Best Photo printer?

[flylikeaneagle]

I need to purchase a photos printer in the next 10 days.
Looking at the Cannon I850. I have owned HP products for 10 years..

Any advise on the sub $300 Photo printers, taking into consideration the cost of replacement cartridges.

Thanks

 

[Maki]

The epson 820 is $90-100 and is better quality than that canon.

A few things going for the canon tho. All canons use seperate ink tanks now so you can replace individual colors. And the canon will be much faster than the epson. Epsons tend to clog. (Tho if you turn them off when not in use it isn't so bad.)

But the quality on the Epson will be better. One of the nicer things about the epsons vs all the other photo printers is that they use their black (VS mixing black via the color cartridges) cartridge in photo printing. Much better shadows. Better color matching from what I can tell, too.

If you want a VERY nice photo printer and are willing to spend slightly more get the Epson 960. 2 picoliter drops. Great quality. Seperate ink tanks. Roll feeder and cutter. $350. I really want one of those.

If you are going to do ANY regular printing along with your photos get the canon. The epson couldn't print a word document to save its life. (Unless you wanted to print that document on photo paper. It'd do a great job then.)

I highly recommed www.atlex.com for ink cartridges. Good prices. Takes 500 years to arrive but I like their prices.

Edit : This isn't to say that the Canon is bad. It is very good. It is just that the epsons are better. (According to me and some of the photo rags I read. Practical photo most recently.)

 

[Cosmo3]

I just went from a HP 970 and now have the Canon i850. Wow the Canon is so much faster and does great color prints. I used to bash Canon but now with the replacable print head, low ink cost and HP going to tiny print cartridges, goodbye HP hello Canon. The first picture I did on 4X6 photo paper was so good I got a magnifying glass out to really inspect it, and while I was looking for flaws all I saw was great detail. I love the i850.