Guide

Printing photographs at home

A four-ink office printer will print a photograph. It will not print a good black-and-white one, because it has no grey ink and has to fake neutral tones by mixing colours. The machines here carry six to ten inks, or use a dye-sublimation ribbon that lays colour down in passes. Print size and per-print cost matter more than pages per minute.

9 printers · Ordered by number of inks, most first.

Printer	Price	Mono page	Colour page	5,000 pages	Speed
Epson SureColor P700	~$799	—	—	—	—
Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-310	~$849	—	—	—	—
Canon PIXMA PRO-200S	~$649	—	—	—	—
Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8500	~$599	0.30¢	1.1¢	~$622	16 ppm
Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550	~$799	0.30¢	1.1¢	~$822	16 ppm
Fujifilm Instax Mini Link 3	~$99	—	—	—	—
Kodak Dock Plus	~$129	—	—	—	—
Canon SELPHY CP1500	~$149	—	—	—	—
Fujifilm Instax Link Wide	~$149	—	—	—	—

Cost figures are estimates computed from each consumable’s ISO page yield and list price. A dash means we could not source one of those two numbers.

Cost to own · 5,000 pages

Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8500~$622
~$599 printer + ~$23 supplies
Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550~$822
~$799 printer + ~$23 supplies

purchase priceink or toner. An estimate: purchase price plus 5,000 pages at each printer’s computed cost per page, assuming 4 mono pages for every colour page. Printers whose consumable price we could not source are left out.