Epson Stylus Photo R3000 Review: Overview

For many enthusiast photographers Epson's Stylus Photo R2880 is the printer they use, or aspire to using. Though it produces excellent prints, it suffers from two often cited problems, both of which the new R3000 addresses.

The first of these is that although the R2880 is capable of using nine inks, it only has eight cartridge bays and the Matte Black and Photo Black ink tanks are interchangeable. This means that if you switch from printing on glossy media to matte, you must remember to swap the ink cartridges. It's not difficult or messy, just a pain having to remember.

Epson's new R3000 has nine cartridge bays to accept the Matte black, Photo Black, Light Black, Light Light Black, Cyan, Light Cyan, Vivid Magenta, Vivid Light Magenta and Photo Yellow tanks and it switches between the Matte and Photo Black inks as required. Just as the print media is selected via the print driver, the user can tell the R3000 whether to use the Matte or Photo Blacks.

We were originally told by Epson UK that the R3000 has 9 ink channels, one for each cartridge. This would mean that printer doesn't have to purge and recharge the black ink lines when swapping between the Matte and Photo Blacks.

However, the full specification of the R3000 has subsequently been released and mentions the ink usage when swapping between the Matte and Photo Black inks (approximately 3 ml when switching from Matte to Photo Black and 1ml when swapping from Photo to Matte Black) suggesting that they share a channel. I have checked this with Epson UK and it has confirmed that, like the R2880, the R3000 actually has 8 ink channels.

Another issue with the R2880 is part of a wider concern about the cost of inks. A cartridge capacity of just 11.4ml can also mean that keen A3+ printers are also likely to become anxious about the frequency with which the cartridges need replacing.

Epson has addressed this with the R3000 by fitting it with cartridges that contain 2.27x more ink, 25.9ml. As well as reducing the frequency with which the cartridges have to be replaced this allows some economy of scale. The list price of compatible cartridges is £24.35 (inc VAT) each, which means a complete set of nine cartridges will cost users £219.15.

As each R3000 cartridge contains 25.9ml of ink, a unit cost of £24.35 means that every millilitre of ink cost around 94 pence. This compares with 97 pence per millilitre for the R2880's ink which is supplied in cartridges with a volume of 11.4ml.

Some users may be disappointed that increasing the ink volume by 2.27x only reduces the ink cost per millimetre by 3 pence - though wastage is reduced as one cartridge is used for every 2.27 of in the R2880.

The Stylus Photo R3000 is set to retail for £699.99.

Epson Stylus Photo R3000 Review: Features

There are many similarities between the R3000 and the older R2880, but we are told that the new printer doesn't replace the old one, they are to continue in tandem, at least for the time being.

Just like the Stylus Photo R2880, the Stylus Photo R3000 can be used to produce prints of up to A3+ size or 13-inches wide, or smaller.

The inkset is also the same, Epson UltraChrome K3 Ink with Vivid Magenta and three black inks (or two grey and a black) being available for enhanced tonal control, especially with monochrome prints.

Although the Micro Piezo print head with 1440 nozzles (180 per colour) is the same in the R3000 as it is in the R2880, and it lays the ink down at the same maximum resolution of 5760 x 1440 dpi, the minimum droplet size is significantly smaller from the newer printer at 2pl rather than 3pl. This is the smallest droplet to date achieved with Epson UltraChrome inks and it should enable the R3000 to reproduce the very finest details more accurately and ensure that tonal gradations are smooth.

Wireless connectivity has been a feature of less specialist, multi-functional printers for a while now, but the R3000 is the first of Epson's enthusiast or semi-professional focussed printers to have Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b/g/n) as well as High-speed USB 2.0 capability. This puts an end to trailing USB leads for photographers who like their workspace to be uncluttered.

As usual there's more than one way to load media into the R3000, largely depending upon its thickness. For many, the majority of paper can be loaded via the rear automatic sheet feeder, but there's also a front fine art paper path, a front thick paper path and a roll paper feed included (though there's no trimmer built-in). It is also possible to print onto compatible CDs and DVDs using the supplied disk feed.

A 2.5-inch colour LCD screen is another new feature since the R2880, it displays ink levels and operating instructions.

