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Kodak ESP 7 in Printers

Verdict

Plenty of features and simple to use, but the speed isn't matched by the print quality.

Review Date: 23 Jan 2009

Price when reviewed: £126 (£145 inc VAT)

Buy it now for: £141.33

Overall Rating
4 stars out of 6

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Value for Money
4 stars out of 6

Performance
4 stars out of 6

Kodak's ESP range of all-in-one devices has always been aimed very clearly at the novice consumer. The colour cartridges come inside a single sealed compartment, and there's no mention of anything as high brow as print resolutions in the menus or on the website.

Kodak does, however, boast of the 'most intelligent paper tray system' in the industry, and while that may sound a strange claim, it turns out to be quite useful. It detects the paper size so you don't end up printing to wrong media, and there's also a sensor to measure how many sheets are in the input tray, so it can tell if a print job is going to finish or not. A built-in duplex unit further adds to the versatility.

The on-device controls aren't quite so intuitive, but neither are they the worst we've seen. A simple list menu and four-way navigation buttons mean it's not too complex to scan and copy, while the pretty driver software makes light work of printing from your PC.

Quality, on the other hand, is hit-and-miss. In our technical test text was sharp and defined, but areas of solid colour were grainy and lacked punch. Reds were orange and photos pale, while the claims of 28-second 6 x 4in photos clearly aren't achievable in the highest quality settings; it took 47 seconds to complete prints in this mode.

That's still as fast as Canon's best offerings, though, and speed on the whole is a strength. An A4 photo took under two minutes while text arrived at a more modest 5.5ppm in mono and 5.6in colour. Scans were nippy - 17s for an A4 photo at 300ppi - and the two combined for fast copying.

The enclosed cartridges make printing quite cheap too: Kodak's figures work out at under 2p per mono page and less than 5p for colour, but its claim of 6.4p per photo doesn't factor in the high cost of Kodak's Premium Ultra paper - the real cost will be closer to 40p.

All in all, though, the ESP 7 is a decent enough printer for its target audience. Those who like to print high quality photos and delve into the settings will be far better served by Canon's MP630, but if you're after simple everyday printing with a few holiday snaps on the side, the Kodak is well worth a look.

Author: David Bayon

User comments

Ink usage

This product is sold as the least expensive ink user on the market. I've managed about a dozen b&w sheets and a couple of colour images from £16 of cartridges. It appears to use ink everytime I switch on my PC, which automatically switches on the printer. Is this normal? If start up uses ink, do I really have to unplug the machine after every use to conserve ink? Comments appreciated.

By poppysmate on 6 Oct 2009

Ink usage and colour

I have recently bought this all in one printer, I like poppysmate, am disappointed with the small amount of sheets I get from my ink cartridges. I bought this printer as had a HP previously and the price of the inks was ridiculous, but now I am finding that I am buying inks for this Kodak more often than I did for the HP. Also the colour quality is awful, I am with Virgin for my phone and broadband, and when I print my bill, the Virgin logo comes out pink or lilac and not red. All in all I am very disappointed with this printer, I paid £175 for it 3 months ago from Comet. Can I just ask why Kodak decided not to include an instruction manual with it, they expect you to go on line and print it off (more ink used).

Catwoman.

By catwoman on 7 Oct 2009

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