What is the best photo printer?

My wife is bugging the hell out of me about a photo printer. I have no idea how to judge quality or performance vs. price. We are looking at one around $300 or less. Anyone have any ideas?

Well, the best will probably cost more than your budget and personally, I'm not sure which is the "best" (Canon makes some really good ones). Last winter, I bought a HP 7960 Photosmart printer (uses 3 ink cartridges). My wife and I are very impressed. We have been printing out pictures on the high setting using premium glossy photo paper and framing them. You can't tell they aren't real photographs. In my opinion, the HP 7960 is excellent and for about $200 shipped, you probably can't find a better photo printer.

review:
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/hp7960_pg3.html

newegg.com
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...263&ATT=Printers+Multifuncti&CMP=OTC-d3alt1me

Basically anything by Canon. They are so clearly superior to the competition right now it is unbelievable. I use the 13x19" i9900, but it is more expensive than your target. Any but the most basic 8.5x11" model will serve you well, even the 5-color units like the IP4000. My mother has a 5-color Canon and its photo output is hard to discern from that of my 8-color i9900's and it's a dynamite text machine also.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16828102154

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16828102150

Even though the IP4000 is only 1/3 your budget limit and the i8500 is right at it, I would recommend the IP4000 for all but the most sensitive users. 99 people out of 100 can't tell the difference in the output. The i8500 is the narrow carriage equivalent of my i9900. I need the 13x19" output of the i9900, and as such had little choice but to ante for it, but the 8-color units are a lot more expensive to operate due to the fact that they have more cartridges and they deplete them at the same rate as do the 5-color models.

The 5-color models have two blacks, one for text and one for photo use. This give superior text output quality, speed, and economy as compared to the i8500/9900, and even though they are only 4-color units for photo use, blow away most any printer from any other manufacturer regardless of how many colors they have. You just can't believe how good Canons are these days until you see what the results are like for yourself. Simply amazing.

The IP4000 also has two seperate 8.5x11 paper trays, and duplexes. And one of the best things about Canons is the factory cartridges are pretty affordable, and the 5-color models sip them. I recommend the Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy for photo use. Using the factory Canon ink and paper yields positively scary color accuracy, something I could not achieve with my epsons no matter what I used. Canons ship with seperate ICC color profiles for each Canon factor paper type, and apparantly they try them after creation and adjust them until perfect color accuracy is achieved. Epsons come with but a single color profile, which typically destroys aqua blues, pinks, and purples no matter what paper you use.

Staples has the Photo Paper Plus Glossy on sale all the time for $5.98 each for either a 50-pack of 4x6's or 20 pack of the 8.5x11. It is superior quality paper and produces effortless punch-the-button-and-mavel-at-the-result quality.

I do strongly recomend the IP4000, my sister loves hers and my mother's functionally identical i860 comes so close to matching the unmatchable i9900 in practice that there really are few pressing reasons to spend more unless you need the 13x19" handling and awesome speed of the i9900. And as mentioned, it and the i8500 drink ink in comparsions (although still are worth it). And these printers are fast... my i9900 prints a 4800x2400 dpi 13x19" in 3 minutes... something that simply has to be seen to be believed. The IP4000 is not quite the speed demon the i9900 is, but still destroys the effective real-world speed delivered by competing manufactueres at the same time its resolution and color accuracy make them all look like amatuers.

BTW, I produce cutting-edge cartography for which I have previously unseen production quality standards, as well as being an avid photographer. No one is more demanding of their printers, and few have tried as many. Anything but a Canon these days is simply ****ing in the wind.

batboy said:

I bought a HP 7960 Photosmart printer (uses 3 ink cartridges).

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The ink cartdriges are the problem here. Although HP's technology is good these days, it's not as good as Canons and the tri-color cartridges produce much higher effective cost-per-photo levels than do the Canon's inexpensive seperate ones. And the Canon output quality and color matching are simply beyond reproach.

heres the top 3 dogs in the printer market

canon

epson

hp

epson usually has the best color/picture quality but it helluva slow on type as well its slow

canon and hp imo are very cllose in picture quality behind epson canon maybe being a bit better esp wit their ink catridges, but hp is the superior overall printer

If you're going to be printing mostly 4x6 prints and there's no incriminating shots in the lot, I'd go with a local photo shop like the one at Walmart. They are only 19 cents a print and far cheaper than a dedicated photo printer. A kodak Printerdock 6000 (for example) that only does 4x6 averages 60 cents a print!

