Photo Printers: The Price of Great Pictures
Today's photo printers produce great snapshots and boast helpful new features. But with some, ink costs could leave you seeing red. We test 11 contenders, starting at $150.Paul Jasper is a technology consultant and freelance writer in San Francisco; Eric Butterfield is a an associate editor for PC World and writes the column The Print Shop. Tracey Capen is an executive editor, and Dan Littman is a contributing editor, for PC World.
Artwork by Marc Simon
The three major chains we surveyed (Ritz, Walgreen's, and Target) charge an average of 28 cents per print, with in-store pickup. To make 20 prints, the four online outlets we looked at (Ofoto, Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Yahoo Photos) charge an average of 35 cents each print, including shipping. In contrast, full-size photo printers averaged 66 cents per print and snapshot printers averaged 55 cents each, though costs varied widely, as detailed in the chart appearing in "Show Me the Money: How Ink and Paper Costs Add Up."
The Imaging Products Lab at the Rochester Institute of Technology tested ink and paper consumption for each inkjet printer on behalf of PC World. In IPL's tests, the Epson PictureMate was by far the cheapest at 23 cents per 4-by-6-inch print. The next cheapest option, the Dell Photo Printer 540, costs 39 cents per print--but to reach that cost, you must buy a $47 bundle of three print packs. Of the full-size printers, the most reasonable was the Canon Pixma IP4000R, at 46 cents per print. The Lexmark P915, on the other hand, will put a serious hole in your wallet: It used up 97 cents' worth of ink and paper per snapshot--and that was with its high-yield cartridges installed.
Print speeds also run the gamut from perky to poky. In speed tests conducted by the PC World Test Center, Canon's Pixma IP8500 printed 4-by-6-inch snapshots faster than any other printer--averaging just 39 seconds--but its text speed lagged. The Epson models were particularly slow at printing text documents, while the Lexmark P915 turned in a blistering 7.4 pages per minute.
Most of the inkjet printers here use dye-based inks, which are absorbed into the paper, whereas models that use pigment-based inks bond the inks to the surface of the paper. The one model that uses only pigment-based inks is the Epson Stylus Photo R800, but the two Canon printers and the Lexmark P915 use pigment-based black ink only for printing text.
Ports and Paper Options
Almost all of the printers offer a way to print photos without the help of a PC. Every printer except the Epson R800 has a direct-print port that lets you print from a compatible digital camera. Most models also have slots that read flash media cards; only the two Canons and the Epson R800 lack them. And most of the printers have an LCD screen for previewing your images and making simple edits, such as cropping and removing red-eye.
Having a photo printer with a built-in media card reader can also be convenient for uploading images to your PC. When you insert the media card from your camera, it shows up in Windows as a removable disk drive. Several models, including those from Dell and HP, also let you print images from a USB flash drive plugged into their direct-print port. The Epson Stylus Photo R320 is the ultimate in connectivity, letting you hook up a wide variety of USB devices, such as Zip drives and CD burners, for archiving your images.
Note: The reviews that follow have been expanded from our print article; we've also added a new section on making panoramic photos.
Full-Size Photo Printers
Of the seven photo printers we tested, all except the Lexmark P915 earned our top score for their prints on letter-size glossy paper. However, both the HP Photosmart 8150 and the Canon Pixma IP4000R had difficulty feeding 4-by-6-inch paper smoothly, a glitch that resulted in noticeable banding near the trailing edge of otherwise good-looking snapshots.
The HP Photosmart 8450 rated best overall because, in addition to printing near-perfect photos, it's loaded with features. It comes with an ethernet port and many other amenities, such as media card slots, a color LCD, and the capability to make banner-size prints. It also comes with HP Image Zone, the most comprehensive software package included with the printers here. Though it uses up 600MB of hard-drive space, the software offers many good tools for editing and sharing photos. But high ink and paper costs kept the Photosmart 8450 from earning our Best Buy honor.
Despite its problems with 4-by-6 paper, we awarded the Canon IP4000R our Best Buy. The IP4000R is inexpensive, its cost per page of 46 cents is the lowest of the full-size printers we tested, and you can achieve stellar results printing 4-by-6 photos on letter-size paper.
