Thursday, August 25, 2011

All-In-One Printer Review - Before You Buy, Ask These 3 Important Questions

If you are looking to save time, space and have one solid go-to office machine, then owning an all-in-one printer is your best option. Within one unit, you can print, copy, fax and scan. If you have seen the many advertisements online or in print for all-in-one printers then you may have noticed that there are many factors that you will have to consider when making a purchase. Some factors will be more important than any of the others. So let's take a peek at some of the most important factors to consider so it makes it easy for you to evaluate your choices.

What is the Print Resolution?

An important performance characteristic of any all-in-one printer is the print quality. This is determined by the print resolution measured by the DPI or dots per inch metric. If you plan to do printing from your home then it is important to have professional grade printing quality from your printer. An acceptable standard for quality color photo prints is a 600 x 600 DPI resolution. Some inkjet printers go as high as 9600 x 2400 DPI in resolution. The higher the DPI measurements, the better quality print you will receive. Though you will have a more expensive all-in-one printer when the all-in-one printer copier fax scan machine has a higher DPI rating. This brings me to the next tip that is about pricing.

What Type of Features And Benefits Do You Get For The Price?

Some printers are still quite expensive, even with all the nice all-in-one printer discounts and deals. Instead of saying that they are overpriced, it is more accurate to say that they are not. The reason being is that they do not have good price to value ratio. A printer that is priced lower will not be able to stand against a more costly printer. You have to decide if the additional benefits and features are worth the increased price. And value is specific to your usage needs.

In general, all-in-one printers typically offer great value. Instead of having to spend $80 - $120 buying separate copy or fax machines, you can a multi-faceted print, copy, fax and scanner machine for under $300. As noted above, the value of a machine to a user varies according to the individual needs of the user. So if you do not need a fax, you could be saving an extra $50 - $80 off the price the all-in-one unit that does no have faxing capabilities. In that case, you will be getting better price to value ratio, or to put it simply, a better buy for your needs.

What Type of Print Technology: Laser or Inkjet All-In-One Printer?

Traditionally, if you are looking for value with volume printing, a laser all-in-one printer will be a better choice than an inkjet printer. If you plan to do a heavy amount of printing, take in mind that an inkjet printer will require expensive ink cartridges. On the other hand a laser printer requires toner that will require changing periodically, however it lasts for quite awhile. Therefore it won't be as often as an ink cartridge and the value offered is better for you. The newer models of inkjet all-in-one printers currently also offer competitive cost per print values along with better color photo prints than color laser printers.

So there you have it, the top 3 questions to consider before you buy an all-in-one printer. It's a good idea to jot down and quantify the pros and cons of each factor and printer choice.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Test Bench - All-In-One Printer Reviews

If you're among the three million British citizens now working from home, you'll know the importance of keeping computer equipment as compact as possible. An all-in-one printer that also functions as a scanner and photocopier can make life much easier. Six of these printers went on the test bench for individual all-in-one printer reviews.

The Canon Pixma MP520 is an attractive all-round printer. Print and scan speeds are high, running costs are low, and photo sharpness scored well in the all-in-one printer reviews. With a compact design, two paper trays, and 2.4in colour display, it is generally priced at £95 or £80.

The Lexmark X4550, a wireless printer, operates anywhere in the house using your wi-fi network. It produces fine print quality, clear photos, and colour prints. In all-in-one printer reviews, however, it rates poorly for grainy, low resolution scanning and slow and sometimes distorted photocopying. Cost is generally £75.

The HP Photosmart C5280 scores well for its fast, high quality printing of photos and text. It also produces good high resolution scans despite a problem with straight lines. However, it is noisy and its photocopying has outline and colour problems. Generally priced at £100, it is available for £62.

The Brother MFC-465CN is a network printer whose Ethernet port allows printing from a wi-fi enabled laptop even if the main computer is not turned on. It has the added attraction of working as a fax machine. Slow speed, however, is a problem. Generally priced at £130, it is available for £112.

The Epson Stylus DX8400 has the slowest photo printing speed of those in the all-in-one printer reviews. Text printing is also slow; there are colour problems with scanning and copying, and printing costs are double those of its competitors. Generally priced at £75, it is available for £62.