For larger prints I've done fine with my HP 940c and a cheap photo paper from Sam's Club (about 30 cents per 8.5"x11") The print will often fade in a year or so if not protected from UV exposure while the print from photo kiosk at stores aren't supposed to fade for many years.

Echo_ said:

canon and hp imo are very cllose in picture quality behind epson canon maybe being a bit better esp wit their ink catridges, but hp is the superior overall printer

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This was true five years ago, but go pick up a Canon IP4000, use it, and then tell me the alternatives from HP or Epson have any merit.

4GHZ_or_bust said:

If you're going to be printing mostly 4x6 prints and there's no incriminating shots in the lot, I'd go with a local photo shop like the one at Walmart. They are only 19 cents a print and far cheaper than a dedicated photo printer. A kodak Printerdock 6000 (for example) that only does 4x6 averages 60 cents a print!

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I pay less than 12 cents per for Canon Photo Paper Plus glossy 4x6's and with the ink it's still no more than 19 cents per. Plus the current Canon printer technology's print quality blows away what you get for 19 cents by any other means. And you can do it yourself, whenever you want, of whatever you want. The 8.5x11 version costs me just under 30 cents apiece, plus ink, and the 13x19" Canon Photo Paper Pro is about $2 a sheet, so with ink, is still under $3 per print. And if you could see what the ouptut looks like, you'd know why these are spectacular values.

I have an older Canon S900 and its great.

One note about the Epson. We've had the C64 for close to two years now now and it is starting to have all these lines through everything that she prints (evenly spaced lines ).

Larva is definitaly pointing me in the right direction. The i8500 looks great.

Thanks for the review link batboy. It should answer alot of my questions.

That Canon IP-4000 does look nice for such a low price. I know Canon makes great printers, I have a buddy who has one and it's top quality, but he paid a lot more than what I paid for my HP. I've heard the argument before that the individual ink cartridges (like Canon uses) are more economical than the HP tri-color ones, because if one runs out you just replace that one cartridge. But, I have printed a lot in the 6 months that I've owned my 7960 and when one color in the tri-color cartridge runs out, the other colors are nearly dry too. For text, it just uses the black cartridge, so it don't effect the other two tri-color cartridges. So, I doubt the amount of ink used between different brands makes much difference. On the other hand, if that IP-4000 prints as good as mine does for half the price, well then it's a bargain.

The simple truth is even an IP4000 prints better than anything HP has. You simply can't believe how good their photo output is until you try one. And when you print in the sort of volume I do you'll find that the ink costs are significantly lower. Not only are the colors seperate, the the cartdriges are cheaper and last longer.

I used to like HPs for text machines, as the Epsons that used to be required to top-notch photo resolution were horrid at it, and the Canon just mediocre overall. But the IP4000 is an even better test machine than the HPs, and their photo output is simply amazing. And with their feed and output trays also the best now, Canons simply have no weakness.

If you feel you must have the i8500 because it has eight colors, well, that's your choice. But I would trade the miniscule color gamut advantage that the 8-color process results in for the text black and resultant superior text output and the economy of operation of the 5-color Canons in a heartbeat. I need the large-format output of my i9900 for mapmaking, and thus don't have a choice, but you do.

You'll certainly get great photos with an i8500, but I've printed the same photos on the 8-color units and the 5, on the same paper, and let me tell you, you could never identify which is which without some serious practice. The IP4000 simply doesn't give up much, and the i8500 is a lot more expensive to buy and operate and has inferior text performance (although it's certainly good enough in that regard).

My advice is unless you are a professional selling the output, buy the IP4000 and invest the $200 you save in a huge supply of factory Canon ink cartdriges and Photo Paper Plus Glossy. It's your money, but I'm telling you, at the end of the day if you go the i8500 route you'll spend 3X as much and not really have a noticeable quality advantage to point to. You'll know it's true 8-color output, but nobody else will even realize they weren't printed on an IP4000.