Stylus Photo R3000: Handling and print times

As with Epson's other printers, the R3000 arrives with the print head installed so after removing the blue packing tape all the user has to do it click the ink cartridges into place (their position is clearly labelled and their shape prevents any mix ups), connect the printer to the computer and install the software. It takes just a few minutes.

Printers don't tend to be the most attractive objects in the world, but the R3000 is very smart. Unlike the R2880, it has a flat rather than sloping top which gives it a cleaner look and makes a convenient resting place for prints. When the paper trays are extended ready for action the R3000 has a footprint of around 616mm x 814mm x 424mm, it's not excessive for an A3+ printer.

With a minimum droplet size of 2pl I wondered if Epson's R3000 might take a long time to make prints, but when the highest quality mode is selected an A3+ prints I takes around 8min 35sec from drawing the paper in to ejecting the finished article. Setting the driver print quality option to 'Quality' rather than 'Maximum Quality' reduces the A3+ printing time to around 3min 15sec and has a barely discernable impact on the result.

As the R3000 was positioned out of sight there were several occasions when we had to go over and check the printer was working because it is almost silent in operation once the paper has been drawn in.

Epson Stylus Photo R3000 Review: Performance

(Click for hi-res version)

The first prints we made with the Epson Stylus Photo R3000 were of our printer test chart. This chart has a series of solid colour and gradation blocks as well as resolution lines and bars to test a printer's ability to reproduce colour and detail.

When colour management is assigned to the printer via the printer driver the R3000 produces very impressive results. There is always a little difference between the transmissive on-screen image and the reflective print and with prints from the R3000 the green and cyan solid colour and gradation bars look slightly less vibrant. The gradations are very smooth with no banding, but the two darkest sections of the grey scale wedge on our chart cannot be separated, they both look black.

With the naked eye the resolution lines look very close to perfect, even the diagonal lines. Using a loupe to give a magnified view reveals slight stepping in both the diagonal lines and the concentric circles. It is also clear that the one and two pixel wide spaces between the one pixel lines are not completely clean.

Prints of photographic images (rather than test charts) from the R3000 are a very good match for the on-screen picture. Colours are vibrant and details are faithfully recorded. The days of dull pigment based colour prints are now gone and even the prints made on glossy media look superb. Skin tones are also accurate.

With three black inks at its disposal the R3000 doesn't need to mix colours to produce monochrome prints so the results are neutral with deep rich blacks. In some instances the blacks are a little too deep however, as some very subtle details can be lost in the darker areas. I suspect, however, that this could be rectified by calibrating the printer.

As printed on the Epson Stylus Photo R3000 (Click for high-res version)

As printed on the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 (Click for high-res version)

As printed on the Epson Stylus Photo R3000 (Click for high-res version)

As printed on the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 (Click for high-res version)

Stylus Photo R3000 vs Stylus Photo R2880

According to Epson UK the Stylus Photo R3000 is based upon the Stylus Photo R2880, but it doesn't replace it and they are to continue in tandem.

The main improvements that the Stylus Photo R3000 offers over the R2880 are the larger ink tanks, the 2pl minimum ink droplet size (instead of 3pl) and the additional cartridge bay, so that both the Matte and Photo Black tanks can be installed simultaneously.

In addition, the print engine has been updated, as the R2880 has a cartridge on-head system, whilst the Stylus Photo R3000 has an off-head system. The latter point means that the cartridges stay still while the Stylus Photo R3000 is printing and they are located towards the front left of the printer.

Viewed in isolation the prints from the R3000 and R2880 straight from their boxes with no calibration are very impressive. Either printer would satisfy most enthusiast photographers. However, prints from the R3000 have more punch with more vibrant colours, especially the reds. Skin tones are also more pleasant, lacking the cool note that the R2880 exhibits in some instances.

Even when inspecting the finest resolution lines on our test chart with a loupe it is very hard to distinguish much difference between the results form the R2880 and the R3000. However, the smaller minimum droplet size does appear to lend the newer printer with a very marginal advantage. It may also partly explain the slightly higher micro contrast or 'bite' that the R3000's image have.