The Lexmark X2550 has acceptable text and colour printing and running costs are reasonable, but operation is slow. Scans are grainy and of low resolution. Suitable for those whose printing needs are minimal and generally priced at £55, the Lexmark is available for £38.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Brother Color Laser Printer Review - Brother HL-4040CN

Overview

HL-4040CN comes with fast printing with exceptional results. It is designed to fulfill the printing needs of small businesses. The consumption of inks of this Brother HL-4040CN is very economical that is why it is very ideal for those who just start running their own business. With high-quality printing and economical ink consumption, this printer costs $400-$500.

Features and Functionality

Powerful and outstanding text and images can be reached with the print resolution of 2400 by 600 dots per inch and provided by the HL-4040CN. The capacity of paper that can be loaded on paper tray is 300 sheets. Therefore, this printer is suitable for handling big projects. The capability to accept wide range of print media like envelopes, letterhead, and custom paper sizes makes the Brother HL-4040CN dependable to do numerous printing jobs.

The Brother HL-4040CN toner cartridges come with fantastic capabilities. They are very economical and have amazing capability to print up to 5,000 pages for black and 4,000 pages for color. And again once you have used your cartridges, you do not have to do maintenance so often. You are also given a choice to prolong the life of your toner cartridges by changing to toner save mode.

To be able to print with outstanding results, this Brother HL-4040CN applies toner cartridges TN115C, TN115M, TN115Y and TN11BK. The price of these genuine toner cartridges will be more expensive when compared to the compatible brand versions. That is why if you want to save more money for toner cartridges but without having to ignore the print quality, you can choose the compatible brand versions.

Having the Brother HL-4040CN, you do not have to worry about the operating system you are using because this printer supports Linux, Windows and Mac OS. To help the fluency of your business, this printer is equipped with parallel interfaces, USB connectivity and Ethernet compatibility that lets you make workgroups.

What Make the Brother HL-4040CN is the Best Option For Small Businesses?

This Brother color laser printer has fast printing speed with sharp, crisp and detail prints either in printing color or in printing black. It is also affordable, low maintenance and flexible connectivity.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Brother HL-4050CN Color Laser Toner Printer Quick Review

Overview

The Brother HL-4050CN is a feature rich color laser printer that costs less under $400. It prints fast in color as well as black and white and has 64megs of onboard memory storage. It offers secured networking, through its integrated network card and has outstanding print quality. This is the ideal printer for any home to small office who requires the power that only a laser printer can provide.

Features and Functionality

The Brother HL-4050CN is network compatible laser printer that can print using a simple shared network connection. It allows multiple user connectivity and even secured storage. Nearly all of the printer's options can be configured and changed remotely requiring no direct computer connectivity.

The printer holds 250 sheets of letter, A4 and Legal size paper, but includes a pull down tray that is capable of storing an additional 50 sheets. No other additional storage trays can be installed, but 300 sheets capacity is plenty for any home to small office and adding additional sheets is extremely easy.

On of the most powerful features of this laser printer is the printing speed. The Brother HL-4050CN prints 21 pages per minute (PPM) in black and white and 21 PPM in color. The high speed printing makes this printer attractive to anyone in the market for a laser printer.

The printer comes with standard capacity Brother HL4050CN toner cartridges. The cartridges are the Cyan (TN110C), Magenta (TN110M), Yellow (TN110Y), Black (TN110BK). High capacity cartridges are available for use in this printer and offer over twice the toner. The high capacity toners are the TN115C, TN115M, TN115Y, and TN115BK.

Conclusion

The Brother HL-4050CN is the great laser printer with basic features that any home or small office would be seeking. Fast print speeds, great quality, and an affordable price make this printer worth considering.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Small Laser Printer: A Review of the HP P1005 LaserJet Printer

A lot of people purchase laser printers for their business and professional use, but there are some people who want a small laser printer for easier accessibility and portability. For that purpose, the HP P1005 LaserJet printer is one of the best models that you can get. This review will cover everything you need to know about this product.

Design

This is a unique laser printing device primarily because of its small size that strays from the conventional laser printer image of a big and bulky machine. However, it is a dedicated monochrome laser printer, and there's probably no all in one that can fit in the body of this device. It has the dimensions of 7.64" x 13.66" x 8.82" and a weight of 10.36 pounds. It's easy enough to place on any tabletop or shelf, and you can even travel with it easily, although its compactness was not meant for that use. It has a simple white body with a foldable paper tray both at the top and bottom.

