharp detail. Photos on glossy paper looked fabulous: Gray-scale prints had lifelike shading; color prints looked intensely saturated, especially the reds and greens.
Mechanically, the i9900 is easy to use. The unit's wide carriage can accommodate 13-by-19-inch paper, though the glossy stock costs $2.50 a sheet. In addition, ink costs for the i9900 were quite high: 12.9 cents per page of black and color.
The printer comes with USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 ports, as well as a Mac-only six-pin FireWire port on the back. Though the front of the i9900 lacks media slots and a control panel, it does have a PictBridge port.
Upshot: If you're serious about photo printing, this speedy model could be just what you need.
Epson Stylus Photo R200
Epson Stylus Photo R200: Low cost and appealing photos, but mediocre on plain paper.
The Epson Stylus Photo R200 costs just $99 but offers light photo cyan and light photo magenta inks to lessen graininess in photographs, plus the ability to print on optical discs.
Text looked a bit choppy throughout, and narrow parallel lines didn't print clearly. One test photo led to a problem that affected both the Epson R200 and its sibling, the Epson R800: While RGB-format files printed beautifully, a file in CMYK format sometimes printed out much too dark (CMYK is not typically used with PC printers, but most models we tested handle it without difficulty). We suspect that the source of this problem is the driver; Epson is investigating. Gray-scale photos on glossy paper had appealing depth, sharp focus, and realistic lighting and reflections. Unfortunately, the R200's printing speeds were not terribly fast.
Printing on discs with the R200 is convenient: You don't have to rearrange the main paper tray, because the R200 has a separate tray for feeding a disc into the printer. The R200 comes with two USB 1.1 ports--one on the front and one on the back--but neither supports PictBridge, and you can't use either to share the printer between two computers.
Upshot: Photos generated on the R200 look wonderful and the $99 price is right, but this is not a strong all-purpose printer.
Epson Stylus Photo R800
Epson Stylus Photo R800: Low ink costs and attractive photos; weak on plain paper.
The Stylus Photo R800 adds red and blue to the standard color inks; but it omits light photo cyan and light photo magenta inks. Other cartridges supply photo black, matte black (for text), and a gloss overcoat. The matte black helped the R800 produce text that looked bold yet clean even at small sizes. While gray-scale photos exhibited punch that other printers' output lacked, they also showed precise detail and realistic shading.
Like other Epson inkjet units, the R800 made a mess of narrow parallel lines. And when we tried to print our CMYK-format test photo, we ran into the same problem with this model that we did with the R200: The photo sometimes printed too dark, and appeared severely underexposed. Even when it did print correctly, the image was a bit duller than when output from other printers in our test group. Images printed on the R800 in the more-common RGB format looked gorgeous.
The printer applies its gloss overcoat to photos in areas with light-colored ink, to prevent dull patches. Epson's driver allows you to turn the gloss cartridge on or off; PC World's panel of judges could detect no difference between prints that used the overcoat and those that did not.
The R800's print speeds were slow, similar to the R200's. The R800 can print on rolls of photo paper either 4 inches or 8.3 inches wide, and it has a tray for feeding CDs or DVDs through the paper path. The R800 doesn't have a control panel or a direct-to-camera port, but it does provide USB 2.0 and six-pin FireWire ports.
Upshot: If you plan on printing a lot of snapshots, you'll appreciate the R800's roll feeder; and as long as you stick with RGB files, the R800 will reward you with great-looking photo prints.
HP Photosmart 7760
HP Photosmart 7760: Top-notch photos, fast at text for a photo printer.
The Photosmart 7760's photos earned a rating of Outstanding, with fine detail, smooth textures, and accurate color. Gray-scale photos printed with HP's photo-gray ink conveyed remarkable contrast and realism. But if you print a wide range of materials, you'll have to swap cartridges fairly often. You'll also pay a lot to get the complete set of inks: The printer comes with only the three-color and photo inks; the cartridge for ordinary black costs $20 extra, and the gray cartridge is $25 extra. The 7760's costs for four-color printing on plain paper, however, are competitive.
Like many photo-oriented inkjets, the 7760 does not deliver top quality on other kinds of print jobs. Black text on ordinary paper looked clean enough but somewhat grayish. On ordinary paper, color prints lost detail and colors seemed washed out. You'll find the 7760 fast enough at text, though, at 4.6 ppm. The unit also supports a duplexer option.
Upshot: The 7760 prints terrific color and black-and-white photos, making it a good choice for users who don't mind swapping ink cartridges frequently.
