Buyer’s guide for inkjet printers
Tom’s Hardware has its latest guide to buying a color inkjet printer:
This is the first in a series of four planned buyer’s guides on consumer-oriented printers available for use with computers. This guide covers the most-popular color inkjet printers, with a special emphasis on units suitable for home or SOHO use. Upcoming guides will cover multi-function printers that copy, print and fax (and sometimes scan). We will also look at color and monochrome laser printers as well.
As to be expected at this hardware-oriented site, there is quite a bit about various specs. All these technical details may be more than the average home user wants to know but here is the conclusion:
Though we trimmed the field of candidates from well over 200 to just over 11 for this buyers’ guide, there’s something for nearly everybody to like in what’s left at prices that range from $30 to $260. Given the amazing amounts of functionality and the respectable output speeds that even the least expensive of these printers offer, we are impressed by the state of inkjet printer art and science.
We give special marks to the Lexmark Z1300 for offering decent print and photo quality at a very low price, and also to the Canon Pixma iP6310D and Epson Stylus Photo R380 for delivering outstanding photo-handling features at very reasonable costs. Any of the printers in this guide is likely to satisfy your needs for low-volume output, but only the HP Business Inkjet is likely to be able to satisfy needs somewhat beyond such modest levels. That printer and the Lexmark Z1420 also earn bonus points for offering a wireless 802.11b/g interface, in addition to more typical interfaces (USB for both and parallel for the HP).