Consumer Reports Tests Printers - Printer_Ratings.jpg [0/6]
Bill
printers.
From Consumer Reports, March 1999...
Printers don't age as gracefully as the computers they serve, because
printers can't be upgraded. If you need increased speed or better color-
reproduction capability from the printer, you generally have to buy a new
one.
For the past several years, printers have gained speed, features, and
versatility while dropping in price. That welcome trend hasn't stopped.
You can choose from many fine printers priced from $150 to $400.
Printer Basics
Here's how the two principal types of machine compare:
Inkjet printers, the dominant type, have a print head that forms images
by depositing an ultrafine pattern of ink dots on the paper. If you want
color, choose an inkjet. They can produce graphics, stationery, greeting
cards, banners, and T-shirt iron-ons. All inkjets can print photographs;
a few rival the quality of professional color prints.
Resolution, expressed in dots per inch (dpi), is often treated in ads as
synonymous with good performance. In truth, performance depends on many
factors. A high dpi setting can slow the printer without adding much
quality, especially if you print on copier paper. And, except when
printing photos, printers don't usually need the maximum dpi setting to
generate good-looking output.
Laser printers priced for home use are strictly for black and white,
mainly text and graphics. (Color laser printers start at about $2,000.)
What laser printers do, they do extremely well and very quickly. Laser
printers work like plain-paper copiers, forming an image by transferring
toner (powdered ink) to paper as it passes over a photoconductor drum.
We rated 17 inkjet printers from the leading manufacturers. We also
tested three laser printers. All work with Windows computers; a few will
also work with Macintosh. A trained panel judged print quality by
comparing text, graphics, and photo output from each printer. We also
calculated each printer's operating costs. -
Printing pictures
We tested each machine by printing a document containing clip art, a pie
chart, small rectangles with sharp edges, graduated shades, and fine
lines. We also printed a high-resolution color photo. Each image was
printed both in color and in black and white. As the Ratings indicate,
most inkjet printers did a fine job of rendering graphics and photos.
The laser printers weren't as good with pictures.
The Xerox DocuPrint X78C and Epson Stylus Color 740 inkjets did an
outstanding job with photos. The prints were almost as good as
commercial photofinishing.
The top-rated Hewlett-Packard inkjets handled both color and black and-
white graphics superbly, producing sharply detailed images, crisp borders
and true, vibrant color. Most other inkjets produced acceptable
graphics. The worst produced coarse shading and dull colors.
Printing Text
We also noticed a quirky flaw with some inkjet printers. When printing
ordinary black-and-white text, most inkjets were reasonably fast, at two
pages per minute or more. But when we had them print a page of text that
included just one word changed to red, several models slowed
significantly. With the Epson Stylus Color 440 and Hewlett-Packard Desk
jet 697C, speed plummeted.
Color combinations
Inkjet printers produce the full range of colors using four inks,
commonly referred to as CMYK. C, M, and Y stand for cyan (greenish-
blue), magenta, and yellow; K denotes black. Most of the inkjet printers
we tested hold one CMY cartridge and a separate K cartridge (a few put
all four colors in one cartridge). Only the K cartridge comes into play
for black and-white printing; both cartridges are used for full-color
work. Some older, low-priced printers can hold only a CMY or a K
cartridge, so you have to swap them periodically. That's an
inconvenience. The CMY cartridge creates a muddy sort of black by
combining the other colors; that's an expensive and slow way of working.
Some inkjets use a special combination of cartridges just for color
photos-a K cartridge and a special photo cartridge containing six inks,
or a CMY cartridge and a multiple-ink photo cartridge. But those special
cartridges won't guarantee high-quality color photos. For example, both
the Xerox DocuPrint X78C, which uses a separate photo cartridge, and the
Epson Stylus Color 740, which doesn't, did an outstanding job with
photos.
Printing Speed
Laser printers remain the speedier type, but inkjets are steadily closing
the gap.
The fastest inkjet tested, the Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 895Cse, can print
3.5 pages per minute of black and-white single-spaced text. That's only
about one page per minute slower than the laser printers. The low-rated
Okidata and Xerox DocuPrint A76C inkjets managed only a single page of
text per minute.
Color photos printed in the highest quality mode take a long time to
produce-7 to 20 minutes in our tests. Slower printing doesn't always
mean better quality; the relatively slow Okidata and Xerox X76C yielded
some of the worst photos.
Troubleshooting tips
Early versions of a printer's driver (the software that makes it run) may
be incompatible with some computers. As a result, you may experience
partially printed pages, garbled pages, operational miscues, and other
glitches. You can download an updated version of the driver from the
manufacturer's web site or call the printer manufacturer's technical
support number.
Caring for photos.
Inkjet photos require a little more care than regular ones. Inkjet ink
smears when wet, so keep the prints away from water. Some inkjets (see
the Details on the Models) use effective water-resistant black ink.
Laser-printer output is impervious to water damage.
We also tested how fading affected color graphics and photos printed on
various types of paper. We continuously exposed prints to bright
fluorescent light for six weeks - more exposure than most computer output
is likely to get. Fading seems to depend on both the paper and the ink
used; we didn't see any consistent pattern. Color photos on display may
be more of a problem. Photos we made this year tended to fade far more
readily than those made last year on the same type of Kodak paper. (Kodak
changed the paper, making it more water-resistant, among other things.)
Recommendations
Two Hewlett-Packards, the Deskjet 89SCse, $410, and 712C, $250, topped
the Ratings for inkjets. They generated superior prints of all types and
did so quickly and quietly. They also had a low operating cost.
Opt for a laser printer if you need to handle a heavy volume of black
and-white printing. Any of the three we tested would be a fine choice.
Overall, printers are fairly reliable products, judging from a May 1998
survey of Consumer Reports readers. Among printers purchased in the
previous three years, fewer than one in ten had ever been repaired or
developed a serious problem.
Mr Bill
Lets try Newsguy...
Rogers
Bill wrote in message ...
>FWIW, Here is the article from the March 1999 Consumer Reports about home
>printers.
Bill, thanks for posting the info.
Wonder if I can impose upon you (or perhaps some other kind reader) to tell
me which were the three Laser Printers that they tested?
I don't know if my eyesight is deficient or my recognition skill are too
low, I mean to say, perhaps they did mention the names and models but it was
interspersed in the text and I couldn't figure out which was laser and which
was inkjet.
The article ended off with a general comment about any of the laser printers
being okay, but did they actually put them in any ratings order anywhere
else in the article?
Appreciate any help I can get. Need to get a new printer soon and since I
don't need or want color, was thinking laser.
Thanks,
Les.
David Chien
www.onsale.com (?) $99 Okidata 4w Lunchbox sized 600 dpi 4ppm printer.
They come and go from these various places, but at $99-150 you can't beat the
price of these 4w printers and they're a throwaway bargin if they break in a
couple years.
david =)
Andrew Klossner
material is readily available for a reasonable fee both at the local
newsstand and at CR's web site.
-=- Andrew Klossner (and...@teleport.com)
Daniel Justin
Andrew Klossner wrote in message <7b1nhn$dve$1...@user2.teleport.com>...