INK WARS : KODAK Vs HP !

[Anonymous]

Ink wars: Kodak vs. HP in the ink-jet consumables battle

 

July , 2007 Kodak may still be a world leader in film processing,
but it’s the new kid on the block in the area of general-purpose
ink-jet printers. Its new EasyShare All-in-One 5000 series printers,
out just a few months, face stiff competition from entrenched
competitors such as Hewlett-Packard, Epson and Canon.

In a gambit
to differentiate itself and gain mind share, Kodak is trying to tap
into alleged consumer dissatisfaction with high ink prices by selling
its printers for a bit more than the competition but its cartridges for
less than half the price. The company claims that its EasyShare
printers have a lower total cost of ownership than competitors’ models
and that users will save substantially on consumables over the life of
the printer. HP begs to differ, of course: “At essentially the same
prices as Kodak, HP offers six-color printing for outstanding photo
quality,” an HP spokesman said.

Kodak’s brash strategy flies in the face of the conventional wisdom in this market, which follows the classic Gillette
model: “Give away” the printer at a very low margin, but rake in hefty
profits on consumables. That approach has paid off handsomely for HP.
The 16.3% margin earned this year by its $1.2 billion imaging and
printing business, announced by Chairman and CEO Mark Hurd during the
company’s May 16th earnings call, makes that unit HP’s most profitable
by far, with three times the margin of its personal systems business.
Epson, Lexmark and other brands follow this same model.

But Kodak argues that it’s not fair to customers. “Consumers have
been ripped off by other printer manufacturers on the cost of ink, and
they’re very frustrated with that,” says Magnus Felke, director of
product marketing in Kodak’s ink-jet systems group. That frustration
may lead them to seek alternatives.

Investors are also wary of that possibility. In its latest appraisal
of HP, bond rating firm Fitch Ratings added a caveat to the stellar A+
it gave the company, alerting investors to “the potential long-term
threat to HP’s highly profitable printer supplies business from
providers of remanufactured cartridges and/or new printer business
models from competitors that offer discounted ink cartridges.”

HP has taken some defensive measures against the threat, most
notably striking a bargain with retailer Staples earlier this year to drive out inexpensive generic versions of HP ink and toner cartridges. Just as HP was closing that leak in the profits dam, however, Kodak made its announcement.

Kodak’s talking tough, but can it really overturn the ink cart? To
find out whether the company’s claims about ink costs are valid, I
compared Kodak’s midrange EasyShare 5300 All-In-One with HP’s Photosmart C5180 All-in-One, a popular printer whose price and features match up well with the EasyShare.

Specs and Stats
Kodak offers three models in the 5000 line, all of which use the same
basic print engine. The basic model 5100 sells for $149. The model I
tested adds a 3-in. color LCD and the ability to review and print
pictures directly from a memory card; it costs $199.99. The $299.99
model 5500 adds a fax function, an automated document feeder and a
duplexer for two-sided printing. (The duplexer is also available as a
$79.99 option for the other two models, and all three can use a $49.99
Bluetooth adapter for wireless printing.)

The Photosmart C5180, one of the most popular of the six entries in
HP’s Photosmart series printer line, is functionally similar to the
5300, though it does include built-in network support and a few extra
buttons on the front. While the Kodak 5300 has a single Copy button,
for example, the C5180 offers separate buttons for black-and-white or
color copies.

		Pigment vs. Dye-Based Inks A key differentiator between the HP and Kodak models lies in the ink technology each offers. Kodak’s printers use pigment-based inks, while the HP model I tested uses dye-based ink. Pigment-based inks suspend colorant particles in the ink, while with dye-based inks, the colorant is dissolved in the liquid. Dye-based inks have traditionally offered brighter colors, but prints have faded faster. Pigment-based inks have generally produced less vibrant colors, but they’ve offered greater longevity. Now both vendors claim to have solved those problems: HP says its dye-based prints will last for decades, and Kodak claims that its 5300 series inks offer color quality comparable to dye-based processes. “When you grind pigment ink into very small nanoparticles and make them homogenous, you can create colors that are just as vibrant,” says Kodak’s Felke. HP claims that photos that are printed on its Advanced paper, protected by glass or a protective sheet in an album, and properly stored will last 40 years, and those printed on its Premium paper will last 80 years — although all photos gradually break down as they’re exposed to light, humidity, ozone and other pollutants. Kodak says its prints have been optimized to last a lifetime even when using less expensive “porous” photo papers. For more on the difference between papers, see “The Paper Choice.”

Both units include print, scan and copy functions. Each has a
letter-size paper tray that can hold up to 100 sheets and a 4-by-6-in.
tray for photo paper that can hold up to 20 sheets. Both have an LCD
screen and memory-card sockets that allow you to print digital photos
without going through your computer. (The Kodak unit also supports
printing directly from a PictBridge-capable camera; the HP one does
not.)

Both printers also bundle various add-on software programs with the
printer driver software, including basic photo organizing and editing
tools. While I did not test that software for this story, I did attempt
to install it, much to my chagrin: You can read about the problems I
encountered with the Kodak software and the HP software in my blog.