While the colours from the R3000 are a little closer to matching those on our test chart, there is a smoother gradation from green to yellow in the rainbow band of the R2880's test chart print. In addition, every step in the grey scale wedge is visible (only just at the darkest end) from the R2880. The last two are indistinguishable in the R3000 print.

Although a wider range of tones are visible in monochrome prints from the R2880, the slightly higher contrast results from the R3000 are closer to the on-screen image.

Epson Stylus Photo R3000 Review: Ink costs

After installing a complete set of fresh cartridges we were able to make 71 A3+ prints (50 colour, 21 B&W) before one cartridge (Vivid Light Magenta) had run out and the printer refused to make any more colour prints. We estimated the remaining level in the other cartridges as:

Yellow -1/5th

Light Cyan – trace

Vivid Magenta - 2/3rd

Cyan - 2/3rd

Light Light Black – trace

Light Black - 1/8th

Photo Black – 2/3rd

Matte Black – 1/6th

As a complete set of nine ink cartridges for the R3000 costs £219.15 from Epson, the average cost per colour print is £4.38 (£219.15/50) for the ink alone.

Epson charges £25.54 for 20 sheets of its Premium Glossy Photo Paper, so we can add another £1.28 per A3+ print for this, or £0.90 for the Archival Matte, which is £45.07 for 50 sheets. This gives us a total of £5.66 or £5.28 respectively, which compares favourably with the £6.59 plus £2.99 for postage charged by Photobox for an A3 print.

Bearing in mind that the black inks are also used for colour prints, it may be a fairer assessment to also take the monochrome prints into account. This works out at £3.09 for the ink.

We printed a variety of different images, with a variety of border sizes on a mixture of glossy (Epson Premium Glossy) and matt (Epson Archival Matte) media as this most closely reflects how photographers use a printer. This isn't intended to be a perfect scientifc assessment, but we think it reflects how most photographers will use the R3000 and gives a reasonable guide price. Extended use would enable us to revise the printing costs.

Epson Stylus Photo R3000 Review: Verdict

Few photographers can fail to be impressed by the prints from the Epson Stylus Photo R3000, the colours, contrast and detail are superb. This plus the convenience its new cartridge arrangement makes it an excellent choice for enthusiasts.

Some may be disappointed that the larger ink cartridges don't offer the same economy of scale as those in Epson's professional level printers such as the Stylus Pro 3880, but it is a significant step in the right direction.

The Canon PIXMA Pro9500 MkII has the same full range of coloured inks as the Pro9000, but adds grey and matte black cartridges.

As with Epson printers, the matte black and photo black inks aren't used simultaneously, as the printer switches between the two to suit matte or glossy photo media. The grey cartridge is used in both cases and, while it has the potential to add smoothness to areas of graduated colour, its main use is for black-and white printing.

This cartridge reduces the risk of unwanted colour casts in black-and-white prints because there's less reliance on coloured inks.

However, when switching to the greyscale printing option in our tests, to ensure that only black and grey inks were used, we experienced a drop in contrast and bite similar to that of the Pro9000, which has no grey ink at all. At least regular printing speeds were maintained in greyscale mode – unlike on the Pro9000, but in keeping with all the other printers in the group.

Print Speed

Canon printers are usually very quick, but the Pro9500 proved the slowest in the group, at least in high-quality print mode. A3+ borderless prints took 8m 22s to produce, but at maximum quality settings, speed proved similar to the Epson A3+ printers on test, at 11m 15s.

That's still less than half as fast as the Pro9000. Colour accuracy and contrast are very convincing on matte photo media, with good results for landscapes and portraits.

Our tests using Canon's glossy papers, including Photo Paper Pro Platinum and Photo Paper Plus Glossy II, were comparatively disappointing. Colours took on a faded appearance and contrast was poor, giving a slightly insipid look to prints. It's nowhere near a match for Canon's Pro9000 Mark II for glossy output.

Aiming to deliver the ultimate in colour quality on glossy paper, the dye-based Pro9000 has seven individual colour inks as well as photo black for a wide gamut. For a dye-based printer, it also produces very pleasing output on matte photo papers and fine-art stock.