HP Photosmart 8450
The $250 Photosmart 8450 has room for three ink cartridges, using up to eight inks at once to great effect; both its snapshots and photos printed on letter-size glossy paper showed sharp details and natural colors.
For the price, the Photosmart 8450 offers many features for operation both with and without a PC. You can preview your pictures on the 2.5-inch color LCD and make basic edits using the buttons on the control panel. The media card slots read all the common flash memory formats, and you can print directly from a compatible digital camera via the direct-print port. Also, like four other printers we tested, the Photosmart 8450's direct-print port reads USB flash drives, so you can print photos stored on these small, handy devices. The Photosmart 8450 is the only printer we tested that has an ethernet port so that the printer is easy to put on a network, making it accessible to multiple shutterbugs. Alternatively, you can connect the Photosmart 8450 to a single PC using its USB 2.0 port, or add a Bluetooth adapter ($50) to send photos from compatible camera phones and PDAs.
Ongoing costs for the Photosmart 8450 could be steep, however. According to IPL's tests, photo paper and ink cost an average of 83 cents per snapshot--21 cents more than the average for the seven photo printers and four snapshot printers we tested.
Though it takes time to install HPa??s large software suite, the wait is worth it. The suite offers a wide range of features for editing and organizing photos, and has a slideshow creation tool.
The Photosmart 8450 is on the bulky side, but stashes dual paper trays neatly into its base. The main drawer holds 100 sheets up to legal size. Up to 20 sheets of 4-by-6-inch photo paper fit in the second tray. You can add an optional 250-sheet drawer; if you want to cut your paper consumption, there's an optional duplexer; each costs $80.
As we typically see from inkjets, prints on plain paper were less impressive than on glossy paper. The Photosmart 8450's color graphics looked a bit faded and showed some banding. Text printed in a strong black, but fine characters such as italics failed to form completely.
The Photosmart 8450 printed text at 5.6 pages per minute, compared to the test set average of 4.6 ppm. You will have to be patient for its photos, however. The Photosmart 8450 took over 2 minutes to print a 4-by-6-inch photo at best quality settings; only the Lexmark P915 and the Epson PictureMate took longer.
Upshot: The Photosmart 8450's long list of features--including an ethernet port--make it a good choice for small offices or networked homes, though ink and paper costs are high.
Paul JasperCanon Pixma IP8500, Canon Pixma IP4000R, Epson Stylus Photo R800
Canon Pixma IP8500
Like the HP Photosmart 8450, the Canon Pixma IP8500 printed great-looking photos and very attractive borderless snapshots, but it costs a hundred dollars more, at $350. One thing the extra money will buy you is time when printing snapshots: The Pixma IP8500 printed a 4-by-6-inch photo in just 39 seconds, more than three times faster than the Photosmart 8450. This Pixma printed to plain paper at below-average speeds, however: 3.4 ppm for text and 1.4 ppm for graphics.
The IP8500's ink and paper costs are lower than the average of our test printers: 57 cents per snapshot. It uses eight individual ink cartridges, adding red and green inks to the standard cyan, magenta, and yellow. Our borderless 4-by-6-inch print was every bit as good as the photos the Pixma IP8500 printed on letter-sized paper. Of the seven photo printers we tested, the IP8500 printed the most attractive color graphics on plain paper; the prints looked quite sharp, with rich colors and sufficient detail in darker areas. Text didn't look as crisp as the text printed by a couple other models, but edges were fairly sharp.
If you plan to perform all your image editing and printing functions from your PC, you won't mind that the IP8500 doesn't have media card slots or an LCD. But that doesn't mean you're entirely out in the cold with your digital camera: The IP8500 has a direct-print port for printing directly from a compatible camera. There are only two buttons on the control panel: a resume/cancel button and a paper tray selector. Also, the direct-print port doesn't let you upload the images to your PC, as you can do with some other models here.
The IP8500 holds a lot of paper. The drawer in the base of the printer takes up to 150 sheets of letter-size paper, sticking out of the front in order to do so; when holding 4-by-6-inch or 5-by-7-inch paper, the drawer remains flush with the front panel. The upright sheet feeder at the back of the printer can hold an additional 150 sheets, and accommodates up to legal-size paper.
