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Best Photo Printer Sub 250

U

UltimaParadox

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Mar 8, 2003
Messages
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I am not exactly sure where to put this so I figured I would put here and if it needs to be directed it will.

I am in the need to buy a photo printer, one pretty much specfically for the job of printing pictures, and rarely any text documents.

The only two that seem to stand out are the Canon i960 and the HP7960.

I was wondering if anyone had an experience with these, and all suggestions are greatly appreciated. :)
 
I was going to buy the Canon i960 myself but opted to go for the i860 instead because I need that separate black ink tank for text documents. Since you don't need that, I think the i960 would suit you well. Photos from my i860 look damned good... I think you'll like the i960. But, I've heard people say you need Canon paper for best results but I guess you can experiment.
 
I've had personal experience with the i960, and like it quite a bit. One of the nice things about the printer is that it has 6 different color catridges. This is nice so that if one color runs out, you don't have to replace the whole color catridge.

I don't know too much about the HP to say much about it.
 
I have an HP 7550. It's great; I love it.

The Fry's in Renton, Washington, had a pile of refubished 7660s for $70, each. That's quite a deal, if you ask me.

.B ekim
 
I recommend the new Epson printers. They use 6 cartriges (including black), and what's the BEST about them, is that the ink does not smudge.

Ive tried and used HP, cannon, and xerox, and after the picture dries... the ink will smudge when wet. ~_~, not good for photo pictures that you want to keep.

But the Epson ink is basically water resistent. You can print out a pic on photo paper, and bring it right under the faucet... and nothing will happen.

I nice little Epson R300 for around 170$US is a pretty good deal for a photo printer.

Also, another thing that i have never tried, but heard good things about, is the Olympus P-400 photo printer, which uses dye sublimation. If you do a little searching, you can find one for about 250$US.

~Hope this helps
 
The Canon and Epson printers are my preference. Epson has pigment inks which are more durable and will last longer. However they cannot match the gamut of dyes (although they're much closer). Epson printers tend to clog the nozzles a lot more than Canon's, and they print a lot slower. The Canon prints however shouldn't last as long.

I've got prints off various Canon and Epson printers behind glass and after over 2 years they've hardly faded at all. If you can protect it from UV and Ozone it's going to last pretty well. A lot of the research done on ink longevity is questionable at best, and testing methods are rarely comparable.
 
UltimaParadox said:
Thanks for the reply, anyone any experience with the HP...


TTT
Click to expand...

I'm sure people will scream bias here, but we have a few of them in one of my offices. The output is something to behold. Contrary to what a lot of people think as well, most of our ink cartidges last a long long time. The ones in that printer handle quite a bit of work between changings.
 
i second the espson's. the r300, i believe it is, has beautiful quality for the price. bonus is, it can print onto cd's. ;)
 
Yea, ive had a HP photosmart 1215 printer for about 2-3 years now, and it works for me... although i don't use this one for printing pictures.

Im not that crazy with the software that came with this printer, because it edges on the "safe side". For me, it will give me a low ink warning way before its empty. This might be fine for people that do massive amounts of printings at one time..... but when your only doing a 1-2 page Physics lab..... its missleading.

Im also not crazy about 1 ink cartrage for 3 colors (RGB). It works, but i don't like all 3 in one cartrage. Ide rather have diffrent cartrages for each color.

Other then that though, its held up very good. Its had a few glitches that ive had to disconnect the power to fix.... but other then that ^_^.

Its put together very sturdy, i love it. But the new "cheap" HP printers..... seem very cheaply made to me. Cheap plastic that is flimsy and not sturdy. I hav'nt had a chance to work with their new HP photosmart printers for ~400$US.

~Just my personal experience, hope this helps
 
I've personally used the i860 so I feel the i960 is the way to go. The Epson...I can't remember the name of it right now...6 ink cartridges and so on...is used by a friend of mine and the quality is also quite nice. I'd recommend either.
 
I was looking at the r300 and it looks promising....

A few more questions...

Whats the difference between the r300 and the r300m?

I noticed that the Epson ink cartridges are about 3 or 4 dollars higher than the canon's. Is the better picture quality of the epson justify the extra price when I have to change ink?

Thanks for the help :)
 
Perhaps its just that there's more ink life in the epson ^_^, or perhaps they just want to charge more money.... i don't know.

The diffrence between the R300 and R300m, is that the R300m can make photo CD's and it has a 2.5" color LCD, as opposed to the grey text based LCD... but that really only applies when using the printer's built in media card slots. If your printing from a computer, you obviously know what your printing ^_^.

As of today, Newegg has the R300 for 171$ - 50$ Mail-In Rebate (MIR) = 121$US !!!, that's a darn good price.
The R300m is 221$US at newegg.

Is the CD and color preview LCD worth 100$???? that's up to you, to me its not worth it, because i would not use these features.

~Hope this helps
 
towert7 said:
As of today, Newegg has the R300 for 171$ - 50$ Mail-In Rebate (MIR) = 121$US !!!, that's a darn good price.
The R300m is 221$US at newegg.

Is the CD and color preview LCD worth 100$???? that's up to you, to me its not worth it, because i would not use these features.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help...

But I did notice to recieve the 50 MIR you have to buy a digital camera with the r300.

As for photo CDs, is only the R300M capable of printing onto CDs?
 
It can burn CD's, yes... and DVD, if that's your question. I guess they have to be "special" ones. Also, the RX800 can do the same thing, although its quite a bit more money.

It can also transfer photos over to any USB device you connect to it, such as a zip drive.
Just read the specifics of the 50$ MIR, "whoops" :p My mistake.

Still though, 171$ is'nt that bad.
 
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