Snapshot Printers
Snapshot printers do only one thing--print gorgeous photos in small sizes--but they do it well. All are designed for travel: Epson's PictureMate sports a handle, and the Canon CP-330 can run on battery power. When you introduce a digital camera, though, individual differences emerge. Each model has its own scheme for printing directly from a camera. Only the Canon prints labels, but it lacks media card slots.
Editor's Pick: For ease of use, low consumables costs, and stellar output, we give the snapshot nod to Epson's PictureMate.
Canon Compact Photo Printer CP-3300
Canon CP-330: Tiny, and offers many features, but a little pricey.
Canon's CP-3300 snapshot printer is so petite that it could almost fit in your back pocket. Though its unique features impressed us, they come at a steep price. For starters, the CP-330 costs $269, which is $70 to $89 more than the other two snapshot printers we tested for this roundup.
The CP-330 prints to three paper sizes--4-by-6-inch, 4-by-8-inch, and smaller prints the size of a credit card--as well as onto photo labels in two sizes: credit card and postage stamp. And speaking of stamps, the back of Canon's 4-by-6 paper has an outline box for one, along with a line running down the middle, just like the markings on the backs of store-bought postcards.
A 36-sheet pack of 4-by-6-inch paper plus ink ribbon costs $20, or about 56 cents a print; 4-by-8-inch prints cost about 83 cents each.
The CP-330 is compact; folded up, it's 6.5 inches wide, 5 inches deep, and 2 inches high. And it can operate on a battery, which Canon includes with the printer. (Canon says one battery charge is good for about 36 prints.) Together, the printer and battery weigh about 2.5 pounds. The CP-330 can communicate with a camera that supports PictBridge or Direct Print, but it has no memory card slots, and lacks a control panel. Canon's Windows driver includes a number of basic image editing controls--such as sliders for adjusting color levels--that other snapshot printers do not have. The CP-330 requires a separate paper cassette for each paper size.
The CP-330's prints had a somewhat earthy look but were still lovely. The unit printed a 4-by-6-inch photo in 1 minute and 45 seconds, 16 seconds slower than the Sony DPP-EX50 took.
Upshot: The CP-330 is a good choice if you want to print while on the road--as long as you're comfortable with your camera's menus.
Epson PictureMate
Epson PictureMate: Fun and easy to use, with numerous features, though slow.
The $199 PictureMate's design suggests portability and recreation: It has a handle and looks like a small silver-and-black boom box. The PictureMate doesn't run on batteries, though you can buy an optional car adapter for $50. It prints only on 4-by-6-inch paper, but you can have it make two wallet-size prints on one sheet.
Nonetheless, we found the PictureMate a pleasure to use. It has a USB 1.1 port--supporting a camera, an external CD writer, or a Bluetooth module ($69)--and slots for most common memory cards. Navigating on-board menus with a four-way toggle button was easy, but the LCD isn't backlit.
Most snapshot printers use dye-sublimation technology, but the PictureMate is an inkjet, with a six-ink cartridge that includes Epson's new red and blue inks. Epson's 100-sheet packs of paper include ink and cost $29, or 29 cents per print.
The PictureMate took fully 2 minutes and 22 seconds to print a photo from a PC--but in the resulting image, the colors looked bright and detail popped out in sharp focus.
Upshot: The PictureMate is a good fit if you want affordable, top-quality snapshots without fiddling with your camera.
Sony Digital Photo Printer DPP-EX50
Sony DPP-EX50: Fastest of the snapshot printers, and plugs into your TV.
Like other snapshot printers, the $180 Sony DPP-EX50 dye-sublimation printer can work without a PC. You can drive it from a PictBridge camera, and it has slots for Memory Stick and CompactFlash cards.
Despite the printer's control panel and backlit LCD, most people will want to connect the unit to a television before they attempt to print from a memory card. You don't have to use the TV if you set up a DPOF job on your camera. (See " The Pros and Cons of Printing Without a PC" for more about DPOF.)
You connect the supplied cable to the TV, which will then display menus for selecting images to print. You can also convert images to gray scale, clean up red-eye, and more.
When the printer is hooked up to a PC, you'll probably want to use Sony's PictureGear software to edit images, because Sony's Windows driver lacks many common image adjustment options.
The DPP-EX50 can print to three sizes of paper: 4-by-6-inch, 3.5-by-5-inch, and 3.5-by-4-inch. Sony provides no consumables in the box; a 25-sheet pack of 4-by-6-inch paper with an ink ribbon costs $17, which translates into about 68 cents per print.
The DPP-EX50 printed a 4-by-6-inch photo from a PC in a quick 89 seconds. The print showed very sharp detail and the luminous quality we expect from dye-sublimation prints, though it had an almost oversaturated look.
