Here is a helpful article from your friends at the Lehigh Valley Morning Call. It’s an introductory article, but helpful nonetheless. They recommend the HP Photosmart 8250 as the best value among standard inkjet printers, the HP Photosmart D7360 as a photo printer and the Canon PIXMA iP6700D if you want a fast photo printer. For all-in-one printers, they recommend the PIXMA MP830 and MP800 along with the PIXMA MP160 for value.

The article talks about individual ink cartridges and how they are “becoming more common.” This is a little bit inaccurate, since really the only thing that has changed lately is that HP has added individual cartridges to a couple of printers. Other than that, Epson, Canon and Brother continue to almost exclusively sell printers with individual color cartridges (Canon offers a small amount of printers with only two cartridges, such as the PIXMA MP160, while Epson and Brother offer none). Also, the article mentions how in their experience, individual cartridges did not save them money. This is likely the exception rather than the rule. It can be very costly to throw out ink cartridges when only one color runs out, and if you aren’t interested in refilling your cartridges, then that’s what you have to do. For those that print in color, and especially those that print photos, having individual cartridges will definitely save you money in the long run.

Buy the best printer for your needs [Mcall.com]

Ah, the eternal question. Well, we might have an answer for you. We just updated our printer guide explaining which manufacturer is best for you. It breaks down the major manufacturers (HP, Epson and Canon) and gives pros and cons for each one, along with information on other brands like Lexmark and Dell.

Here’s a sneak peek:

HP
Pros - availability, dependability, name recognition
Cons - no individual ink cartridges on almost all models, long term costs

Epson
Pros - good photo printing, individual ink cartridges
Cons - some maintenance issues, can’t refill cartridges, machine may not last forever

Canon
Pros - excellent photo printing, reliability
Cons - some lack of selection/availability of machines

Now, go….read.

Recently we posted a review of the relatively new PIXMA mini260 photo printer. Now we have a deal for it. Amazon has the PIXMA mini260 on sale for $115. This is a regular sale, so there are no mail-in rebates and there shouldn’t be any tax or shipping.

This printer has been well-received so far, so the low price makes it a good deal. It has a 9600 x 2400 resolution and 1,536 precision nozzles to produce one picoliter sized ink droplets. It has a 2.5″ high definition TFT display for previews of your pictures. It’s got a bunch of connectivity options and you can also add Bluetooth connectivity to it.

A couple people have reviewed it on Amazon in the past few days and pretty much all of them liked it. Most reviewers have noted how good the quality of the prints is.

As usual, since this is Amazon we don’t know when the deal is going to end.

First off, I don’t know why Canon does all this weird stuff with capitalizations. They have the PIXMA and the imageRUNNER. Why does RUNNER need to be capitalized? Why isn’t the ‘i’ in image capitalized? Is PIXMA an acronym for something? We may never know.

Anyways, Canon is releasing four new imageRUNNER printers, the 3045/3035/3030/3025. These models are all monochrome laser printers that are more geared towards small to mid-sized business; in other words, they are not meant for home users. Canon rates the imageRUNNER 3045 at 45 pages per minute, which is pretty dang fast. Of course, it won’t actually print 45 pages in a minute, but just for it to be rated that high means something. The other three models are rated at 35 ppm, 30 ppm and 25 ppm, respectively. They all come with 512 megs of memory and a 20GB hard drive to store endless TPS Reports. All of these models come with dual 550-sheet paper trays and with expansions, you can store up to 4,950 pages. Awesome.

All these printers are designed to be shared by a bunch of people, so they have a bunch of technology that helps them do that. None of that technology means anything to most people though. If I told you that these models have Canon’s imageCHIP (Concurrent Hyper Intelligent Platform) technology, would you know whether I was making that up or not?

Now the fun part: the prices. The 3045/3035/3030/3025 will cost $11,600, $9,200, $6,600 and $5,200, respectively. Start saving those pennies now.

Canon U.S.A. ‘’Personalizes'’ Office Technology with the Introduction of the imageRUNNER 3045/3035/3030/3025 [Press Release]

Amazon has the Canon PIXMA MP600 All-in-One Photo Printer on sale for $155. This is a regular sale so there is no mail-in rebate. The list price is $200 and the lowest the price usually gets is around $170, so this seems like a pretty good deal. Since it’s Amazon, though, the price could go back up at any moment.

