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Ink costs exposed

Posted on 27 Feb 2006 at 11:37

Do bear in mind that, although photos from some printers will last considerably longer than others, you still need to store them in a relatively airtight place. Air pollutants will degrade colours far quicker than light, so keeping photos in a frame or album will ensure they last longer.

How we work out the ratings

At the bottom of each review, you'll see six star ratings. They're calculated using a complex mixture of benchmark results, objective scores and subjective quality ratings. For full details on how we calculate the Running Costs rating.

Quality

The Quality score is based on the ratings given by a panel of judges to the prints from each printer. All prints are judged 'blind': the judges have no idea which printer printed the images, as the name is written on the back of each print.

We assess quality both under fluorescent lighting (for text and colour graphics prints) and natural daylight for all photos and the mono-quality print. We weight each of the quality tests differently, with the photomontage gaining the highest importance. Text quality is important too, although draft quality is less important since this mode is mainly about speed.

Speed

Print speed can't be ignored, and a printer that offers equal quality to another but delivers prints quicker is naturally a better choice. However, we haven't given speed as high a weighting as quality in the Value for Money rating, since most people would rather wait a bit longer for a higher quality photo.

We time from the moment the paper is picked from the input tray to the moment the last page is dropped onto the output tray. This eliminates any processing time introduced by our test rig and purely tests the engine speed of each printer. The results are shown in the graphs on the right.

Features

We award points for many aspects of each printer. These range from warranty to OS support and driver options, and cover all physical attributes such as paper handling, connectivity and any TFT displays. Points are also awarded for the ability to print on CDs/DVDs and optional interfaces such as networking and Bluetooth. Lastly, we give points based on Wilhelm's fade resistance figures.

Value for money

The Value for Money rating is a weighted average of the Quality, Speed, Features and Running Costs ratings. We then factor in how much each printer costs (including delivery) to give a bang-per-buck result.

Bear in mind that the Value for Money rating is specific to each group of printers, so you can't compare the value of an entry-level inkjet to a premium photo printer, or the value of a mid-range model to an A3 printer.

Overall

The Overall score is a straight average of the Quality, Speed, Features, Running Costs and Value for Money ratings.