Upshot: The best match for the Sony DPP-EX50 would be people who want to view their pictures on a TV, or who plan to transmit DPOF print jobs directly from their digital camera.
Ink Costs Compared: The Frugal and the Spendthrifts
The Test: On behalf of PC World, the Imaging Products Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology evaluated the ink-consumption rates for 12 of the printers reviewed here. The lab did not test the three snapshot printers because two of them aren't inkjets and because they use paper-and-ink kits designed to be consumed together. Each printer output a test document repeatedly until its cartridges failed due to low ink, or until the prints weren't acceptable. We calculated cost per page by dividing the cost of each four-ink cartridge by the number of pages it printed, and then adding the results together. In the test document, a printed page was equivalent to covering 5 percent of the page with each ink--cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
Our assumptions about ink coverage are similar to those that many printer manufacturers use when calculating the page yield of their ink cartridges. Though most of the printers in this comparison have six or more inks, four inks was the highest number all 12 printers had in common, so we excluded the additional inks.
What We Found: In this group of 12 printers, general-purpose models that had individual ink cartridges posted the lowest ink costs. Canon's i860 is one of the models that use individual cartridges; it had a total cost per page of 8.3 cents for black and color. Among models equipped with a tricolor cartridge, the lowest total cost per page was 11.2 cents, managed by the Canon i455.
See Page-Yield Test
About the Lab: The Imaging Products Laboratory is a recognized authority on print cartridges and media. IPL has been testing their quality since 1996, when it was established at the Rochester Institute of Technology; RIT has been researching imaging technology since 1829, and was the first university to offer a Ph.D. in imaging science. IPL is not affiliated with any vendor, and has evaluated thousands of print cartridges from manufacturing sites around the world.
Eric Butterfield
Printing Pretty Pictures: You May Not Need Many Inks
Do more ink cartridges mean better photographs? You might assume so, based on the trend among higher-end photo printers toward as many as eight individual ink cartridges. But in the photos we printed and examined, that expectation didn't always hold true. The now-common six-ink print engines are designed to prevent dottiness in light areas by adding light cyan and light magenta inks to the standard four: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. We tested two printers that use two extra inks to help reproduce hard-to-match colors. Canon's i9900 Photo Printer supplements light cyan and light magenta with red and green, while Epson's Stylus Photo R800 adds red and blue but drops the light cyan and light magenta in favor of a second black and a gloss optimizer cartridge.
But unless you're very sensitive to color accuracy and saturation, you may not need such a sophisticated ink system to produce prints that you'll be happy with. The Canon i9900 and the Epson R800 offer richer, warmer-looking prints than most inkjets, but popping the optional photo cartridge into one general-purpose printer--the HP Deskjet 9650--produced spectacular results as well: The Deskjet 9650 earned marks of Outstanding for both its color and its gray-scale glossies. Even the mobile HP Deskjet 450wbt, despite its small size, printed color photos that our picture quality evaluators rated as Outstanding.
Four Inks: Canon i455: Outstanding
Five Inks: Canon i860: Oustanding
Seven Inks: Epson R800: Very good
Eight Inks: Canon i9900: Outstanding
Dan Littman
The Pros and Cons of Printing Without a PC
The HP Photosmart 7760 supports six media formats and can print directly from HP cameras.
With the right printer and camera, you can bypass your PC. In informal tests with our snapshot printers, prints came out as fast when sent from a camera as when sent from a PC.
Make sure that your printer-camera combination will work well as a team. Most newer photo printers (and many general-purpose printers) can receive photos via a PictBridge port or through a slot that reads the camera's flash memory card. PictBridge ports (eight printers here have them) look like USB ports and use USB cables. PictBridge-supporting cameras are now widely available, and will work with PictBridge-supporting printers, regardless of brand.
Make It Easy
Fewer printers come with memory card readers (only three models here have them). Be sure to choose a printer that reads your camera's card format. For example, the Sony DPP-EX50 reads only CompactFlash and Memory Stick cards. Using a card reader saves on battery life, since sending images from a camera taxes its battery (many cameras have an AC adapter for this purpose).
Some printers have controls so you can choose which images to print, and most recent cameras do, too, through the widely accepted digital print order form standard. DPOF encodes instructions on the camera's card, which the printer receives via PictBridge or via a card reader. But DPOF is often buried within camera menus, where it can be difficult to find and use. A printer equipped with a control panel and an LCD is more convenient to use. Best of all is an LCD that displays both menus and photos (the HP Photosmart 7760 has one). If the LCD shows only menus (like the one on Epson's PictureMate, for example), you can print an index sheet and enter the numbers assigned to each photo.