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Which
Inkjet Printer should I buy?
Before
you buy any printer we advise you to
consider the following factors:
COST
OF INK CARTRIDGES
Make
sure that the cartridges used in the
printer are easily obtained and do
not cost too much. See the guide to
Ink Cartridges for further details
of how to save on your ink
cartridges.
IMAGE
QUALITY
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The
other most important factor is the
Image Quality. The quality of the
printed image depends on the quality
of the source image. Decide what you
want your pictures for. A picture
that will be look at closely needs
high resolution. A picture that will
be hung on a wall does not need to
be so sharp. Resolution is measured
in dots per inch (DPI), which are
how many individual dots a printer
can print next to each other on a
line one inch long. This is, however
just one of the factors that decides
how good an inkjet or Laser printers
output is. Most printer
manufacturers today employ many
picture enhancement techniques and
offer "photo-cartridges"
with more colours of ink to improve
print quality. Epson has a series of
printers that print at a very high
5760 dpi, but be aware that printing
at such a resolution can be a very
slow process and that you will want
to use expensive high quality paper
to get the most out of such printer.
It's also important not to ignore
other factors of a printer’s
usability, such as speed, build
quality, noise level and running
costs.
PRINTER
SPEED
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The
speed of a printer is given in pages
per minute or sometimes for slow
colour printers, minutes per page.
Take the numbers advertised by the
manufacturers with a pinch of salt
as they are invariably measured with
the printer printing at a low
resolution and thus don't show how
fast it is at printing at high
quality.
INKJET
PRINTER COMPARISON
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Hewlett
Packard has the best reputation for
quality but are usually expensive to
maintain. Epson printers provide the
ultimate in print quality at a good
price. There is however some doubt
about quality, but that’s taken
care of by Epson’s excellent
warranty service and continuously
improving technology. If it's high
quality output you want at an
economic price, this is it.
No
matter which brand of inkjet printer
you go for, we would recommend that
you don't buy the cheapest model in
the range - moving up to the second
cheapest often brings very
worthwhile improvements. Don't buy
the latest newest model either. The
chances are that there will not be
any cheap cartridges available for
it for several months. Beware of
"Bargains". Recently
printers are being sold at prices
that are the same as (or less than)
the cost of the cartridges they
contain.
Read
the other articles in this section
to help you develop a complete
understanding of what inkjet
printing is all about.
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