The device has no LCD display and no connectivity options. All it has is a power button, a power inlet, and a USB port for connecting it to the computer. It also has no wired or wireless capabilities, so you can only use it on a single computer and you can't use it without accessing the computer first.

Printing and Other Functions

This small laser printer may be minute in size, but it's definitely big in functionality. It can print to a speed of up to 15 pages per minute, or 4 seconds per page on average. It can also produce printouts of 600x600 dpi resolution, clear and detailed enough for high quality and professional printing purposes.

It can print on papers as small as 3x5 inches and as big as standard legal size papers or 8.5x14 inches. Although it does not feature automatic duplex printing, it does have a manual support provided for easier accessibility so you won't have to keep on flipping pages. The maximum duty cycle of the device is 5000 pages per month, so you can print up to 161 pages a day and you'd be able to use the device perfectly fine. It also has an internal memory of 2 MB - small, but enough for you to be able to print long documents or even several short ones.

Other Features

This device makes use of hi-speed USB connection to the PC so you can operate the printer with the fastest time possible. It is also Energy Star qualified so you can save a lot of energy for your benefit, and Mother Nature is also preserved by using it in place of another device. Conclusion

If you're in search of a good but small laser printer that you can use for business and professional purposes, then the HP P1005 LaserJet Printer is the perfect model for you. Not only is it a great monochrome laser printer, it's also compact in size. And for its very affordable price, you definitely will find this model a great buy. I highly recommend this model for all those who want to have a completely functional yet affordable compact laser printer.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Printer Reviews - The Top 3 Printers For a Home Office

For business owners, there's one office equipment you will not do without, and that's a good printer. Currently there are 3 home office all-in-one printers from Canon. These are my printer reviews - the top 3 printers for a home office. Sometimes it's not easy to pick the best office printer. Do you want one to have a fax or not? Is print speed, and energy efficiency important? For me it's nice to have a fax built in with my printer. In my opinion this is what makes an office printer. The Canon PIXMA MX870, MX350, and the MX340 are all very good wireless printers. You can set them up almost anywhere so everyone has access to them. Each of these printers needs a code to access the editing and printing of PDF files.

Here is the breakdown on all 3 printers.

Canon Printer PIXMA MX870:

The resolution is brilliant at 9600 x 2400 color dpi. Great for business documents and photos. It also has an independent ink system which works with 4 dye based inks including black ink. With the independent ink system you can replace only the ink that runs out which saves money. It has an advantage of printing and copying on both sides of the paper without you turning the paper over. This definitely saves time and plenty of paper. Another cool thing is that there is a 2 way paper feeder. You can load paper on either the front or back of the printer. The printing speed I think is a little slow. It takes 30 - 40 seconds for the first page to print and 1 minute for 3.5 pages overall to print. What I didn't like was the lag time between pages.

Canon printer PIXMA MX350:

The resolution for this printer is terrific at 4800 x 12006 color dpi. Canon uses what they call a Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering. It's great for document and photo printing. It uses 2 ink cartridges. One is a black cartridge for detailed quality text. The other, a multi color cartridge. Both are very easy to replace. When you upload your pictures, the printer automatically categorizes the images into 5 styles. If any of the images were under exposed the printer has an option of automatically correcting the images. The print speed for this printer was pretty good at 5.7 pages per minute.

Canon printer PIXMA MX340:

This printer has the same terrific resolution as the MX350 at 4800 x 12006 color dpi. Which also uses the Canon Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering. At 5.8 pages per minute, this printer is the fastest. What all three have in common are these.

Built-In Wireless
Built-in Ethernet
Super G3 Fax
USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
Energy Star Qualified

These are my printer reviews-the top 3 printers for a home office. Depending on what you are looking for, a good start up office printer that I would consider would either be the MX350 or the MX340. Both of these have fast printing speeds with great resolution with about a $15 difference. The MX870 has the best resolution overall. If you are printing many multi color graphs for presentations this one may be for you. The ink will come out to be cheaper in the long run.