The Canon IP8500 and IP4000R are the only printers here with a built-in duplexer for making double-sided prints, though both printers wait a few seconds so the ink on the first side can dry before they begin printing on the second side.
Upshot: The IP8500 prints photos very quickly, has a duplexer, and its ink and paper costs are below average; its direct printing features are limited, however.
Paul JasperCanon Pixma IP4000R
The $230 Pixma IP4000R is the only printer we tested that comes with an 802.11g connection, though both the Epson Stylus Photo R800 (reviewed below) and Stylus Photo R320 offer it as an option. The Pixma IP4000R doesn't have media card slots or an LCD monitor, but it does have a direct-print port.
The IP4000R also has an ethernet port; however, you can't access the printer via ethernet and Wi-Fi simultaneously on the same network. To do that, Canon recommends sharing it through a PC connected to its USB 1.1 port.
The Pixma IP4000R produced prints more cheaply than any other full-size printer we tested. Ink and paper cost 46 cents per 4-by-6-inch borderless print. Only the Epson PictureMate's prints cost less.
The IP4000R uses five individual ink cartridges, employing just three primary colors and two black inks: one dye-based ink for photos, the other a pigment-based ink for printing text. Nonetheless, the IP4000R printed very attractive, vividly colored photos on letter-sized paper that impressed us as much as those printed by models using more inks. The IP4000R's snapshot prints weren't as appealing, however: We noticed fine banding toward the trailing edge of the print, where the printer apparently had difficulty feeding the smaller paper.
Using the black pigment ink, the IP4000R produced strong dark text, though the edges of some letters looked a little fuzzy. Color graphics printed on plain paper looked less attractive: The heavy-handed use of the pigment black ink seemed to cause a posterized effect in some areas.
The IP4000R is a good all-around performer. It printed text at a speedy 6.8 ppm, and was the quickest at printing color graphics, at 2.5 ppm. Our best quality photo sample emerged in 76 seconds, second only to its larger sibling, the Canon Pixma IP8500 (reviewed above). Both Canons were noticeably quieter than the other printers we tested.
The IP4000R can hold 300 sheets of paper: up to 150 sheets each in the bottom drawer and the upper feeder. A button on the front panel selects the paper source; a second button resumes or cancels print jobs, and that's the extent of the function buttons, other than the on/off button. The built-in duplexer enables two-sided printing, but the first side has to dry before printing begins on the other side of the paper.
Upshot: Fast print speeds and a lot of features--including wireless capability--would make the IP4000R a good buy even if its printing costs weren't so low.
Paul JasperEpson Stylus Photo R800
The $399 Epson Stylus Photo R800 isn't designed for casual shutterbugs; it's clearly designed for photographers who prefer to preview and edit their images on a PC monitor, not on a small LCD. Unlike every other printer we tested, the R800 doesn't have a direct-print port, and it lacks an LCD. But it does have a six-pin FireWire port, a rare feature among the photo printers we've tested.
The R800 uses a total of eight cartridges, but only five colors. Rather than add light cyan and light magenta to the standard set of cyan, magenta, and yellow inks, the Stylus Photo R800 adds red and blue 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.
The R800 printed the least impressive color graphics on plain paper, but glossy photos looked gorgeous, with realistic textures, sharp detail, and strong, rich colors. Borderless 4-by-6-inch prints were also very attractive--and inexpensive. IPL calculated ink and paper costs for the R800 at a below-average 56 cents per snapshot print. By comparison, the seven desktop photo printers and four snapshot printers we tested averaged 62 cents.
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; though we saw the coating in the company's sample photos, we could not detect the coating on our test photo.
The R800 doesn't win any medals for speed: Text pages emerged at a very slow 2 ppm, though graphics printed at the average of 1.8 ppm. It didn't spit out snapshots either, delivering them in just under 2 minutes, compared to the average of 1 minute and 37 seconds for our test set.
The R800 can print on rolls of photo paper either 4 inches or 8.3 inches wide. The printer has a button that pushes finished photos out for you to cut off, and then retracts the excess paper to avoid waste. You don't have to remove paper from the main tray before feeding in a roll--an improvement on Epson's previous roll-printing models. A dedicated tray feeds a specially coated CD or DVD through the paper path, and there's a bare-bones utility for designing labels. One minor inconvenience: To print on a CD or DVD, you must reposition the output tray.
