Product Reviews

The inkjet printer market is already fairly crowded, with big names like Epson, Canon and HP fighting it out to produce the best quality photo printers. With such a high level of competition comes a similarly high degree of innovation, and many of the top manufacturers have already spent a huge amount of time and money improving their print engines. With this in mind, Sharp's first entry into the market, the AJ-2100, would seem to be at the foot of a very large mountain facing a tough uphill struggle.

The AJ-2100 is Sharp's first photo printer and is the resulting product of a three-year collaboration with Xerox and Fuji-Xerox. The end result of this partnership is the AJ-2100's six-colour ink cartridge system, which consists of standard C, M and Y colour cartridges, and a further three Photo C, Photo M and Photo K cartridges. This system is intended to provide a wider range of colour tones, eliminating grain and making photographs appear more natural.

Another advantage to the six-colour system is the reduction in wastage. Three-colour cartridges, like those used in some HP printers, have to be replaced entirely if one colour runs dry, wasting what's left of the other two, whereas the AJ-2100's cartridges can be replaced individually. This is good news, as are the running costs - just 4.5p per colour page (standard) and 10.85p per page for photo printing.

With so much thought having gone into the AJ-2100's interior, it's therefore disappointing that Sharp seems to have spent far less time contemplating the exterior design, which is somewhat boxy and angular, giving the printer a dated look.

Setting up the AJ-2100 was simple, with each of the six colour cartridges clearly numbered to match with the correct place in the print mechanism. We were less impressed with the 150-sheet A4 input tray though, which crudely latches onto the front of the printer. Even worse was the translucent blue output tray, which simply rests on top of the input tray. This loose-fitting attachment requires only a slight knock to be dislodged, making the AJ-2100 appear flimsy and cheap. This is a shame, as the general build quality of the main unit is quite good.

As the AJ-2100 is primarily a photo printer, we kicked off testing with our A4 photo test at the printer's maximum 1,200 x 1,200dpi setting on Canon's glossy photo paper. Print speed was impressive, completing the task in ten minutes,

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29 seconds. However, print quality was quite disappointing, with noticeable grain and banding throughout the image, although detail was impressive. The image also displayed an unnatural colour balance, which veered from overly green to overly red, depending on the type of colour matching selected. Having said this, Sharp's printer management utility offers separate colour and hue adjustments, although experimenting to obtain the correct balance will doubtless result in a lot of wasted ink. By comparison, HP's DeskJet 990Cxi (see Labs, issue 77, p106) produced a far more natural image, with greater detail and less grain. We also retested the AJ-2100 using both Epson and HP photo papers to examine the differences between each media. However, the AJ-2100 produced equal results with each.

The AJ-2100 performed better with our colour performance test, printing smooth colour fades with only minimal stepping, although grain was still evident. The photo test hinted at the AJ-2100's lack of colour accuracy, and this was again highlighted with our resolution test. Pantone reproduction was generally inaccurate, with a noticeable drift in hue and saturation. However, resolution was more impressive, with straight, evenly separated lines on the 150dpi and 200dpi patterns. Moving up to 300dpi showed a slight loss of accuracy, with some uneven spacing. The results were still impressive, although not on a par with the DeskJet 990Cxi.

Photo printers are not renowned for their ability to print plain text, and the AJ-2100 is no exception. Our 25-page plain-text document took an exhausting 24 minutes, 39 seconds to print at the normal setting. Unfortunately, the print quality was equally uninspiring, with shaky text printed in a washed-out dull shade of grey. This is probably due to the AJ-2100's composite C, M, Y black production when printing below the Best quality setting. Dropping down to the printer's draft setting resulted in a marked speed increase, with 25-pages returned in six minutes, 38 seconds at 3.8ppm (pages per minute), which is still slower than Sharp's quoted 8ppm for this setting. Text remained shaky though, and the contrast dropped even further, making it suitable for rough or informal printouts only.

It was a similar story with our five-page DTP test, which took 32 minutes, 31 seconds - almost three times as long as HP's Photosmart 1218 (see Labs, issue 77, p106). Quality was better due to the higher print-quality setting for this test, but the AJ-2100 was still inferior to the DeskJet 990Cxi.

At a price of £169, the AJ-2100 is slightly cheaper than most photo printers, such as the £247 HP Photosmart 1218, which gives it a notable price advantage. However, HP's superb DeskJet 990Cxi outperforms the AJ-2100 in every department while costing only £20 more. Even discounting the competition, the AJ-2100 is a disappointing photo printer and the six-colour print engine clearly needs further refinement before it can truly challenge the existing competition.