Issue #0709/2 - How long does it take to get our treasured memories out of the printer into a hard copy format to show our friends and relatives? But is fastest best?
Because photo printing can be an exceptionally slow process, users should know how long to expect to have to wait for results to be produced. It may be necessary to plan the print run for a time when it can be left running without causing inconvenience to other activities. Or, alternatively, enough forward planning may be required to ensure that the prints are ready when they are needed.
Methodology
Using the CharisCo standard Photo Test Suite, comprising a set of 12 photographs selected to represent typical home photo printing, the time taken to print complete sets of images at borderless 10×15 was measured on each of the target devices.The full PhotoSuite can be viewed at:
CharisCo Printer Labs - PhotoSuite
Two photographs (image 5, woodland; and image 9, car) were printed on each printer at borderless A4 size. The time taken to print the A4 photographs was measured.
Again, the goal is to print high quality glossy photographs in a manner as close to typical printing habits of users as possible.
Print Settings:
Print speed results comprise:
Print Speed
It is important to understand that there is a clear correlation between print speed and image quality as determined by psychometric testing (see also "Inkjet All-in-One lab tests – Photo Printing Print Quality"). The devices that are slowest at photo printing were perceived to be of the highest quality while those that printed fastest were deemed to be acceptable but not outstanding.|
Times shown in Minutes:Seconds |
10×15 Photo Test Suite |
A4 Photo (Woodland) |
A4 Photo (Car) |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First photo out | Per 12 photos |
Average time per photo |
Time per photo | Time per photo | |
|
Brother DSP-330C |
3:51 | 48:50 | 4:03 | 13:22 | 16:55 |
|
Epson Stylus Photo RX620 |
2:17 | 25:22 | 2:06 | 4:46 | 4:53 |
|
Hewlett-Packard Photosmart C4180 |
1:57 | 19:41 | 1:37 | 4:23 | 4:22 |
|
Lexmark P4350 |
3:28 | 33:23 | 2:43 | 7:17 | 7:14 |
Table 1 - Photo print speed using the CharisCo Photo Test Suite, comprising 12 photos printed at 10×15 and two photos each printed at A4
This correlation is most striking with the Brother DCP-330C where print speed was as much as four times slower than competitive devices but the 10×15 images were chosen as the highest quality prints by 42% of participants in the psychometric testing. Lexmark’s P4350, at 67% slower than the fastest competitor, C4180, was deemed to produce the best quality prints on an overall score basis.
As you will see from the table and chart, Hewlett-Packard’s Photosmart C4180 was fastest in every respect, up to 4x faster than the Brother DCP-330C.
There is a reason for this.
Firstly, Brother uses finer ink droplets than Hewlett-Packard, at 1.5pl (picolitre) instead of 5pl. This means that more droplets have to be placed on the paper in order to create the image. It is this droplet size, which relates to the size of the ink dot on the paper, that represents real visible dots per inch (dpi) where printing is concerned, as opposed to addressable dots per inch (how many locations in one inch that the printer could place a drop of ink if asked to do so) that is quoted in the specifications.
Smaller dots generally mean a higher quality image – hence manufacturers quoting addressable dots per inch in the hope that we will associate that with higher print quality – not entirely true.
Smaller dots also means that more dots are required to create the image, which means that it takes longer to cover the page.
So, we have to choose between faster print speed with acceptable print quality or slower print speed with higher print quality.
This relationship between print speed and print quality is most easily recognised when comparing ‘draft’ print quality and speed with ‘best’ print quality and speed.
Secondly, Brother takes a different approach to other manufacturers in the printing of borderless photos. Whereas most photos are printed borderless by overprinting round the edge of the paper by several millimetres, in order not to infringe inkjet patents, Brother has designed its borderless photo printing capability such that there is no overprint. This inevitably means that the printing process is a little slower but it also has the advantage that less ink is wasted and so cost is optimised.
Unusual in this group of photo printers is Epson’s Stylus Photo RX620. Having compared relatively poorly on office print speed, the RX620 actually competes surprisingly strongly against Hewlett-Packard’s Photosmart C4180, particularly when printing A4 photos.
A comment that must be made with respect to the print speed of these two machines though, so that we come full circle, is to point you to the next article where we see that image quality was deemed only to be acceptable and poor respectively.
Average Time to Print
Photo Printing
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