Upshot: The R800 offers unique features such as a roll feeder and a Firewire port, and it prints to CD/DVD discs--but its high print quality is limited to glossy photo paper.
Dan LittmanHP Photosmart 8150, Epson Stylus Photo R320, Lexmark P915
HP Photosmart 8150
The $200 HP Photosmart 8150 has a 2.5-inch color LCD display, which makes it easy to see what you're printing when you use a digital camera's media card. Four slots protected by a clear cover on the front of the printer accommodate all the popular card formats. From the control panel you can crop an image, remove red-eye, or add a decorative border. You can also print directly from a compatible camera connected to the 8150's direct-print port, or you can plug in a USB flash drive loaded with images.
The 8150 has a large footprint but keeps its paper supply conveniently underneath and out of the way. The paper drawer holds as many as 100 sheets of plain paper, up to legal size. A secondary feeder lets you keep 20 sheets of 4-by-6-inch photo paper ready to go. For even more flexibility, you can add a 250-sheet paper drawer for $80. The printer detects the type of paper loaded in the trays. An optional duplexer (also $80) will let you save paper by printing double-sided.
Two cartridges supply up to six inks for printing. In the box, you get a tri-color (cyan, magenta, yellow) cartridge and a photo cartridge with black, light cyan, and light magenta inks. You can swap the photo cartridge for a black-ink cartridge for printing text documents; for printing black-and-white photos, you can insert a photo-gray cartridge that has two shades of gray ink in addition to black ink. Swapping cartridges often could be a pain, but at least you can store partially used cartridges in an indentation under the cover. In IPL's tests, 4-by-6-inch prints cost a pricier-than-average 74 cents each. Our test set--seven desktop photo printers and four snapshot printers--averaged 62 cents per print.
The Photosmart 8150 made very high quality photographic prints on glossy letter-sized paper. However, borderless prints made on 4-by-6-inch glossy paper didn't look as good; the prints were marred by some unusual dithering in the lightest areas and by a light band near the trailing edge. On plain paper, text looked a bit fuzzy, and the edges of closely spaced bold lettering bled together. Color graphics on plain paper looked a little washed out.
The Photosmart 8150 printed text at 5.2 ppm, which was slightly faster than the 4.6 ppm average, and it generated graphics faster than most other models, at 2.1 ppm. Glossy snapshots emerged in 102 seconds, slightly slower than the test set average of 97 seconds.
Options include a Bluetooth wireless adapter ($50) that plugs into the direct-print port, allowing you to print from a Bluetooth-equipped camera phone or PDA with a built-in camera.
It takes time to install HP's Image Zone software suite (it takes up 600MB of space on your hard drive), but the wait is worth it: The package--which also comes with the Photosmart 8450--offers more features than the software included with the other printers in this roundup, such as tools for organizing and sharing photos, creating cards, designing album pages, and the like.
Upshot: Because of its extensive features, the Photosmart 8150 makes a nice center for the amateur digital photographer, though printing costs are high.
Paul JasperEpson Stylus Photo R320
If you want to print images from many different sources, the $200 Epson Stylus Photo R320 should provide the versatility you need. Its media card slots accept all the major formats, and its direct-print port does more than just communicate with compatible digital cameras: you can use it to offload your photos to a whole host of devices, including Zip drives, CD and DVD writers, and USB flash drives.
The R320 proved very economical with its ink and paper. Snapshots used up 49 cents worth of consumables; among the seven full-size printers we tested, only the Canon Pixma IP4000R's prints cost less.
Using its six individual ink cartridges, the R320 printed excellent glossy photos on letter-size paper as well as superb 4-by-6-inch snapshots. However, its text prints were the worst of the bunch: letters looked gray and very fuzzy. Similarly, color graphics on plain paper were among the least impressive; images looked blurry, with banding and obvious bleeding.
The R320 printed a borderless 4-by-6-inch snapshot in 108 seconds, 11 seconds slower than the average It printed text at 2 ppm, much slower than the 4.6 ppm average.
The Stylus Photo R320 is the only printer here that comes with two LCD screens. However, almost all the other printers with an LCD offer a 2.5-inch color display. The R320's color LCD measures only 1.5 inches--too small to adequately see edits made to your images. The larger 2.5-inch monochrome LCD displays the menus. We think a single 2.5-inch color monitor would have been more useful.