The rear-mounted paper input tray accommodates photo paper up to A3+ size, while a front-loading feeder accepts individual sheets of up to 14x17 inches. However, borderless printing isn't supported on 14-inch media. Installing the printer is quick and easy, and the supporting driver and additional software is intuitive.

Fast Results

The Pro9000 Mark II printed at twice the speed of any other printer in the group, delivering a high-quality borderless A3+ colour print in just 1m 54s. However, there's a catch in black-and-white photo printing. Without any grey cartridges, the only way to ensure that you avoid unwanted colour casts is to switch to greyscale printing.

This not only makes black-and-white photos look a little dull, with a lack of detail in darker tones, it also slows down the printer to a snail's pace. In maximum quality colour mode, the Pro9000 Mark II output an A4 borderless print in 2m 9s, but in greyscale mode it slowed to 15m 9s.

Back in colour mode, with auto colour/intensity enabled, the Pro9000 excels in producing vibrant landscape images, as well as giving a glamorous golden touch to skin tones. Manual colour adjustments are also available for landscape and portrait images, the latter giving slightly pinker skin tones.

The printer also delivered accurate results when Photoshop was given control of colour management. Overall, it's fast and glorious for colour, but black-and white printing is a disappointment.

The Stylus Photo 1400 uses the same Owl cartridges that act as high-yield options for some of Epson's A4 photo printers. However, with a relatively low capacity of 11.1ml per cartridge, they need replacing more often than most when fitted in an A3+ printer.

The variety of colours is limited, with a traditional range of CMYK inks boosted by additional light cyan and light magenta. This means that you're lacking the extra red and green cartridges found in the Canon A3+ printers for an extended gamut.

Onboard printer controls are limited, too, although the printer driver has a good range of features, including customisable controls for fine-tuning print brightness, contrast, saturation and colour balance.

Like the other dye-based printer tested, the Canon Pro9000 Mark II, the 1400 makes vibrant colour prints on glossy paper. In fact, prints can be a little too high in contrast with the Photo Enhance feature enabled or when using the printer's vivid colour mode, whereas some images in the standard colour mode can look a little muted.

Overall, it can be tricky to achieve the right balance and, to make matters worse, our review sample produced particularly dull results when handing over the control of colour management to Photoshop.

TEST PRINTS

In maximum quality mode, the Epson 1400 is slow for a dye-based printer, taking 11m 16s to produce a borderless A3+ print, compared with the Pro9000's 4m 25s. That's akin to the print speeds of pigment-based printers, but unlike the Pro9000, it doesn't slow down in greyscale-printing mode. However, our black-and-white test images were too dark in greyscale, and we found it better to use regular colour mode, especially as colour casts were quite minimal.

First, the good. Epson's R2880 offers eight-ink printing, including two black and two grey inks, designed to produce immaculate black-and-white photo prints. The not-so-good part is that the complete range of cartridges adds up to nine, but there's only space for eight of them in the printer.

This means that you have to physically swap the photo black and matte black cartridges every time you want to switch between printing on glossy or matte media.

The process takes about five minutes to complete, once all the print heads have been refreshed and the black channel has been purged of any remaining photo or matte black ink. It's time-consuming, inconvenient and a waste of ink. Indeed, switching from matte to glossy media just four times can be enough to drain the photo black cartridge, without even doing any printing.

Print Quality

The R2880 redeems itself when it comes to print quality, with vivid colour and fabulous black-and-white output even on glossy paper, which is always a challenge for pigment-based printers. In the Advanced B&W Photo print mode, only black (photo or matte), light black and light light black inks are used, so unwanted colour casts aren't an issue. If you do fancy a warm or cool tint, this is available in the Advanced B&W Photo mode, at which point the R2880 calls on the required colour cartridges.

Our only criticism of print quality is that skin tones were a bit cool and unflattering in our tests, although they warmed up a little when switching to the Photo Enhance (people printing mode). Print speeds are average for a pigment-based printer, as you'll see from our comparison table, and a neat extra is the roll feeder for panoramic printing.

Upsizing your prints from A4 to A3 makes them twice as big – go up to A2 and they're twice as big again, four times the size of an A4 picture. A2 printers are usually correspondingly large, too, and expensive, but the Epson Stylus Pro 3880's relatively modest dimensions and price make it an attractive proposition.

