Full-Size Photo Printers
Of the seven photo printers we tested, all except the Lexmark P915 earned our top score for their prints on letter-size glossy paper. However, both the HP Photosmart 8150 and the Canon Pixma IP4000R had difficulty feeding 4-by-6-inch paper smoothly, a glitch that resulted in noticeable banding near the trailing edge of otherwise good-looking snapshots.
The HP Photosmart 8450 rated best overall because, in addition to printing near-perfect photos, it's loaded with features. It comes with an ethernet port and many other amenities, such as media card slots, a color LCD, and the capability to make banner-size prints. It also comes with HP Image Zone, the most comprehensive software package included with the printers here. Though it uses up 600MB of hard-drive space, the software offers many good tools for editing and sharing photos. But high ink and paper costs kept the Photosmart 8450 from earning our Best Buy honor.
Despite its problems with 4-by-6 paper, we awarded the Canon IP4000R our Best Buy. The IP4000R is inexpensive, its cost per page of 46 cents is the lowest of the full-size printers we tested, and you can achieve stellar results printing 4-by-6 photos on letter-size paper.
HP Photosmart 8450
The $250 Photosmart 8450 has room for three ink cartridges, using up to eight inks at once to great effect; both its snapshots and photos printed on letter-size glossy paper showed sharp details and natural colors.
For the price, the Photosmart 8450 offers many features for operation both with and without a PC. You can preview your pictures on the 2.5-inch color LCD and make basic edits using the buttons on the control panel. The media card slots read all the common flash memory formats, and you can print directly from a compatible digital camera via the direct-print port. Also, like four other printers we tested, the Photosmart 8450's direct-print port reads USB flash drives, so you can print photos stored on these small, handy devices. The Photosmart 8450 is the only printer we tested that has an ethernet port so that the printer is easy to put on a network, making it accessible to multiple shutterbugs. Alternatively, you can connect the Photosmart 8450 to a single PC using its USB 2.0 port, or add a Bluetooth adapter ($50) to send photos from compatible camera phones and PDAs.
Ongoing costs for the Photosmart 8450 could be steep, however. According to IPL's tests, photo paper and ink cost an average of 83 cents per snapshot--21 cents more than the average for the seven photo printers and four snapshot printers we tested.
Though it takes time to install HPa??s large software suite, the wait is worth it. The suite offers a wide range of features for editing and organizing photos, and has a slideshow creation tool.
The Photosmart 8450 is on the bulky side, but stashes dual paper trays neatly into its base. The main drawer holds 100 sheets up to legal size. Up to 20 sheets of 4-by-6-inch photo paper fit in the second tray. You can add an optional 250-sheet drawer; if you want to cut your paper consumption, there's an optional duplexer; each costs $80.
As we typically see from inkjets, prints on plain paper were less impressive than on glossy paper. The Photosmart 8450's color graphics looked a bit faded and showed some banding. Text printed in a strong black, but fine characters such as italics failed to form completely.
The Photosmart 8450 printed text at 5.6 pages per minute, compared to the test set average of 4.6 ppm. You will have to be patient for its photos, however. The Photosmart 8450 took over 2 minutes to print a 4-by-6-inch photo at best quality settings; only the Lexmark P915 and the Epson PictureMate took longer.
Upshot: The Photosmart 8450's long list of features--including an ethernet port--make it a good choice for small offices or networked homes, though ink and paper costs are high.
Paul Jasper
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