The PIXMA MP600 came out about six months and it has been pretty popular since then. Right now at Amazon, it is sporting a perfect feedback rating from 37 customers. Canon rates it at up to 30 ppm for black and 24 ppm for color. It has a resolution of 9600 x 4800, which is basically as high as standard inkjets go these days. It has dual paper trays for double sided printing, the ability to print wirelessly from an infrared camera and it can print a 4 x 6 picture in less than 30 seconds. The thing that Canon touts most on this print is the Easy Scroll Wheel which you use with the 2.5″ LCD. Supposedly it’s an improvement over other displays, but that remains to be seen.

Buy this printer Buy Canon PIXMA MP600 cartridges

Since compact/portable/snapshot photo printers seem to be growing in popularity, people are probably beginning to wonder what the best model is. Up until recently, there wasn’t a huge selection of models and out of those, there really wasn’t any model that was declared the best by the public. The reviews and reactions to the models out there mostly fell in line with what you’d expect based on the manufacturer: Epson made good stuff, HP made pretty good stuff, Canon made good stuff in limited quantities and Lexmark basically made junk.

We haven’t really received a lot of feedback from our customers/readers as to what they think about certain compact photo printers, so I’ll just take a look at what’s availble out the Net.

- the top three compact photo printers according to CNET are the HP Photosmart 475, the Epson PictureMate Flash 280 and the Epson PictureMate Snap

- the top three selling compact photo printers on Amazon are the Canon iP90, the Canon SELPHY DS810 Photo Printer and the Epson PictureMate Deluxe

- this thing on about.com says that the top three are Canon i70/i80/i90, the HP Photosmart 375 and the Epson PictureMate Personal

Overall, it seems like the Epson PictureMate series has been rated pretty well by both professional reviewers and customers (all but the PictureMate Pal, which is an entry-level model that isn’t worth the small savings). Like most of their inkjet printers, HP compact photo printers perform pretty well but are never the best available. It seems like it’s a good idea to stay away from Kodak printers, just because I’ve only seen one get a good review and then most others get only decent reviews. It’s really not worth it to get a Kodak because you have so many other reliable options like Canon and Epson available. Plus, since some of these printers use their own ink/paper and not standard ink cartridges, you don’t want to be hunting around for some weird Kodak products that aren’t sold anywhere.

Macworld has a review up of one of Canon’s newer compact photo printers, the mini260. It’s a standalone photo printer that was released last summer and that retails for $200 (although you can get it on Amazon for $130 right now).

Some basic stats on it:

• It has a 9600 x 2400 resolution and 1,536 precision nozzles
• It produces one picoliter sized ink droplets in order to better produce detailed photos
• It has a 2.5″ high definition TFT display for previews of your pictures
• It’s got a bunch of connectivity options, which is a must since it’s a standalone printer
• It can print wirelessly from an infrared camera phone or with an optional Bluetooth device
• Each print costs about 28 cents

In their review, Macworld mentioned how they liked the print quality and the ability to customize your prints. They didn’t like that the mini260 didn’t support xD cards (not a big deal in our opinion) and that it didn’t have red eye removal, which is maybe a big deal if you aren’t using a computer. So far only one person has review it on Amazon, but they did give it five stars. One downside for us is that this is one of those compact printers where Canon makes you buy a package that includes paper and a cartridge. This is bad for two reasons. One, it means that you have to always buy their packs and you can just buy whatever replacement ink cartridges you want. Two, since it’s just one cartridge it means that it will probably run out quickly if you are printing pictures with a lot of black in them since the mini260 has to produce black by combining a bunch of colors.

Buy this printer

The PIXMA MP960 is one of Canon’s more recent PIXMA updates and also one of their more expensive ones. It was released back in September as a replacement for the PIXMA MP950, which means that it has mostly all the same features. But with a starting retail price of $400, it is a couple hundred dollars more than the average PIXMA.