The A2 print size of 17x22 inches looks impressively larger than the 13x19 inches of an A3+ image, but the aspect ratio is a bit on the square side for photo prints. Considering that the 3880 can create prints of up to 17x37.4 inches, it seems strange that Epson doesn't sell A2+ or 'Super A2' sized media in any of its photographic or fine-art media ranges.

One thing that definitely is super-sized, though, is the 3880's ink cartridges. These are a generous 80ml, which means you can keep printing for much longer without needing to change cartridges. Plus both photo black and matte black are installed simultaneously, like with the R3000.

Sadly though, you still waste about 1.5ml of matte black ink or 4.5ml of photo black ink when switching between matte and glossy media. The bigger cartridges provide a saving of about £1.50 per A3+ colour print, compared with the R2880. The flipside is that a complete set of cartridges for the 3880 will set you back a whopping £450.

Big Picture

Compared with the R2880 and R3000, resolution drops from 5,760x1,440dpi to 2,880x1,440dpi, but image quality is still excellent.

With a lower resolution, print speeds are noticeably faster in maximum quality mode, with an A3+ print taking 8m 53s to produce, compared with 11m 9s on the Epson R2880. A2 prints take 7m 9s and 12m 38s in high quality and maximum quality settings respectively.

HP has been going all out to add a new twist to the humble desktop printer. Recently it launched e-All-in-One functionality in the Photosmart Premium and Photosmart Plus models, enabling you to set up these printers on a home network and email them directly from anywhere in the world, with attachments being printed automatically.

Cunningly, while documents, spreadsheets, PDFs and the like are printed on regular A4 paper, 6 x 4-inch or 7 x 5-inch photo paper is loaded automatically from a separate tray for printing photo attachments. The new Photosmart eStation follows suit, but raises the bar with its very own 'Zeen'.

Whereas the HP Photosmart Premium has a perfectly serviceable 8.9cm colour touchscreen, the eStation's has a much larger, 17.8cm tablet-like touchscreen that's a self-contained gadget in its own right, called a Zeen.

Remove it from its docking bay on the front of the printer and you can use it all around the home, not just controlling the printer but also reading the news, catching up with your Facebook pals, receiving and sending Yahoo Mail and more besides.

The various widgets are designed to work seamlessly with the printer as well as the internet, using your wireless network.

It's not all good news, however, because despite being based on the Android 2.1 operating system, functionality is somewhat hamstrung and the Zeen only really works with a relatively small collection of 'Print apps', rather than the wider range of general Android apps.

The printer comes with a collection of pre-installed apps and extra ones are available for download from HP's website directly to the printer. There are currently about 30 in all, including a slew of business and entertainment apps.

These range from handy forms to Picasa photo printing, greetings card creation, web Sudoku puzzles and fun for the kids from the likes of DreamWorks and Crayola.

Surfing the web on the Zeen is a slow and tedious business and, based on our review sample, operation is still a bit flaky. Several of the components such as Yahoo Daily Digest and Yahoo Mail repeatedly crashed during our tests and the weather forecast widget wouldn't let us switch to UK locations.

The touchscreen also often failed to tell the difference between a press and a swipe, taking us to the wrong place in our navigations. On the plus side, there's an SD card slot built in, making the Zeen good for viewing photos and printing them without even having to get up off the sofa.

The underlying print engine seems identical to the Photosmart Premium, which we've reviewed previously. Compared with the pigment-based black and dye-based cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges of the Photosmart Plus printer, both the Premium and eStation add an extra dye-based black cartridge.

Commonplace among Canon PIXMA printers over the years, this configuration adds depth, contrast and greater colour fidelity in photo prints. Indeed, print quality for both documents and photos is very good, although colour accuracy isn't quite as excellent as with the latest Canon printers, such as the PIXMA iP4850 and MG5150 all-in-one printer.

Print speeds are pretty quick, with mono text pages and colour DTP pages taking just under 10 seconds and 20 seconds respectively. Photo output is fast too, at about 30 seconds for a normal quality 6 x 4-inch print and just under three minutes for a high-quality borderless A4 photo print.

