Issue #0706/1 - With inkjet All-in-One machines selling is large numbers, we took an opportunity towards the end of 2006 to test several examples of this category for cartridge yield, including Cost of Printing, performance and print quality.
In this issue we introduce the products tested and provide an overview of the findings, drawing on the main highlights in a number of different areas:
| Cost of Printing | Performance | Print Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Photo | Printing | Photo |
| Office | Copying | Office |
In several areas, the results are quite startling.
Machines tested are all small office and personal/home inkjet All-in-One devices, designed for high quality photo printing as well as office style multifunctional applications. This group directly pitches four-ink against six-ink where both cost of printing and print quality are concerned.
Inkjet All-in-One printers are the primary device for the micro office and home user, with good reason – selling in huge numbers every year. They are inexpensive to purchase and offer the kind of flexibility that a low-volume, generalist environment requires.
They allow users to undertake a wide variety of tasks: from simple printing of letters to printing of high-quality borderless glossy photographs at up to 10×8 (standard photo size – max printable = A4/Letter); from archive copying of black and white documents to high quality copying of colour photographs; from scanning simple graphics for use in document creation to text scanning with Optical Character Recognition; and from scan-to-email or fax to Document Management.
CharisCo Printer Labs recently ran a series of tests on a group of low cost AiOs, with some very interesting results.
In the group are three six-ink (photo printing) devices and one four-ink device, as detailed in the accompanying chart showing purchase price.
The target device type was high-quality photo inkjet – hence the interest in the six-ink configuration. However, Brother does not have a six-ink engine and Canon had stopped manufacturing six-ink A4 engines. Brother does have a new inkjet engine that is directly relevant to the target environment, the DCP-330C series.
At the time of testing, a four-ink Canon MP-450 was available, so we have included Cost of Printing data for that machine as part of this group for the sake of interest and to help complete the picture, even though this may not have been the most obvious choice of printer as a direct competitor.
On the face of it, the odd-man-out here is the Epson Stylus Photo RX620. However, Epson does manufacture 6-ink AiOs along with Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark, so it needed to be included even though the purchase cost is higher.
Ironically, the Lexmark appears expensive as well. This is something of an anomaly because prices of the P4350 actually vary by about 2.4x – from £49.98 right up to £120!! Thankfully, this model is now discontinued (as is the Canon MP-450) but we have no reason to believe that the replacement, the P6350, will demonstrate any different characteristics because it uses the same supplies and is to all intents and purposes identical (it is slightly faster and has a larger, swivelling LCD display) – oh, and it’s quite a lot more expensive than the price used for the P4350 here!! So we’re not being unfair to Lexmark in this assessment of cost.
Cost of Purchase
(Typical Street Price - UK)
Brother DCP330C - 4-ink Separate tanks
Canon MP-450 - 4-ink Tri-colour plus black
Epson Stylus Photo RX620 - 6-ink Separate tanks
HP PhotoSmart C4180 - 6-ink Tri-colour plus Photo or Tri-colour plus black
Lexmark P4250 - 6-ink Tri-colour plus Photo or Tri-colour plus black
All prices (hardware and supplies) used in the comparisons are ‘typical street price’, including tax, and have been sourced in the UK. Prices do vary considerably and may be found both lower and higher than those used here.
All tests were carried out using the cartridges that are shipped with the machine at the time of hardware purchase.
Testing was centred around Cost of Printing, print quality and performance. These elements were tested for office mono printing, office colour printing and photo printing.
Before we dive into detail, we should take a moment to review the major findings of the exercise.
Highlights
Cost of photo printing
- Four-ink photo printing is at least 29% less expensive than 6-ink photo printing
- Brother’s 4-ink system is 36.5% less costly per 10×15 photo than the nearest 6-ink competitor and 65% less costly than the most expensive 6-ink competitor.
- Brother’s individual ink tanks produced at least 50% more prints than the devices using tri-colour cartridge technology - meaning fewer user interventions.
- Epson’s Cyan ink tank produced nearly three times the number of prints produced by Brother’s Cyan tank but the Epson used 3.2 photo magenta tanks before the Cyan ran dry.
Cost of office printing
- Hewlett-Packard and Brother lead the field in low Cost of Printing.
- Where the majority of pages are mono, Hewlett-Packard just has the edge but if the majority of pages are colour, the advantage switches to Brother.
- Epson uses all six inks (i.e. including photo inks) for office colour printing.
Office print speed and quality
- Hewlett-Packard’s Photosmart C4180 was consistently fastest in printing but by a very short margin ahead of the Brother DCP-330C when printing the colour test document
- No device was consistently fastest at producing the first page of a print job
- Brother’s DCP-330C was the fastest device to produce its first page when printing a 10-page mixed document, with a short lead over Hewlett-Packard …
- … while Hewlett-Packard’s Photosmart C4180 proved fastest to first page with both mono and colour documents - by a small margin over Brother in colour
Office copy speed and quality
- Hewlett-Packard, with its Photosmart C4180, produces the fastest office mono copies with a good copy quality
- Brother’s DCP-330C produces the fastest office colour copies
- Brother’s DCP-330C has the fastest photo copying capability, both at 10×15 and A4
- The most accurate colour when copying photographs comes from Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark
- Epson’s photo copy image quality most closely resembles a contone image
Photo print speed and quality
- Lexmark P4345 rated best overall with a 72% score
- Strength of feeling ran very high for the Brother DCP-330C and Epson Stylus Photo RX620
- Brother DCP-330C ranked ‘most pleasing’ by 42% of respondents but ranked ‘least pleasing’ by a further 42%
- 48% of respondents ranked Brother DCP-330C as producing ‘most natural’ images
- Epson Stylus Photo RX620 ranked ‘least pleasing’ by 45% of respondents
- Lexmark not ranked ‘least pleasing’ by any participants
- Hewlett-Packard just proved fastest in printing photographs but image quality was unexciting
- Slow photo printing is more likely to result in high quality prints - Brother’s DCP-330C may have been slowest but was voted most accurate in psychometric testing
To find out more about any individual comment, see the following article and issues of TCPglobal.
While working with each of the machines was not a specific element of the testing, notes were made if errors occurred or particular features appeared to be either excellent of missing.
The list of negatives was much longer for the Lexmark P4350 than for any other machine - and the list of positives much shorter! It was irritating and slow to work with, taking a very long time to prepare itself for the next print job.
There were faults such as: two cartridges being dead on arrival and needing multiple cleaning cycles (and, in the case of one cartridge, soaking in flush fluid) to make them useable; it actually crashed the computer on one occasion and crashed its own software on two occasions; and, worst of all, its paper picking mechanism is notoriously ineffective and unreliable.
None of the other machines gave serious cause for concern, though Brother’s DCP-330C was the only machine to suffer a paper jam and Canon’s MP-450 is horribly noisy in operation.
Overall, the most enjoyable and satisfying machines to work with were the Brother DCP-330C and the Hewlett-Packard C4180. Attempting to choose between the two is a very difficult task and can only come down to personal preference.
~End~
