It’s that time of year – in the UK at least – when the further north you are, the colder, longer and darker the nights become. Hardy souls might make their way outdoors for some frigid winter night shots, but those of us who like our creature comforts might prefer to stay indoors and create prints of the shots we took during more clement seasons.
Erring on the side of comfort, we’re focusing on some pretty epic photo printers. We’ll kick off with the more modest options, and work our way through to large-format models that can output prints of a suitable size for hanging on your wall, or submitting to galleries and exhibitions.
First, we’ll cover three A4/8.5-inch models that are suitable for mono and colour documents, while also working well as photo printers for outputting bordered or borderless glossy prints in popular sizes, including 4x6-inch, 5x7-inch, A4 and 8.5x11-inch. For many, these represent the perfect compromise, enabling a raft of home-office duties while delivering impressive photo-quality output.
Upsizing to A3/11x17-inch, the Epson XP-970 ‘small-in-one’ printer enables larger-format printing while retaining a compact build and office-friendly features. Larger still at A3+/13x19-inch, there’s the Epson EcoTank ET-8550 printer and Canon’s PIXMA PRO-200 and imagePROGRAF PRO-300 models, which use dye-based and pigment-based inks respectively. Largest of all is the Epson SureColor P900 for A2/17x22-inch photo prints.
A4 PRINTERS
Canon PIXMA G650/G620 £255/$329
Canon PIXMA G650/G620 This dye-based, six-ink Canon MegaTank printer is aimed squarely at high-volume photo printing
Like other Canon MegaTank inkjet printers, the G650 (G620 in the USA) is a cartridge-free machine that has relatively high-volume ink tanks, topped up with 60ml bottles of ink, working out at about an eighth of the cost of most cartridge-based printers. The printer itself is refreshingly affordable for a MegaTank machine.
The photo-friendly lineup of six dye-based inks includes CMYK plus red and grey inks, aiming for a wide colour space and enhanced mono photo quality. The individually keyed, squeeze-free bottles ensure simple, mess-free top-ups and make it impossible to pour ink into the wrong tank.
There are no internal paper-feed cassettes; just an upright input tray at the rear, which makes it easy to swap between different sizes of plain or photo paper. There’s also no colour touchscreen, but the small mono LCD enables an intuitive push-button interface. It makes short work of creating mono or colour photocopies courtesy of the built-in scanner. Connectivity is good, too, with USB and Wi-Fi, the latter enabling PIXMA