Canon Compact Printer - Your Killer Review!

For important meetings or projects, it is important that we provide a clear and detailed print out. The kind of printing device determines the quality of your output.

As a natural result, it is a must then that you find a good printer that can give you quality prints. The more efficient your printer is, the better the prints you could get. In this manner, you may search for the answer to the question: Should I buy Canon compact printers?

For many years now, canon had not yet stopped producing photo or documents prints with the highest color quality and details.

Consequently, there had been a lot of Canon compact printers available on the market. Hence, opting for the best model is not that easy task.

Based on my personal search, a lot of users are impressed with Canon-Selphy-CP series. Adding to this, other thousands of customers are really happy with other modes, e.g. Canon-Pixma printers.

Which models should one consider?

You may want to own one of the following outstanding models, e.g. Pixma MX7600, Pixma MX860, and Pixma MX320. Other examples of compact photo printers are Pixma MX 870, Pixma MX 340, and Pixma 350.

Which model I personally prefer?

Based on numerous printers review sites and forums, Pixma mini320 -that replaced the Pixma mini260- has received positive reviews from many users.

And, that is why I decided to opt for this model and it was a good decision. Indeed, it is very portable and is able to produce prints with high color definition.

It has a horizontal position when it is operating and a vertical position when it should be carried. Aside from its portability, it also has a scroll wheel and an LCD screen tilted. What makes it a better choice is that it can do prints from computers, memory cards, and Bluetooth adapter.

What should do you opt for when you target high speed and flexible printers?

For the highest speed and flexibility, the Canon Pixma iP4000 printer could make a good candidate. Its five-color system makes photo prints possess an almost real-life effect with its high laser quality and perfect contrast. This reason alone makes this printer one of the most preferred models.

What are the other advantages of this model?

The 1856 high performing nozzle print head makes printing very vivid. With a high resolution of 4800 x 1200 dpi, you would enjoy a photo print so much similar to the ones traditionally printed.

Furthermore, this model produces photos with perfect contrast in a borderless print in 8.5 x 11 inches.

How fast does Pixma iP4000 print?

In a matter of thirty-six seconds, this printer can produce a borderless output of 4"x6" with up to 25 ppm in black and 17 ppm in color. Its direct photo printing capability allows you to print even with the absence of a computer. You simply have to connect a PictBridge compatible digicam or DVD camcorder and you can do the printing.

What do people love the best about Canon compact printers?

Based on my personal experiences with many computer accessories companies, I cannot stress enough how much important it is to have a good customer support.

And, in this manner, I would confirm that Canon printer support representatives do a unique job. In other words, you should make sure that they will stay behind you in case you faced any issues.

HP Photosmart Premium E-All-In-One C310 Review

I lately got an offer to perform a hands-on evaluation of an ePrint-enabled printer; the HP PhotoSmart Premium e-All-in-One C310 printer. Exactly what I discovered is this: HP's ePrint technology and iOS products are made for each other; the printing ability with iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads is actually smooth and quick.

Setup of this particular unit is amazingly easy. Without the need of studying the instructions or even quick-start document, I unwrapped the box, took out the unit, detached all the tape and plastic that safeguards the printer during delivery, put in the print cartridges, popped paper in to the main paper tray and also photo paper in to the photo tray, and switched on the unit. There's a simple first-time setup which the unit runs automatically that takes around six minutes to complete. When you finish following simple prompts on the vibrant, built-in touchscreen display, I finally arrived at the point where I needed to key in my network passphrase. The printer registered with the network and I was prepared to rock and roll.

There are numerous of Print Applications that may be downloaded and placed directly on the printer. Using the Print Applications, it's not necessary to even start up ones personal computer or iOS gadget - finding a map, recipe, news, or perhaps weather report is in fact as simple as dialling up the Print App with the touchscreen, and after that tapping a print button if you want a hard copy.

The next great element is known as a zero-configuration printing ability. Using a Mac, you will still require to add the printer using the Print & Fax System Preference, there is however no reason to add drivers or software unless you want extra functions such as scanning, copying, and so on. I'd wish to see Apple add in the ability for these models to be automatically put into the collection of accessible equipment on the Mac. On iOS products, the machine just shows up within the collection of accessible models. The new PhotoSmart machine just showed up on the collection of models on the network accessible to my iPad as well as iPhone, without any configuration called for.