The eStation also comes with an auto duplex unit as standard, for double-sided printing, which can cut down on paper usage for multi-document printing.

The Photosmart eStation creates very good quality prints for documents and photos alike, and it's pretty quick too. The printer is only supplied with 'setup' cartridges, but ink costs are quite modest if you fit HP's high-capacity 364XL cartridges, at around 2p per mono text page, 7p per colour text page and 14p for a 6 x 4-inch colour photo.

We liked

Build quality feels solid and dependable and the printer is smartly styled and finished. The additional photo tray reduces the need to swap between plain and photo paper, unless you want to print photos at sizes larger than 7 x 5 inches.

We disliked

The main selling point of the eStation is its tablet-like Zeen. This does a fairly good job of controlling the printer, both when it's docked and when you're using the Zeen remotely, but there still seems to be a few bugs that need ironing out. Ultimately, the fact that apps are mostly limited to printing makes it of limited appeal.

We found that after the initial novelty value of using the Zeen remotely, we tended to keep it docked all the time. This makes it an expensive luxury that's simply not worth having, considering that the eStation is 3.5 times the price of the Photosmart Premium e-All-in-One, which includes most of the same ePrint functions.

Verdict

The Photosmart eStation's printing performance is pretty impressive but no better or faster than the much cheaper Photosmart Premium e-All-in-One. That means that you're currently paying an extra £225 or so for the luxury of the removable Zeen, and a couple of extra (but quite basic) web browsing facilities. For our money, it's just not worth it.

Brother HL-4150CDN review: Overview

It's surprising how cheap colour laser printers have become. The new Brother range starts at only £260, though this particular model is a little more expensive at £445. The Brother HL-4150CDN can be connected through USB or Ethernet, and can serve one to 10 users.

It has built-in LCD screen, a 250-sheet tray with an option for an extra 500 sheets and a 50-sheet multipurpose media tray for envelopes, thin card and more. For sensitive documents, there's PIN-protected printing.

Windows 7, Vista, XP and 2000 are supported out of the box, as is Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, with Linux drivers available to download from http://solutions.brother.com. Duplex printing is catered for, and you can print PDF, TIFF and JPEG files from a compatible USB drive.

The Brother HL-4150CDN promises up to 24 pages per minute, with the first page out in under 16 seconds. We found these figures a little optimistic.

Our 20-page test document printed in around one minute and 10 seconds, with the first page ready in 22.3 seconds. With Duplex switched on, it printed in one minute and 35 seconds, which is slower than the claimed seven pages per minute, but far from sluggish. Our photo test card printed in 23.3 seconds.

Print quality was pretty good for a laser printer of this price. Text printing was clear and vivid, with even the smallest point sizes perfectly readable. It could've been a little darker, but without comparing it side by side to a print-out from a more expensive laser printer, you're unlikely to find fault with the Brother HL-4150CDM.

Colour documents also printed very well, with clear text, good contrast and very little banding. Colours were rich and accurate, and shading well realised. It was less capable when reproducing photographs. The images were a little grainy, the grayscale ramp very banded and colour reproduction was definitely over-dark.

To be fair, photo printing is hardly the main reason for buying a colour laser printer, but it's worth bearing in mind if you print a lot of documents containing photos.

A secure printing option keeps sensitive documents away from prying eyes. After entering a four-digit number on your computer, the print job is passed to the printer, but not actually printed until you enter the same code on the HL-4150CDN's screen. Very useful if your printer is networked and shared.

As well as being inexpensive to buy, the Brother HL-4150CDN is reasonably cost-effective to run. Taking the higher-yield toner cartridges at the prices offered on Brother's website, the cost per page of a black and white print-out is 1.73 pence, and colour pages at 12.29 pence (both figures offered without the cost of the paper itself).

Perhaps the colour cost is a little high, but it's bound to fall as the printer series achieves market penetration and net-discounted cartridges arrive.

Brother HL-4150CDN review: Verdict

The Brother HL-4150CDN has a decent range of features for a colour laser printer of this price. It can be networked with up to ten computers, connected through Ethernet or USB and it can print some documents from a compatible flash drive. It offers Duplex printing and a secure print feature too.

