Printer Review and Advice

Panasonic KX-PX20 and KX-PX2 Press Release

Panasonic is pleased to introduce two, easy-to-use home photo printers, the KX-PX20 and KX-PX2. Making a superb partnership for printing images captured by your Lumix* digital camera in clear, beautiful detail.

In response to the increasing demand for an easy-to-use home printing solution, Panasonic will launch two new compact-sized, easy-to-use home photo printers. The KX-PX20 and KX-PX2 are both equipped with a colour LCD display; with the KX-PX20 boasting a 3.6-inch Large IPS**-TFT colour LCD, providing extra clarity and convenience.
Read more…

CNET reviews the Samsung CLP-300 and writes, “The CLP-300’s print quality was a bit of a mixed bag. Black text showed a deep, solid black with clean edges, though the characters suffered from a slightly puffy, swollen look. Color text was nicely rendered, though some of the italicized and bolded text had a hazy look. Monochrome graphics were just okay, with the photo elements looking slightly blurry and dark (compression). The color graphics print showed nice saturation in color, but the printer had some problems with bar code-style patterns. The color photo elements fared better than those in the mono print but were still slightly faded. … Overall, the print quality and speed of the CLP-300 indicate that this printer isn’t for those who need fast prints or high-quality outputs. But its low price and small footprint make it a decent choice for anyone with basic printing needs and a tight budget.”

Read more about the Samsung CLP-300.

IT Reviews reviews the HP Photosmart Pro B9180 and writes, “What is going to blow the socks off the professional photographer is the quality of the results. The accuracy of the reproduction and the sharpness, vibrancy and quality of the colours is due to HP’s new “densitometric closed loop colour calibration system” which scans printer-generated colour targets and measures colour density, then adjusts its output accordingly … For professional photographers and serious amateurs, this is the printer you’ve been waiting for, with excellent colour reproduction on a variety of media formats up to A3+ size.”

Read more about the HP Photosmart Pro B9180.

PhotographyPress reviews the Lexmark X5470 and writes, “Print speeds look impressive with up 25 pages per minute (ppm) in mono draft mode. As soon as you require better quality output, the speeds slump to a less impressive 15ppm mono. Colour print speeds are slower still, a claimed 18ppm (in draft) drops to around seven pager a minute. … performance in terms of speed comes at a cost: quality drops off quickly in all areas but particularly in text output. However, it does well to remember the likely audience for this machine will not always be requiring the highest of quality output or, conversely, the fastest of high quality prints, and given the price; the package is not bad overall.”

Read more about the Lexmark X5470.

Trusted Reviews reviews the Brother HL-5270DN and writes, “Brother offers two high quality print options: a true 1,200dpi print and another called HQ 1200. The HQ 1200 option uses resolution enhancement to achieve a 1,200dpi-like print and for our 15 x 10cm photographic print, it completing in 14 seconds, four seconds less than the full 1,200dpi print. Both photo prints suffered from some banding across areas of sky, but in general were above average, with good levels of detail, particularly in shadowed areas. Text and graphics came out well, with text being dense and with little noticeable spatter. Graphics also suffered little from the various dither patterns used to produce greyscales.”

IT Reviews reviews the Samsung CLP-300 and writes, “The CLP-300 hits four out of the five buttons you should want a colour laser to hit. It’s inexpensive to buy, reasonably cheap to run, easy to use and maintain and prints quickly for its class. The only problem is a slightly heavy-handed print, which may need manual adjustment to get natural-looking images.”

Read more about the Samsung CLP-300.

Fujifilm ASK-4000 Press Release

Today at the Imaging USA conference, FUJIFILM U.S.A., Inc. unveiled two high-speed digital photo printers for professional photographers, the ASK-4000 and ASK-2000 Digital Printers. The ASK-4000 and ASK-2000 enable a wide range of professional photographers to reap the benefits of Fujifilm’s industry-leading commercial photo printing technology.

The ASK-4000 and ASK-2000 Digital Printers allow studio, wedding and event photographers to quickly and easily provide customers with 4 x 6 inch prints in 8 seconds and 8 x 10 inch prints in 40 seconds. Onsite printing also eliminates the need and expense of organizing, printing and mailing photos in the days following an event. By simply connecting the printers to a laptop via a high-speed USB 2.0 interface, professional photographers can leverage the ASK-2000 and ASK-4000 dye-sublimation thermal transfer technology to produce beautiful, natural-looking prints onsite at client events. Both printers feature color-correction software incorporating Fujifilm’s Image Intelligence™ technology, giving photographers lab-quality prints regardless of their location.
Read more…

CNET reviews the Lexmark E250dn and writes, “The Lexmark E250dn’s performance was a mixed bag. Its text prints were dismally slow, 11.15 pages per minute. The equivalently priced Samsung ML-2571N printed text at a much faster 16.71ppm. On the other hand, the E250d sped through graphics prints scoring a blazing 20.95ppm, besting all the competition in its price range. … Lexmark E250dn is an inexpensive, high-quality monochrome laser printer. If you need the fastest text prints, however, look to the competition.”

PCWorld reviews the Canon MP600 and writes, “The printer uses a dye-based ink on photo paper, but a pigment-based ink gives stronger and sharper darks on more-absorbent plain paper. In our print-quality tests, we saw very sharp and well-formed characters for an inkjet. Our line-art sample was also quite sharp, though we noticed some wide horizontal banding and diagonal interference patterns in closely spaced blocks of lines. Our photo samples on plain paper also looked good compared to the output of most inkjet printers, with smooth tones and decent contrast, but many of the colors were too bright. On photo paper, the MP600 excelled, producing beautifully sharp prints with smooth gradations–though skin tones looked a little artificially bronzed. As with most inkjet MFPs we’ve tested recently, the MP600 produced good-quality scans, but our judges failed to award it their highest marks.”

Read more about the Canon Pixma MP600.

Trusted Reviews reviews Lexmark E352dn and concludes, “Lexmark publicity highlights a quiet mode for the printer, but even its own figures, showing 52dBA in normal mode and 48dBA when quiet, don’t indicate much of an improvement. We certainly couldn’t hear a lot of difference, though even in normal mode it’s never noisy. … The E352dn is a high-end personal or small workgroup laser printer, ideal when most of the output will be text. It’s not quite so good at line and block graphics and photos look decidedly dotty. It’s reasonably inexpensive to run and prints more quickly than many other printers in its category. The built-in duplex facility is a useful extra and the printer is quiet and unobtrusive in use. A good partner in a busy office.”