Like Epson's R800, the R320 prints on coated CD and DVD discs, using a tray to feed them through. Epson provides a basic utility for designing the labels. On the downside, the R320 skimps on paper capacity--just as the R800 does. The R800 has a single 120-sheet paper feeder, and no optional paper tray or duplexer.
Also, like the three HP printers we tested, the Stylus Photo R320 works with an optional Bluetooth adapter for printing from compatible camera phones and PDAs; Epson's device costs $69.
Upshot: The Epson Stylus Photo R320 prints superb glossy photos and works well with a variety of media, but if you plan to make many prints on plain paper you should look elsewhere.
Paul JasperLexmark P915
The P915 is low-priced, at $150. Like some of the more expensive models we tested, the Lexmark P915 offers media card slots and a direct-print port so you can print photos without having to turn on your PC. The card slots and a direct-print port sit behind a see-through flap that folds down from the front panel. There's also a 2.5-inch color LCD for previewing photos, viewing simple edits, and navigating the menus. When the control panel isn't in use, the monitor displays the ink levels as a series of bars.
Those bars could represent a lot of money. Even using Lexmark's high-capacity ink cartridges, the P915 turned in the highest ink costs, and when you factor in the highest paper costs of any printer we tested, it comes out to almost a dollar per 4-by-6-inch print. That's more than four times the per-print cost of the Epson PictureMate, the model we tested that had the lowest cost of consumables. Lexmark only sells its snapshot-size glossy paper in packs of 20; all the other vendors sell their 4-by-6-inch glossy paper in packs of at least 100 sheets or offer some savings by packaging multiple packs together.
One potential plus is that the P915's ink cartridges have print heads built into them, like HP's cartridges, which in theory could prevent clogged nozzles. The P915 uses two cartridges supplying six inks: a tri-color cartridge with dye-based inks and a photo ink cartridge containing pigment-based light cyan, light magenta, and black inks. Also, you can replace the photo cartridge with a pigment black-ink cartridge. Lexmark provides a snap-on plastic cover for storing partially used cartridges.
Using the optional pigment-black cartridge, the P915 clocked a text printing speed of 7.4 ppm--faster than the six other photo printers we tested. However, the 1.5 ppm color graphics speed was among the slowest, and 4-by-6-inch photos emerged slower than from any other printer in our batch except for the Epson PictureMate. The P915 took over two minutes to print our snapshot at best quality settings.
Across the board, the P915's print quality was a disappointment. Colors in photos looked muted, and fine horizontal banding was evident. The black-and-white photo was particularly unattractive: The other six photo printers we tested earned an Outstanding for their grayscale photos. The Lexmark P915 earned a Poor for its black-and-white photo, which appeared dull and very grainy. On plain paper, color graphics looked fuzzy, but with decent contrast in shadows. The same horizontal banding showed up in text documents, and some letters were so fuzzy that they appeared to cast a shadow.
Upshot: The Lexmark P915 is priced low and includes common features like media card slots and a color LCD, but they don't make up for the poor print quality and expensive consumables.
Paul JasperSnapshot Printers
Snapshot printers offer an easy way to print 4-by-6-inch photos. Three of the units we tested almost matched the high print quality of the best full-size printers. But one model, the Dell Photo Printer 540, was particularly disappointing, producing less vibrant colors than the others.
Epson PictureMate
The $199 PictureMate isn't the smallest or lightest snapshot printer we've tested, but nonetheless its handle and lunchbox size suggest portability. The PictureMate doesn't run on batteries, though you can buy a car adapter for $50. It prints only on 4-by-6-inch paper, but it will print two wallet-size photos on one sheet.
We found the PictureMate a pleasure to use--and the least expensive to operate of all the printers we tested. Epson advertises that prints cost 29 cents each; its $29 print packs come with 100 sheets of paper and an ink cartridge, which the company guarantees will last at least 100 sheets. But we wanted to find out how far you might be able to stretch your dollar, so IPL fed the PictureMate extra paper until the print quality degraded noticeably. Doing so reduced the per-print cost to 23 cents.