We liked

The secure printing feature is easy to use, and useful in a busy office. Print speeds are reasonable, even if they're a little behind the claimed figures, and text quality is very good. Colour documents print well, and the Duplex feature, which takes pages in pairs, is speedy and useful.

We disliked

There isn't a huge amount to dislike about the Brother HL-4150CDN, but its photo reproduction isn't as good as it might be. Colours are a little too strong, and images grainy overall – to be fair, though, photo printing is a laser printer's least important function.

The 250-page tray is okay for home use, but if you want to network it in an office, best invest in the optional 500-sheet lower tray.

Verdict

The Brother HL-4150CDN is a very capable colour laser printer at a very good price. If you're looking for a decent-quality device for small office use that won't break the bank, look no further. It's as good as any budget colour laser printer for home use too, but make sure you have enough room for it. Laser printers aren't known for their small footprints, and this is no exception.

Canon PIXMA iP4850: Overview

How much do you really need to pay for a top-of-the-range printer? If you don't need options such as Wi-Fi connectivity, faxing and self-contained photocopying – offered in varying mixes by Lexmark's Impact S305, and Epson's PX720WD and WorkForce range – it might be less than you think.

The new Canon iP4850 delivers spectacular performance for just £70. Taking over where the outgoing iP4700 left off, the latest model features a new set of pigment-based black ink, plus dye-based cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks that are tailored for top-quality document and photo printing.

In fact, the actual inks remain the same, it's just the cartridges they come in are slightly different, with PGI-525 for pigment black and four CLI-526 cartridges for the dye-based inks.

In most ways, the new iP4850 is near identical to the older iP4700, but that's no bad thing.

It keeps the same dimensions at a remarkably compact 431 x 297 x 153mm (W x D x H). As with most other printers, the overall depth increases once you've extended the input and output trays to their full extension, but in this case to a still space-friendly 550mm.

The input and output trays are also worthy of note here, since you get a 150-sheet cassette feeder that slots in underneath the printer, plus a full-size upright feeder at the rearm which can take a further 150 sheets of full A4-sized paper.

The upright feeder is especially useful for loading with photo paper, meaning you don't have to keep swapping paper types every time you want to switch between document and photo printing. Some printers, such as the HP Photosmart Plus and Epson PX720WD, also feature a separate photo tray, but in both of those cases you only get a postcard-sized photo tray, which is no good for A4 photo printing.

Many of Canon's older models included a paper feed switch on the front of the printer, but this has been scrapped on the iP4850. It actually helps avoid a bit of confusion, since the printer driver could overrule the paper feed switch anyway. Now, an automatic option selects the lower cassette for document printing and the rear tray for photo printing, but this can still be overridden in Printer Properties.

Other finery includes auto duplex for double-sided printing, which is no mean feat on a printer this small. Better still, printing is as amazingly fast as the iP4700, outputting mono text pages in six seconds, colour DTP pages in 16 seconds, 6 x 4-inch normal quality photos in 19 seconds and full A4 borderless photo prints at the highest quality setting in two minutes flat.

Document quality is impeccable and colour photo quality is absolutely stunning. The only thing that's second-best here is black-and-white photo printing, which can have a slight colour cast. To avoid this, you'd need to upgrade to Canon's PIXMA MG6150 all-in-one printer.

Canon PIXMA iP4850: Conclusion

Considering its very compact footprint, the iP4850 offers a full range of features, including auto duplex printing, direct printing onto CDs and DVDs and dual paper input feeds, along with super-fast, ultra-high-quality output.

We liked

Photo quality is dazzling, with beautiful colour rendition, excellent brightness and contrast, and highly flattering skin tones. Reserving the full-size rear paper feed for photo paper up to A4 in size is another bonus, so you can keep the lower input cassette for plain paper.

The iP4850 does a brisk and excellent job of document printing thanks to its mix of pigment-based and dye-based inks.

The printer also features Canon's latest Full HD Movie Print gizmo, so you can print individual frames of video clips captured on Canon cameras via the software that comes as part of the package.