Canon rates the all-in-one MP960 at 30 ppm in black and 22 ppm in color. It has seven individual ink tanks and a resolution up to 9600 x 2400, which is basically as high as standard inkjets get these days. Canon says that you can print borderless 4 x 6″ photo lab quality” prints in about 35 seconds, which is about twice as fast as its predecessor (although the text speed is roughly the same). The scanning speed of the MP960 is also roughly the same as the MP950. One of the big features of the this printer is the fact that it has two paper trays and built-in duplexing, otherwise known as two-sided printing. This is an important feature if you plan on using your all-in-one for business purposes and it seems like more and more printers these days include this feature. In addition to that, the MP960 has all the usual connectivity options, including PictBridge. Canon touts their Easy-Scroll Wheel, which you use to scroll through the menu on the 3.5″ LCD.

CNET recently review the MP960 and they gave it a 7.7, which translates to “very good” for them. They liked the speed and quality of the MP960’s prints , the image editing options and the two-sided printing. They didn’t like the scan quality (seems like they are always unhappy with that) and the high price of the printer. They may have a point on the high price, since this model is so much higher than other PIXMAs yet it doesn’t do a whole lot more. So far it doesn’t appear as though a lot of people have purchased this model, probably due to the price, so customer feedback on it is limited.

If you own this printer, please leave some feedback and let others know what you think. If you already own it and need Canon PIXMA MP960 ink cartridges, then you know where to go.

Buy this printer Buy Canon PIXMA MP960 cartridges

Circuit City has the PIXMA iP4200 on sale for $60, which is the lowest price we’ve seen for it. The list price on this printer is $130 and the previous low was a brief sale on Amazon where it went for $70. This deal through Circuit City is web-only, but there are no rebates involved so it’s all good. We’ve mentioned the PIXMA iP4200 a lot before, mostly because it is a very popular printer which we recommend. You can read more about it in our Holiday Printer Buying Guide.

The PIXMA iP4200 features two-sided printing and a resolution up to 9600 x 2400, which is higher than almost every other printer in this price range. It can print a 4 x 6 picture in under a minute and it features automatic two-sided printing, something you will not find in any other model in this price range. You can check out the large number of user reviews on Amazon if you don’t want to take our word for it that this is a very good printer.

If you already own this printer, you can head over to our site for Canon iP4200 cartridges.

Canon released the PIXMA MP600 over the summer as a lower-priced alternative to the rest of their PIXMA all-in-one series. Most of these PIXMA models that have been released so far have been popular and highly rated. CNET has reviewed the PIXMA MP600 and based on their review, it seems destined to be another success for Canon.

The PIXMA MP600 is rated by Canon at 30 ppm for black prints and 24 for color. According to CNET, the real-world printing speed is around 8 ppm for text (which is good) and 2.3 ppm for 4 x 6 prints, which makes the MP600 one of the fastest photo printers they’ve ever tested. Canon officially claims it can print a 4 x 6 in 28 seconds, which is basically the speed that CNET reported, so kudos to Canon for accurately advertising that speed. Surprisingly, Canon does not make a huge deal about the speed of the MP600 in their promotional material, instead deciding to focus on overall ease of use. Also, based on the reviews and user feedback on CNET and Amazon, the print quality (a 9600 x 2400 resolution) is also very good for the MP600, so you don’t have to sacrifice anything to get a fast machine.

The MP600 has the usual features of an all-in-one, except that it is missing a fax. A lot of mid-level all-in-ones do not contain faxes these days, because these printers are geared towards home users that don’t do any faxing. With a model like the MP600, Canon decided to focus on the photo capabilities, something a business user might not be real concerned about. Conversely, all-in-ones that do feature fax machines generally are not marketed based on their photo printing. But, it still has a good flatbed scanner so it’s not just a glorified photo printer.

All the user reviews so far are positive and CNET gave the MP600 a rating of 7.9, which is very good and is also one of the highest ratings I can remember seeing on their in a long time. The MP600 prints fast, high quality prints at a moderate price, and you get the quality of buying a Canon. Sounds good to me.

If you own this printer, leave us some feedback and let us know what you think of it.

Buy this printer Buy Canon PIXMA MP600 cartridges