Alps MD-1300

Life with the MD-1300 can be tricky, however. You have to get used to keeping track of up to 12 individual cartridges and the relevant paper types. The review unit was supplied with manuals only in Adobe Acrobat format, and given the sheer number of print options this is a retrograde step compared to a printed manual. You'll also need to be aware that the MD-1300 isn't the most economic of printers when it comes to standard colour inkjet tasks. Printing text is especially expensive, costing around 7p per page. More graphics-intensive and photographic tasks are more reasonable, however: a print using the photographic inks at 100 per cent coverage costs £1.43 per A4 page, and 39p when using the standard colours. The relatively short cartridge life also means that long print runs will involve plenty of printer intervention.

The MD-1300, like its predecessor, is a printer for specific tasks. If you're going to be printing mainly big, colourful graphics and photographs, there's not much that can beat it in terms of quality at this price point. If text and business graphics occupy most of your printing time, however, you'd be better off buying Lexmark's excellent 5700 (reviewed issue 43, p156) or an HP 890C (reviewed issue 38, p168).

Author: Barry Plows