If you're using genuine Canon inks (which we'd always recommend), you also get access to Canon Creative Park Premium, enabling you to download top-quality photos and illustrations for projects such as greetings cards and calendars.

We disliked

Being 'just a printer', rather than an all-in-one, you don't get a scanner for scanning or stand-alone photocopying, and there are no built-in memory card readers or LCD preview screens here. That said, you can still print photos directly from PrintBridge-compatible cameras.

Verdict

If all you want is a printer, as opposed to a multi-function device that can do everything apart from making coffee, the iP4850 is an absolute stunner. Print quality is exceptional for both photo and document printing; running costs are reasonable; it's got a neat range of features, including auto duplex and CD printing; and it's immensely fast. At the price, it's an absolute steal.

Lexmark Interpret S405: Overview

Along with HP, Lexmark stuck with the old-fashioned system of tri-colour cartridges with built-in print heads longer than most manufacturers.

But we all resented throwing away expensive ink just because one of the three chambers had run dry, so fixed print heads and individually replaceable ink cartridges, which are little more than basic ink tanks, are the new order of the day.

The Interpret S405 joins the previously reviewed Lexmark Interact S605 in serving up Lexmark's new Vizix individual ink system, more along the lines of the Canon MP640. But whereas most 'all-in-one' printers come up short in office-minded features, the S405 aims to give you everything you need.

Whereas the fun-loving and flamboyant Lexmark Interact S605 is based around 10.9cm full-colour touch-screen, the cheaper S405 has a more hard-nosed businesslike mono LCD for just two short lines of alpha-numeric characters.

This makes it less than ideal for printing photos direct from memory cards, since you can't preview them, although printing is still possible using the USB input socket which can read memory sticks or connect with PictBridge-enabled cameras, or from the single memory card slot which works with SD, MMC, Memory Stick and xD cards.

Even so, with only four inks under the bonnet, photo quality is merely good, rather than fabulous, as colour space is slightly lacking.

Where the S405 really hits its stride is in office duties and, unlike the S605, it adds a 35-sheet ADF (Auto Document Feeder) for scanning, which makes short work of multi-page documents.

Moreover, the ADF teams up perfectly with the built-in fax machine, also lacking on the S605, so you can make mono or colour photocopies, print and send or receive faxes even when your computer is switched off.

Having the right connections is vital in business and the S405 doesn't disappoint. As well as the usual USB 2.0 port for connection to a standalone computer, there's Ethernet for hooking up with a home or small business network and, even more important nowadays, full Wi-Fi connectivity. This is particularly good for printing from your laptop, anywhere around the home.

The S405 is no slouch when it comes to print speeds. In our tests, it outputted mono text pages in seven seconds flat and colour DTP pages in just under 20 seconds. Switch to photo output and you'll get a regular quality 6x4 print in about 30 seconds.

The only real fly in the ointment is that the standard capacity cartridges supplied with the printer last no time at all, but page yield and running costs are average if you switch to Lexmark's XL high capacity cartridges.

Lexmark Interpret S405: Verdict

The new generation of Lexmark inkjets is a huge improvement over previous models, both in terms of print quality and running costs. The four-ink system is perfectly suited to document printing, and photo output is surprisingly rather better than from Lexmark's older six-ink models.

We liked

Despite the email revolution, sometimes we still need to send and receive faxes when working at home, and the S405 enables this in fine style, along with a good quality keypad and 35-sheet document feeder.

Printing in normal and high quality modes is massively quicker than most of Lexmark's older printers for photos as well as documents, and the Vizix individual ink system makes for reasonable running costs too.

The provision of Wi-Fi as well as Ethernet connectivity is a bonus, making the printer compatible with pretty much any home network.

We disliked

There's only one paper input tray, which sits at the back of the printer, so it's impossible to load up the machine with standard paper and letter-headed stock simultaneously, or plain and photo paper, as you can with printers like the Canon MP640. There's also no provision for printing onto white-faced CDs and DVDs.

Verdict

As a home office or small business printer, the Interpret S405 makes short work of printing, scanning, photocopying and faxing. It's reasonably cheap to run and print speeds and quality are good, making it a bit of a bargain at the price.