Unless you really need the quality of a color laser printer, why not cut your expenses with one of the seven color ink-jets reviewed here? The idea of buying a color ink-jet for only $100 or so more than the price of a monochrome ink-jet printer is indisputably appealing.
Most of these color ink-jets are considerably smaller, less expensive, and slower than the lasers we tested for this report, but they provide better quality and quieter operation than dot-matrix printers. Their main attraction is that they offer color at reasonable prices. We tested seven color ink-jets, which range in price from $355 to just over $2000.
We awarded the best-overall color ink-jet moniker to
Tektronix's Phaser 140
. The 140 is the only PostScript printer--and the only one to offer an optional Ethernet interface--in this category. Its
as-tested price of $2091 makes it the most expensive of the color ink-jets, but if you're looking for quality, it's worth it. With a resolution of 360 by 360 dpi, the Phaser 140 takes its time and produces color output comparable to--but for thousands of dollars less than--the least expensive color laser we tested. Its monochrome quality was also comparable to that of most of the monochrome laser printers we tested.
The Phaser 140 can print on plain, coated, or glossy paper and on transparencies (we used the glossy paper provided by Tektronix). You can print on legal-size paper by upgrading the printer from its standard 8-MB configuration to a 12-MB one. The Phaser 140's trade-off for quality is speed--or lack thereof. In fact, it was one of the slowest color ink-jets we tested.
Epson's Stylus Color Ink Jet and Digital's colorwriter 520ic tied for second place. At 720 by 720 dpi, the Epson Stylus has the highest addressability in this category. Its second-place status was due not just to its ou
tstanding quality but also to its all-around solid showing in our quality, features, and usability analyses. The Stylus printer software offers many options for optimizing the quality of output and for monitoring print jobs. You can print on plain paper at 360 dpi on the Stylus; special coated paper is required for 720-dpi resolution.
The Digital colorwriter 520ic attained the fastest performance results in the group; it has a 5-ppm rating for monochrome output and a 0.3-ppm rating for color output. An RS-232 port is optional. The colorwriter 520ic supports the HP DeskJet 500/500C/550C emulation and up to two output trays for a maximum paper capacity of 300 sheets (twice as many as its closest competitor in the paper-capacity category).
At $355, Digital's lower-end colorwriter 120ic is the least expensive color ink-jet we tested, and it posted the second-fastest performance and the best usability scores. Its monochrome speed is rated at 2 ppm, and its color is rated at 0.3 ppm. It has a relative
ly low maximum input capacity of 70 pages and offers parallel input only. Weighing in at 8.3 pounds and sporting a small footprint (about 14 by 14 by 11 inches), the colorwriter 120ic is a good candidate for road trips.
The fourth-ranked Lexmark ExecJet IIc is a 300- by 300-dpi printer priced at $379 with a monochrome speed rating of 3 ppm. Its color output is rated at 2.5 to 7 minutes per page, not pages per minute.
The two Canon ink-jets we tested were easy to operate. They both come with a laminated quick-start guide for easy setup and extensive on-line Windows-based help that includes pointers for setup, use, maintenance, and troubleshooting. The BJC-600e offers the second-best quality rating and has a price of $549. It has a 3-ppm rating for monochrome output and a 1-ppm rating for color output. The $399 BJC-4000 offers a 5-ppm monochrome rating and a 0.8-ppm rating for color.
Apple's Color Stylewriter 2400 was submitted to us for testing, but we weren't able to compare it to the oth
ers in this report because it was the sole Macintosh-only printer in our roundup. However, we can vouch for Apple's reputation for making solid and reliable printers.
If you're looking for excellent monochrome and color quality from an
ink-jet, the Phaser 140 provides it. This 360- by 360-dpi color
ink-jet has built-in Adobe PostScript Level 1 and 2 support, comes
with parallel and LocalTalk ports, and offers Ethernet as an option.
Designed for workgroups, its networking ports work simultaneously.
The Phaser 140 comes standard with 17 resident fonts and 8 MB of RAM.
It does high-quality printing on plain, coated, and glossy paper and
transparencies, and, if you add a 4-MB RAM upgrade, on legal paper as
well. It's a bit slow, but quality takes time.
OVERALL PPM MFR.'S PPM
SCORE PCL POSTSCRIPT MAC RATING
T
ektronix Phaser 140 4.31 N/A 1.11 N/A 2
Digital colorwriter 520ic 4.06 4.13 N/A N/A 5
Epson Stylus Color Ink Jet 4.06 2.47 N/A N/A 2-3
Lexmark ExecJet IIc 4.03 2.69 N/A N/A 3
SCORES PRICE
QUALITY FEATURES USABILITY AS TESTED
Tektronix Phaser 140 **** *** **** $2091
Digital colorwriter 520ic ** ** **** $449
Epson Stylus Color Ink Jet *** *** **** $699
Lexmark ExecJet IIc *** ** *** $379
KEY:
Ratings from 1 to 4: * is the lowest; **** is the highest.
N/A = not applicable.
photo_link (33 Kbytes)
The easy accessibility of the Phaser 140's ink cartridges (left), along with its high-quality output (above), gives the 140 our top rating in its class.
Color Ink-Jets