Officially, the C5180 sells for the same price as the 5300 —
$199.99. However, the HP model is often on sale or available with a $20
rebate that brings the street price down to $179.99.

The C5180 is also easier to find: Kodak’s printers and ink
cartridges are currently available only at Best Buy stores or direct
from Kodak online. In my case, the nearest Best Buy store is about 50
miles away — a long way to go for refills if I run out of ink in the
middle of a job.

Kodak’s black cartridge sells for $9.99. (The company claims that
works out to an average ink cost per page of 2.3 cents, or about 434
pages per cartridge — more pages than I was able to get on my tests,
as you’ll see.) Its five-color cartridge sells for $14.99, or 10 cents
per page for 4-by-6-in. color prints. (In this case, my results were
even better than the company’s claims.)

Total cost of ink: $24.98, though you can get a combo pack that includes both color and black cartridges for $21.99.

Rather than using one black and one multicolor cartridge as the 5300
does, the HP printer is equipped with six separate cartridges — one
for black and one for each of the five colors it uses. The company
claims that this saves the consumer money since you don’t have to buy a
whole new multicolor cartridge if only one color runs out. Each HP
color cartridge sells for $9.99 each, and a black cartridge costs
$17.99 at Staples.

Total cost of ink: $67.94, nearly three times as much as a set of
Kodak cartridges. (HP also offers a combo pack of the five-color
cartridges for $44.99.) Of course, it’s the cost per page we’re
concerned with, and you’ll see how that compares later.

Testing Methodology
Both Kodak and HP claim to have conducted independent page-yield
testing for its printers based on the International Organization for
Standardization’s ISO 24711
page-yield protocol. However, while the protocol includes standard test
pages for black-and-white documents and documents with mixed text and
graphics, there are as yet no standard test pages for color
photographs, so each vendor uses its own approach.

To boil down the sometimes confusing test results, the Kodak EasyShare 5300 results
report a yield of 342 pages for the black cartridge when printing
black-and-white documents, and up to 167 pages for the color cartridge
when printing 4-by-6-in. photos. The HP Photosmart C5100 results
report a yield of 660 pages for black, but the results for 4-by-6-in.
color prints are broken out by cartridge. Claimed page yields range
from 160 pages for the yellow cartridge to 330 for cyan.

		The Paper Choice While practically any paper will do for black-and-white printing, the choice of photo paper grade — and brand — can make a big difference in print quality. HP offers four grades of paper, ranging from its Everyday Photo paper to its Premium Plus line. Kodak offers three grades of paper for photo printing, from plain old Photo paper to its Ultra Premium line. For my tests, which focused on ink costs per print, I chose to use a lower-grade paper, since higher-grade photo papers tend to use more ink. On the Photosmart C5180, that meant that I used HP’s Everyday paper. The paper HP recommends for the C5180 is its Advanced paper, which eliminated most of the paper rippling problem I describe in the main story. However, it’s also much more expensive than the Everyday paper I used for my tests: It sells for $19.99 for 50 sheets (about 40 cents per sheet) vs. $14.99 for 100 sheets of the Everyday (15 cents per sheet) — and gave me about 10% fewer prints per cartridge. The higher end of HP’s line, such as its Premium and Premium Plus papers, are “swellable” papers: They’re thicker and have special coatings that swell to absorb the ink, which produces a marginally better image at the cost of using more ink. The coatings also help with image longevity. HP’s Advanced and Everyday papers are “porous” papers and don’t have such coating. In contrast, I bought Kodak Photo Paper for $11.99 per 100-sheet package — just 12 cents per sheet. The Kodak paper that compares to HP’s Advanced paper (according to HP) is the Premium Photo Paper, which sells for $20.99 per 50 sheets at Staples, or 42 cents per sheet, slightly higher than the HP paper. All grades of Kodak paper are porous, which, according to Epson, is better for pigment inks. (See “Pigment vs. dye-based inks.”) Thickness of the paper varies by grade, and the most noticeable difference is between the basic Photo paper and the Premium Photo paper. To see how each printer performed on a better grade of paper, I ran two test prints. On the 5300 I used Kodak Premium Photo Paper, and with the C5180 I used HP Premium Photo Paper. Although I couldn’t see much difference in image quality between the HP Premium paper and the Everyday paper, Kodak photos brightened up considerably on its Premium paper. (To see for yourself, check out the image gallery that accompanies this story.) Lesson learned: Paper choice can make a big difference.

I conducted one test for black-and-white text pages and another for
photographs. I chose to print files that I would encounter as part of
my normal workflow to see how each printer would perform in a
real-world home office setting.

For the black-and-white test, I selected a 71-page report entitled “The Development of Broadband Access in Rural and Remote Areas.”
This PDF file includes mostly text, a few tables and several pages of
footnotes. I opened it in Adobe Reader and printed copies on standard
Staples multiuse paper, using the default settings, until the printer
ran out of black ink.

For the photo printing test, I printed a random selection of 350
family photographs directly from within the Windows Explorer. These
included a mix of indoor and outdoor shots, with lots of people in
various settings: at home, on vacation and at social events — the
kinds of images most people would be printing.

