PCMag.com – July, 2016 – Present
My current beat is printers, scanners, labelers, product roundups, how-tos, components, projectors, op-eds, and more at PCMag.com (PC Magazine), one of the oldest and well-respected technology journals. PCMag.com is a Ziff-Davis publication. Ziff-Davis is one of the world’s most successful tech market media companies.
See all of my PCMag.com articles here.
Hello William, thought your review on the Epson XP-7100 was great. Quick question: which one prints better pictures (4×6)…the XP-7100 or the Canon TS9120? thanks!
Derek
They both print very well, but Canon 6-ink Pixmas seem to print slightly better snapshots, after close inspection, though.
thank you very much for your reply! i really appreciate it!
My pleasure!
Do you plan on reviewing the Pixma G6020 anytime soon? I was thinking if getting it, but wanted to see a review of it first.
The review posted on PCMag today: https://www.pcmag.com/review/369454/canon-pixma-g6020-megatank-all-in-one-printer
Thanks for your interest.
Greetings. I am trying to purchase for my home office and all-in-one printer. I am likely to print from 600 to 1000 pages a month and would like to link the printer via USB to my computer. The price range I am looking for is between $250 to $350. For me print quality should be decent, print cost average to low, although how quickly pages print is not a high priority to me. Having a good scanner is important. I am not tech savvy at all.
I went through your reviews — thank you — and well as others and feel overwhelmed at the choices. Given the criteria I mentioned above, what would you recommend as the top two to three printers? Thank you for your time and effort. I hope to hear from you.
Sorry for the late reply.
You’re right, choosing from a pool of similarly configured machines can be confusing. The good news is that your price range is high enough that you have a wide selection of well-endowed AIOs to pick form. For me, when all things are equal, I prefer inkjets. Generally, they print photos and detailed graphics better than their laser counterparts, and nowadays they’re cheaper to use, not to mention that they burn through far less power.
If your application is business-oriented, as opposed to family and photo printing, you can’t go wrong with Brother’s MFC-J6945DW INKvestment Tank Color Inkjet All-In-One Printer. It’s built to last, and it prints, copies, scans, and faxes pages up to tabloid-size, 11 by 17 inches, pages, twice the standard letter-size. It’s running costs are under one-cent for black pages and under five cents for color. It holds up to 600 sheets of paper from three separate sources, allowing you to switch between paper types without having to empty and reconfigure a paper drawer. I could go on and on, but the short description is that there are few things that this AIO can’t do–except, that is, print photos comparable to its family and home-based office photo-optimized counterparts. See my review of the MFC-J6945DW here.
In this case, that would be, among several others, Canon’s Pixma TS9520. This AIO prints photos and graphics extremely well, but it’s not nearly as fast and robust as the Brother. Though it does print tabloid-size pages. It’s also a bit expensive to use, so much so that if you’re printing or copying more than 100 or so pages each month, it’s not very practical. That, unfortunately, is the nature of this type of printer. To get a photo-centric machine that doesn’t cost a lot per-page to use, you’ll have to spring for one of Epson’s EcoTank models, and a good one is a bit beyond your price range. Keep in mind, though, that if you plan to print and copy a lot (say, a few hundred pages or more), how much a printer costs to use on a per-page basis is a much more important consideration than how much you pay for the printer itself. The EcoTank ET-7700 costs about $450, but it prints both monochrome and color pages for under 1 cent each. Compare that to the 3 to 4 cents for black pages and upwards of 15 cents for color for most consumer-grade photo printers, and, if you print a lot, it doesn’t take long to make up the difference in how much you paid for the printer and start saving money on ink. See my Canon Pixma TS9520 review here.
Finally, it’s important to note, too, that most Canon, Epson, and HP inkjets print decent photos, even those company’s business-centric models. If you’re wedded to printing the most vibrant, highly detailed photos possible, choosing a midrange business inkjet AIO with decent per-page costs should suffice. Even the Bother model mentioned earlier prints photos acceptable for most business applications, but I wouldn’t want to print my family’s keepsake photos on it.
Hope this helps.