One more major function is the capability to print from virtually anyplace. Each ePrint-enabled HP printer features its own email address. When you register the unit on the internet, every Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, PDF as well as image (JPG, PNG along with other formats) file may be sent to the specific email address and inside a short timeframe, it can print on your printer. I could understand exactly where this could be ideal for someone like my mum, who will not work with a computer of any kind. I could send emails to her with pictures, recipes, or even just a sweet thought, and they would show on her printer in order for her to get and read through.

Just about the only thing you can't presently print from email are webpages, yet HP claims they are implementing dedicated solutions to help support printing webpages from mobile devices. There's a max attachment size for the print from email feature - at present this is 5 MB per email.

I was impressed with how the iPhone as well as iPad performed with this particular model. Any time I printed from Pages, for example, the unit "knew" that I wished to print it out with standard 8-1/2 x 11-inch paper. Printing a photograph from the Photo Library, using the HP PhotoSmart Premium eC310 ink cartridges from, the unit chose photo paper right from the photo tray. Very neat.

HP Photosmart Wireless E-All-In-One Printer B110 Review

After putting in a bit of time utilizing the HP Photosmart Wireless e-All-in-One printer B110 we are currently hopeful for the long term future of cloud-based printing, however it would seem there are currently some kinks which require to be ironed out.

After unboxing the B110 appears to be your regular All-in-One (AIO) printer having a pleasant piano black finish. Certainly no complaints there, but nothing to write home about either.

Given that HP is pressing the wireless features of its new models we decided we would attempt setting up the B110 without hooking up by means of USB and find out exactly how things went. This meant relying on the B110's 2.36-inch (5.9cm) LCD display, which regrettably isn't really as instinctive as a complete touchscreen display. HP calls it a "Touchsmart frame" which means just the predefined buttons round the exterior of the frame are touch sensitive - these will furthermore just be illuminated when they are selectable for the presently exhibited menu. Still, the menu was basically fairly uncomplicated and guides users through the actual setup operation fairly well.

The unit detected my home network (the B110 boasts 802.11b/g/n) without any problems and having the printer's email address now at hand I was in a position to log on to the ePrint Centre and set up the unit to be able to obtain ePrint work.

To experiment with the email printing we sent a handful of types of attachments in order to find out exactly how it fared. PDF, Word documents, GIFs as well as many JPEGs printed alright.

Nevertheless, if you need admittance to the printer's full capability you are going to need to install the drivers, if not the computer software, which comes included on a CD-ROM simply because printing by means of email does not permit management of options including print quality. This may also be carried out wirelessly over the home network without fuss.

The printer applications, which may be obtained either on the printer or chosen via the ePrint Centre making use of a web browser, all functioned with no hassle. Many of these are actually directed at youngsters - colouring pages and puzzles - so did not really hold a lot of appeal.

Being situated within the cheaper part of HP's internet capable units; the print quality of the B110 wasn't extremely remarkable. Small fonts are inclined to bleed a little plus blacks in photographs may well contain a slightly green touch, but it is pretty much what you'd be expecting with respect to a model at this particular price point. The technical specs show the unit as printing as much as 32 ppm when it comes to draft quality in black as well as up to 30 ppm with regard to colour nevertheless things obviously reduce speed substantially when you are mailing a big picture using ePrint - a 6 x 4-inch 2.8MB picture took over a minute to be able to print, while the very same picture crunched way down to 512kb took about 30 seconds, however the reduction of quality was in fact evident.

The HP Photosmart e B110 ink cartridges are cyan, magenta, yellow and black - and may also use XL cartridges, that will cost more but they are considerably more economical.

If you want an every day printer designed for non-critical documents and also photographs then the B110 is actually comparable to likewise costed products from various other makers print quality-wise, thus this would not end up being a determining consideration. Assuming, however, you'll probably use the ePrint functionality then this ought to tip the scales in HP's favour due to the fact not one other manufacturer provides this capability. The ease of use of the ePrint system - when it functions - helps it to be a hassle-free means by which to print (an undoubtedly still rather restricted assortment of documents but the main ones are taken care of) without needing to be tied geographically to the machine.