Photo printers - a good buy?

[Woofage]

Worth it or not?

We don't have a colour printer in use at the mo'. I could buy some new cartridges for our HP Deskjet or I could use the money (plus a bit) to buy a photo printer instead. Decisions...

[Biggsy]

You can get really excellent photo quality from a home printer costing less than £250 (perhaps less than £100)  Whether it's worth it comes down to the cost of the ink & paper.  Only you can answer that.

I'm cutting costs by using a continuous ink supply system that I mentioned on the other thread, but still it's not cheap if I want good quality ink - especially for the R800 printer with 8 cartridges.  4 or 6-cartridge printers are signifcantly cheaper to run.

[kyuss]

I like my photo printer, but I got it for nothing and I only really print the odd photo anyway. I could certainly get by without it. Like others have said the cost of inks and paper make doing loads of prints a bit expensive. Much cheaper to use the services of the likes of Photobox. Then again, it is nice not having to wait, but I'm quite impatient.

[Biggsy]

It may be cheaper to use online/mail order printing services, but the beauty of home printing is the ability to instantly experiment with brightness, colours & sharpness etc, bigger choice of paper, and the quality can be better as well than all but the best professional services.

I put off buying a decent colour printer for years for cost reasons, but it is something I always wanted, really.

[Gandalf]

It may be cheaper to use online/mail order printing services, but the beauty of home printing is the ability to instantly experiment with brightness, colours & sharpness etc, bigger choice of paper, and the quality can be better as well than all but the best professional services.

I put off buying a decent colour printer for years for cost reasons, but it is something I always wanted, really.

+1

I have tried various online printing services and I have always been unhappy with the results compared with printing my own, most of them look rather desaturated and lifeless.

[geraldc]

I use the instant machines in shops.

I find if you don't use a printer on a regular basis the print heads clog up, giving very poor results. I only print photos once in a blue moon, and I can go to the 24rh supermarket if I'm desperate for a photo print. 

[tonycollinet]

It is definitely cheaper to print on line, but you don't have the convenience, or final control.

[pcolbeck]

I think it comes down to this. If you just want to print your snaps then use Photobox or similar - the price per print is an order of magnitude lower than using your own printer. We use them and the quality is good and the service quick and cheap. If you want to fiddle around with your photos and print out on A4 check it adjust and try again then get a photo printer. The quality at A4 these days is fantastic with something like an Epson R800. We use both, Photobox for high volumes of snaps and the printer for when we are pretending to be David Bailley.