The PictureMate has a direct-print port and memory card slots, and it can print via a Bluetooth module ($69). Also, it can write files to an external CD burner. Navigating on-board menus with the four-way toggle button was easy. The menus let you print a proof sheet, pick images by number (the LCD doesn't display images), and print multiple pictures on the same sheet. But the LCD isn't backlit, and it suffers from distracting reflections. You can convert prints to black-and-white or sepia-tone, and you can apply various cropping templates. The Save Photo button lets you write images from your memory card to a disc loaded in an external CD burner.
The PictureMate uses a six-ink cartridge that includes Epson's new red and blue inks. The flat, wide cartridge slides into the back of the printer. In our test photos, colors looked bright, and details popped out in sharp focus; highlights and shadows looked well exposed.
However, to print our test photo the PictureMate took 2 minutes and 16 seconds--noticeably longer than the other three snapshot printers we tested.
Upshot: The PictureMate is a good choice for very low-cost snapshots, as long as you don't need prints in a hurry.
Dan LittmanHP Photosmart 375 Compact Photo Printer
Snapshot printers don't get any more portable than the $200 HP Photosmart 375. This petite printer weighs just 2.6 pounds, and at less than 5 inches thick and 4.5 inches tall, is easy to take on the road; an optional rechargeable battery tucks neatly inside the printer, and costs $80. With its silver top and white side panels, the Photosmart 375 looks like a four-slice toaster for mini cocktail bread.
A 2.5-inch LCD display flips up from the top for previewing and editing images. The front panel folds down to act as an output tray, revealing four memory card slots. The rear panel tilts back to reveal an input tray that holds up to 20 sheets.
The quality of the photos that popped out of the Photosmart 375 were on a par with those from the Epson PictureMate and the Sony DPP-EX50 (see reviews on this page). We liked the rich colors and sharp details in most of the Photosmart 375's test prints, but noted that one of the photos didn't look as smooth as the same image printed by the Photosmart 8450. Both HP printers gave the sky and water in that image a slightly purplish cast, but, the Photosmart 375's prints showed a slight band across the trailing edge of the paper.
The Photosmart 375 uses a tricolor cartridge (or a gray-ink cartridge for printing black-and-white photos). Running costs are high, however: Ink and paper costs totaled 81 cents per 4-by-6-inch snapshot in IPL's testsa??higher than the other three snapshot printers we tested.
The Photosmart 375 printed at below-average speeds, printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot in 1 minute and 47 seconds, though the HP Photosmart 8450 was slower, taking over 2 minutes to print a snapshot.
The printer comes with the same high-quality software package that accompanies HP's desktop inkjets. Also available are a $50 Bluetooth adapter and a car lighter power adapter that costs $40.
Upshot: Printing costs for the HP Photosmart 375 are more than three times higher than the PictureMate's--but this small, lightweight printer is the only model here with an optional battery pack or car adapter, making it ideal for taking on the road.
Paul JasperSony Digital Photo Printer DPP-EX50
Like the other snapshot printers we tested, you can drive the $180 Sony DPP-EX50 dye-sublimation printer from a direct-print-capable camera, and the printer has memory card slots (but only for Memory Stick and CompactFlash cards). However, many people will want to connect this model to a television.
You connect the supplied cable to the TV, which will then display menus for selecting images to print, and for creating calendars, postcards, or multiple-image layouts. In addition, you can convert images to sepia-tone or grayscale, clean up red-eye, apply a fish-eye lens effect, and more. You don't have to use the TV if you set up a DPOF job on your camera. (DPOF, or digital print order form, is an industry standard for digital cameras that lets you mark pictures to print directly from a media card).
The printer's on-board control panel and backlit LCD make it functional without a PC, but when you do link to a computer, you'll probably want to use Sony's PictureGear Studio 2.0 software to manage and edit images, because Sony's Windows driver lacks many common image adjustment options, such as color and density adjustment.
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; all three work with the same paper cassette, which slips into an opening on the front of the case. 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 $43 value pack of 75 sheets reduces the per-print cost to 57 cents each, but that's still more than twice as much as the 23 cents per-print cost of the Epson PictureMate reviewed above.
