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In the same way that digital cameras have revolutionized how we take pictures, ink jet printers have revolutionized how we print them. Gone are the days of waiting two weeks for a reprint or an enlargement. Now you simply turn on your PC and load some glossy paper into your ink jet printer. In 5 minutes, you have an image that rivals anything produced by your neighborhood photo lab.

We looked at 16 ink jet printers from Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, and Lexmark. Of these, we classified 7 as general-purpose models, with prices ranging from $79 to $200 and features appropriate for home and small-office use. Such printers work well for printing text and graphics files, as well as the occasional photo.

The other nine printers, designed with the digital photographer in mind, are a bit pricier, ranging from $149 to $699. Most of the photo printers we tested use six or more colors of ink to provide subtler shading in continuous tones; the exceptions are Canon's I850 Photo Printer and S530D Direct Connect Photo Printer, which use the standard four inks. Some printers, such as the HP Photosmart 7550 and the Canon S530D, have slots that can accept your camera's flash-memory card, or they let you use a USB cable to bypass your computer and print shots directly from your camera. HP's Photosmart 7550 bundles a small LCD screen like the one on your digital camera that allows you to preview images and perform rudimentary adjustments before printing. Some of the models we tested, including the Canon S530D and the HP Photosmart 7550, don't come with USB cables, so check the box to determine whether the supplies you need are included.

In our image quality tests, Epson's Stylus Photo 2200 surpassed its competition to earn our Best Buy award in the photo printer category. At $699, it costs more than any other photo printer on our chart, but it produced color photographs and gray-scale images that went above and beyond those of the other printers we reviewed. The 2200 also has plenty of extra features, such as wide-format printing (up to 13 inches wide and 44 inches long) and a FireWire port, and it was the only model we reviewed that came with a USB 2.0 high-speed port. The Best Buy on the general-purpose chart, the Canon I320 Color Bubble Jet Printer, is the least-expensive model we reviewed for this article. The I320 competently prints text, photos, and graphics, and though it doesn't have exceptionally fast print speeds, its $79 price tag and inexpensive ink cartridges make it an economical choice.

Features Comparison: Top 10 Ink Jet Printers (chart)

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