Printers.(Product Updates)(Product/Service Evaluation)

WHAT'S NEW

* Faster printing. Inkjet printers are getting speedier. Four inkjets in our tests, two from Canon and two from Epson, printed between 8 and 9 pages of black text per minute (ppm). That's almost as fast as a laser printer. (We've revised our tests, so speeds can't be compared directly with those of the printers in our September 2002 report. A printer that produces 8 ppm in our new test would have produced roughly 6 ppm in the old.) Adding even one word in color per page can slow things down a little or a lot: The HP Deskjet 995c lost only about 4 percent of its printing speed, but the Epson Stylus C62 lost 66 percent.

* Focus on photos. The profusion of digital cameras and scanners, plus photo sharing over the Internet, is driving the interest in printing photos. Indeed, photo printing is becoming such a draw that five of the inkjets in this report use "photo" in their names. Some inkjets now use photo inks that include light cyan and light magenta, to produce more accurate colors in photos; others can print directly from a digital camera. Still others have a built-in 4x6-inch paper tray for printing standard-size snapshots.

* Water-resistant ink. More printers offer water-resistant black ink. One inkjet in our tests, the Epson Stylus C82, features water-resistant colored ink on plain paper.

WHAT WE TESTED, WHAT WE FOUND

This report evaluates 16 printers. We tested nine new inkjets, including four from Hewlett-Packard, which recently redesigned most of its inkjets. The Ratings also include seven previously tested models that are still available: three inkjets, three laser printers, and one multifunction (or "all-in-one") machine that prints, faxes, copies, and scans. The inkjets range from $100 to $400; the lasers, from $250 to $400. The multifunction costs $200.

We evaluated each model's ability to print text, photos, and graphics, focusing on quality, print speed, and cost per page.