The DPP-EX50 printed a 4-by-6-inch photo from a PC in a snappy 88 seconds--faster than most of the seven desktop photo printers we tested, and 9 seconds faster than the test set average. The print showed very sharp details and the luminous quality we've come to expect from dye-sublimation prints.
Upshot: The Sony DPP-EX50's unique TV interface makes it a fun addition to the living room, but you'll get equally attractive prints at a much lower cost with the Epson PictureMate.
Dan LittmanDell Photo Printer 540
Of the four snapshot printers we tested, Dell's Photo Printer 540 was the quickest, but it also printed the least attractive pictures. This dye-sublimation printer generated 4-by-6-inch photos in just over a minute--more than 30 seconds faster than the average. However, our test prints weren't aligned properly, leaving white bands on the top and right edges of the paper. Also, there were noticeable light and dark bands close to the trailing edge. As you'd expect with a dye-sub printer, tonal changes were nice and smooth, but we saw richer, more vibrant colors from most of the other snapshot and photo printers we tested. Perforations at each end of the print leave a slightly rough edge when you remove them.
The Photo Printer 540 costs $189, and like all of the other snapshot printers, it has a direct-print port and memory card slots, though it lacks a slot for xD-Picture cards. One plus: The direct-print port also reads USB flash drives. The 2.5-inch color LCD is handy for previewing photos and making simple adjustments.
Buying Dell's print packs individually makes the cost per print 50 cents each, but that becomes more reasonable if you buy Dell's $47 bundle of three print packs. Purchasing in this quantity reduces the cost to 39 cents each, which beats all of the desktop photo inkjets we tested. Each pack includes a dye-sub ribbon and 40 sheets of paper.
This printer is small and light enough for easy travel, weighing only 3.6 pounds and measuring 7.5 by 5.5 by 2.7 inches. Though it can't run on batteries, the power adapter is compact.
Upshot: The Dell Photo Printer 540 is very fast, and printing costs are low if you buy supplies in large quantities, but its print quality is the least impressive of the snapshot printers.
Paul JasperShow Me the Money: How Ink and Paper Costs Add Up
THE TEST: On behalf of PC World, the Imaging Products Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology evaluated the ink and paper costs for printing 4-by-6-inch glossy photos. IPL tested nine of the printers we reviewed; the two dye-sublimation snapshot printers were not tested because they use a ribbon capable of producing a fixed number of images (therefore, their costs are easily calculated without testing). If you buy single packs of paper and ribbon, prints from the Dell Photo Printer 540 cost 50 cents each, and the Sony DPP-EX50 prints cost 68 cents each. However, buying print packs in quantity can reduce those costs to 39 cents and 57 cents, respectively.
IPL printed a series of four images from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that it had cropped to 4 by 6 inches using each printer's "best" or "photo" mode and the vendor's recommended glossy photo paper. The lab depleted three sets of cartridges, replacing them when they failed due to low ink, or when print quality had depreciated noticeably. IPL used the average of the page yields to determine ink costs per page; prices for ink and paper are from the vendors' Web sites. The test beds had controlled temperature and humidity to simulate normal office conditions.
WHAT WE FOUND: The good news is that ink and paper costs bore no direct relation to photo print quality--you can print beautiful photos without getting bilked for supplies. For example, the Epson R320 printed top-notch photos to both letter-size paper and snapshot paper, yet its cost per page of 49 cents was well below the average of 62 cents for all printers. In contrast, the Lexmark P915 printed less attractive photos than any other desktop printer, yet its cost per page was almost twice that of the Epson R320, at 97 cents. Paper alone for the Lexmark costs 40 cents per 4-by-6-inch sheet, and the company only sells packs of 20 sheets; in contrast, Epson sells 100-sheet packs of snapshot paper that cost $16.20, or about 16 cents per sheet.
When IPL performed page-yield testing for our August 2004 story, "Printers for Every Purpose," inkjet printers with individual ink cartridges tended to have lower ink costs than models with tricolor cartridges when printing color graphics on plain paper. The same proved true for photo printers when printing glossy photos.