I printed three 4-by-6-in. photographs per page in the same order on
each printer, using each vendor’s own brand of standard-grade
8.5-by-11-in. photo paper. Specifically, I used the entry-level photo
papers both vendors offer for volume printing: Kodak Photo Paper and HP
Everyday Photo Paper.

Because both printers use some material from the color cartridges
when printing black-and-white pages (both vendors say this is a very
small amount; Kodak puts it at about 4 cents of color ink per
black-and-white page), I replaced all the cartridges with fresh, full
ones between tests. For pricing comparisons in both cases, I used the
individual cartridge prices, not the prices for a combo pack.

Head to Head
On the black-and-white tests, the HP C5180 printed 306 pages before
running out of black ink (at which point it asked if I would like to
continue to print black using the color cartridges, which could have
been a lifesaver in a real deadline situation).

With the EasyShare 5300, I was able to print 353 pages before
printing halted and the “Black ink cartridge needs replacing” message
appeared — with no offer to continue printing with just color ink.

Then a funny thing happened. I opened the lid on the 5300 to change
the cartridge, but the phone rang and I closed it. When I turned my
attention back to the printer, the out-of-ink message had disappeared.

I continued printing and was able to increase my mileage by another
17 pages before getting the empty cartridge warning again. (If only I
could do that with my car.) I tried to do the same thing with the
C5180, but it didn’t help.

On the color tests, the EasyShare 5300 cranked out 218 4-by-6-in.
images on standard Kodak Photo Paper. The Photosmart C5180 reached 209
photos on HP’s Everyday paper.

The colors in the HP output were noticeably brighter and more
saturated than the Kodak images, some of which seemed a bit washed out
by comparison.

The HP printer generated an image with bright, saturated colors (notice the blue shirt), while the Kodak printout appears lighter and the faces a bit washed out. Both images were printed on the companies’ low-end photo paper. (Click either image for larger view.)

For more (and enlarged) printout results, see our image gallery.

I did experience some trouble with HP’s Everyday Photo Paper: It
came out so wet that the paper lost its shape and small ripples formed
across the surface of the photographs. These smoothed out a bit once
the paper dried, but they were still noticeable.

When I reported these results to HP, a company representative was
unhappy that I had used the Everyday Photo Paper without manually
selecting it in the print menu — an option buried three layers deep in
the Windows print dialog box. Once I found the proper selection, the
paper still came out rippled but did dry flat. Image quality was about
the same.

Also on HP’s suggestion, I reran the entire test with HP Advanced
paper. “If Everyday Photo Paper is selected in the driver, it should
use less ink than the default setting,” a spokesperson for HP said.
This time the C5180 stopped at just 190 photos, although there wasn’t
as much rippling.

Conclusions
While the output from the two printers was close in quality, the bottom
lines were in completely different ballparks. My per-page ink cost for
black-and-white copies on the Kodak was about half that of the C5180.
On the color print tests, the Kodak 5300 appears to have cleaned the HP
C5180’s clock: At 7 cents a page, it cost less than a third as much to
produce a 4-by-6-in. photo on the Kodak as on the HP. The complete results breakdown is at the bottom of this page.

But the math is a bit more complicated than that. I could have
continued printing color photos on the HP after replacing just the
yellow cartridge for $9.99, rather than having to buy a whole
multicolor cartridge for $14.99, as I would have with the Kodak. On the
other hand, the cyan and magenta cartridges both ran out just three
photos after the yellow one did, so that would have been another $19.98
pretty soon.

Then there’s the paper issue. Had I specifically selected the HP
Everyday paper from the printer dialog during my tests, it’s possible
that the machine would have used less ink and I might have gotten a few
more prints.

These considerations notwithstanding, however, it seems clear that
from an ink-cost perspective, Kodak has a big advantage. While I liked
the photo quality from the C5180 better, overall I found the quality of
the Kodak 5300’s images acceptable — especially given the price
difference.

On the downside, both devices use proprietary consumables, and each
vendor encourages users to buy its own brand of cartridges and paper
for ideal image quality. When it comes to paper, my recommendation
would be to experiment with competing papers, such as the Staples house
brand, to see which offers acceptable images at the lowest cost.

As for ink, brand makes less difference for everyday black-and-white
prints and basic color graphics than for photos. However, color
cartridges do use proprietary inks that are optimized for each vendor’s
hardware and can substantially affect image quality. For all intents
and purposes, then, most people will be limited to one supplier for
color ink when printing photos — which is a good reason to take a
careful look at the cost of those ink cartridges.

		Cost-per-Page Breakdown   HP Photosmart C5180 All-in-One Printer Kodak EasyShare 5300 All-in-One Printer List price $199.99      $199.99    Black ink cartridge $17.99                       $9.99         Color cartridge(s) $49.95                       $14.99                       Total, all ink cartridges $67.94                       $24.98                       B&W pages printed 306     353   Cost per page, black ink $0.06   $0.03  Color pages printed 209  218     Cost per page, color ink $0.24   $0.07

[Author]

July 9, 2007 at 10:50 AM