ARE KODAK PRINTERS REALLY THAT CHEAP TO RUN ?

[Anonymous]

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/news/254314/are-kodaks-printers-really-that-cheap-to-run.html
Are Kodak’s printers really that cheap to run?
Kodak’s
recent TV adverts have pushed how cheap its inkjet printers are to run,
so we decided to investigate if this is really the case with the
company’s ESP 7 multifunction inkjet.

While we found that the
ESP 7 can be cheap to run, the prices quoted in recent TV and web
adverts don’t tell the whole story. The printer uses a dedicated black
ink cartridge for text printing, but a combined-colour cartridge for
photo and colour document printing, which means that you’ll have to
replace the whole thing as soon as any one colour runs out. This is
unusual for a printer that costs over £150.

The ESP 7’s colour
cartridge comprises pigment-based cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink,
along with a clear overcoat for photos. Quoted print costs [are] often
[different] from what your home printer will actually cost you, since
it depends on what you print. For example, if you went on holiday to a
rain forest, your photos will probably be primarily green. With a
combined cartridge, you’ll need to replace it when the yellow and cyan
inks are used up (since these combine to form green), even if there’s
plenty of magenta and black ink left. This is clearly a waste and makes
the printer more expensive to run than printers with separate ink tanks
for each colour; here, you’d only replace the cyan and yellow
cartridges.

Kodak has calculated its figures by the book. It
hired independent testing firm Quality Logic to use the
industry-standard ISO/IEC 24711 methodology to test the printer’s page
yield and costs. This standard provides a common point of comparison
for the ink consumption of different printers. We confirmed Kodak’s
pricing when we calculated page costs using Quality Logic’s page yield
figures. Our calculations revealed a cost of 2p per black (text) page
and 2.6p per three-colour page (photo or colour document).

Adding
these together produces a remarkably low mixed-colour total of 4.6p.
Don’t forget that, as ever, these figures don’t include the cost of the
paper.

When we test printers in Shopper’s labs, we don’t use the
ISO/IEC 24711 test, as it uses specially-created documents. These tests
have 20 per cent ink coverage of a sheet of A4’s surface with an even
volume of cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks used. Our tests use real
documents and photos, which we believe are more representative of what
home users print, that don’t use ink evenly. We also test with a text
document to see how much these pages cost.

We were impressed
with the cost of text printing. Using a standard Kodak Black Ink
Cartridge (£6.99 inc VAT), we calculated print costs of 2p per page. In
our colour tests, using a Kodak Color Ink Cartridge (£9.99 inc VAT) we
managed to print 152 pages before the printer ran out of one colour and
prompted us to change the cartridge. This gave us costs of 6.6p per
page of colour and 8.6p per mixed-colour page.

Our tests
highlight how print costs can be significantly raised by combined
cartridges that force you to replace every ink at once, regardless of
the current level. While individual ink cartridges could lower print
costs, it’s interesting to note that the ESP 7 still manages to have
competitive print costs, when compared to other printers we’ve reviewed
recently, despite being potentially wasteful with ink.

Finally,
there’s no standardised test for photo printing yet but Kodak quotes a
photo yield of 173 6x4in prints per colour cartridge. This equates to
an ink cost of 5.8p that, with Kodak Ultra Premium photo paper at 24p
per sheet, gives a total photo cost of 29.8p. This is a little more
expensive than most of the photo printers in our recent photo printer
group test.

Although we prefer individual colour cartridges, the
ESP 7 is a good value printer, as Kodak has managed to keep its ink
prices at the same level as last year, while other manufacturers have
seen their ink prices increase. The ESP 7 is available now from QVC and
you’ll soon be able to read our full review in Shopper 258, on sale
Thursday June 19.

[Author]

June 12, 2009 at 11:46 AM