The three desktop photo printers that use tricolor cartridges (the two HP models and the Lexmark P915) averaged 85 cents per snapshot, while the four models using individual cartridges averaged 52 cents per print. However, the lowest cost came from the Epson PictureMate, which uses a single cartridge with six inks. If you only print onto the 100 sheets of paper that come with the ink cartridge, cost per page is 29 cents. However, you might be able to stretch your pennies a lot further: Printing onto additional glossy paper, the PictureMate averaged 186 snapshots per ink cartridge, lowering per-print costs to 23 cents.
The Price of Prints
Tests show that some printers will soak you for nearly a dollar a print.
HOW WE TEST: Data based on tests designed and conducted by the Imaging Products Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology. A series of four 400-dpi images from the International Organization for Standardization were printed at "best" or "photo" settings to calculate page yield and cost per page. Paper costs based on packs of either 100 or 120 sheets, except for the Lexmark P915, for which only 20-sheet packs are available. FOOTNOTES: 1Optional tricolor photo cartridge not used in this test. 2High-yield color cartridge used. 3 Price for set of paper and either ink cartridge or dye-sublimation ribbon. 4 Paper and ink or ribbon costs cannot be calculated separately; print consumables sold together.
Eric ButterfieldIn Search of Top-Notch Snaps
Though six of the seven full-size photo printers earned our top score for their glossy photos printed on letter-size paper, not all of those models printed equally impressive snapshots.
The Canon Pixma IP4000R and the HP Photosmart 8150 both printed 4-by-6-inch photos that showed banding near the trailing edge, which may be due to problems feeding the smaller paper. Some textures in the IP4000R's snapshot didn't look as smooth as they did on larger paper. Details in the 8150's 4-by-6-inch print looked oversharpened--edges appeared jagged.
None of the snapshot printers earned an Outstanding for their snapshots, though four of the full-size printers did.
Photograph by Rick Rizner
Panoramas Made Easy
One of the hidden charms of digital photography is making panoramic shots. From mountaintop views to vast desert vistas, I've assembled photos as large as six inches high and 104 inches long (at 300 dpi). Making a panorama is surprisingly easy with any midlevel or advanced digital camera. All you need is the ability to lock the camera's exposure values for two or more shots, and an application for stitching the shots into one long photo. I've used ArcSoft's Panorama Maker for about a year with good results, and recently I tried Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 10, which also worked well.
The principle behind making a panorama is simple. Typically, you take a series of overlapping horizontal shots (5 to 10 percent overlap should do). Or, if you want to make a vertical panorama of a very tall subject, overlapping vertically also works. The panorama software finds common points within the overlap and uses them to merge and blend the two shots. Some cameras make this process easy. My Olympus C-5050, for example, has a panorama mode that locks the exposure for the sequence of shots and places framing boxes in the LCD viewfinder to help me match the points of overlap. Models from Canon and Nikon also offer a stitching or panorama-assist mode.
If you are really serious about making a high-quality panorama, you can spend a few hundred dollars on a specialized panorama head, such as the Bogen 303 Panoramic Head. This device goes between the camera and your tripod, and gives you precise stops as you rotate the camera. Carrying a tripod isn't always convenient, however; for my trips into the mountains, I've adapted one of my trekking poles into an ultra-light monopod. But even a monopod may not always be necessary: I've made a perfectly good panorama by carefully handholding my camera. The important steps are to keep the camera on a straight horizontal (or vertical) plane, and to keep the same shutter speed and aperture value for all of the shots you want to combine. Because light values change as you rotate the camera, it's a good idea to take test exposures to find an average setting for the sequence.
Once you've assembled your panorama on your PC, the next step is printing it--which can be disappointing. Only a few of the latest consumer inkjet printers have a panorama-printing mode (or banner mode). Two models that I've looked at limit the length of the print. The HP Photosmart 8450, for example, has a limit of 24 inches for a single print; the Epson Stylus Photo R300 goes up to 44 inches. Panoramas wider or longer than that will require multiple prints that have to be spliced together. Another option is a commercial printer. Two backpacking friends took a nine-inch by eight-foot panorama I created to Kinko's, where it was printed and mounted on a foam backing. Their print cost $100, but they later found out that they should have been charged more. One service I haven't tried is EZ Prints, which charges by the length of the print: $1.25 per six-inch increment for 6-inch-tall panoramas, and $2.25 per six inches for one-foot-tall prints. A one-foot by eight-foot panorama would have cost my friends $36, unmounted.
Tracey Capen