New Products: The latest printers from Oki, Epson, Canon, and Lexmark

Oki’s C3600 colour printer

Oki's new C3600 colour printer uses LED printing technology to produce colour and offers mono printing that is comparable in quality to a laser printer. The C3600 measures just 29cm high, 37cm wide, and 48cm deep, but its paper tray can handle 250 sheets of A4. It can print on a variety of paper sizes and labels, including banner prints that are up to 1.2m long, making it a good choice for small businesses that need to produce posters or other eye-catching marketing materials. It costs 349.

Epson’s Stylus SX200, SX400, R2880 and S20, Stylus Pro GS6000, Business Inkjet B-500DN and the AcuLaser M4000 laser printer

Epson's Stylus SX200 and SX400 are multifunction devices designed for the home office, which combine a colour inkjet printer, scanner and copier in a single unit. Both models include a variety of memory card slots so that you can print photos straight from a digital camera without having to transfer them to your Mac first. On the scanning side, they also include Epson’s Easy Fix software for removing dust and other flaws from scanned photos, and OCR software for scanning text documents. The SX200 costs 79.99, while the SX400 adds a 6.3cm LCD display for previewing photos for 119.99.

For professional users there’s the Stylus R2880, an A3 printer priced at 569.99. The R2880 can print on a wide range of media, including CD and DVD disks, fine art paper and even certain types of cardboard. Epson has also developed a new ‘multi-image’ Photoshop plug-in for the R2880 and other large-format printers that enables you to quickly combine multiple images on a single page. The plug- in is available as a free download from www.epson-europe.com.

It’s not just cameras and camcorders that can do the face-detection trick. Epson’s S20 Stylus printer has the ability to detect skin tones within a photo and automatically adjust the colour settings to produce the best results. It can also detect other types of shots, such as a landscapes and skylines, and adjust the colour settings for these too. The S20 costs just 39.99, and uses individual cartridges for the various coloured inks – priced at 5.99 each – so that you only need to replace the inks that actually get used up.

Epson is also planning to release the Stylus Pro GS6000 a large format 8-colour printer designed for producing posters and signs up on a variety of materials, and up to 64in in size. The UK price has not been announced yet.

Most inkjet printers are low-cost models aimed at home users and small businesses that need a cheap colour printer. However, Epson’s new Business Inkjet B-500DN is a more powerful model aimed at business users who need high-speed colour printing.

Epson claims print speeds of up to 33 pages per minute for the B-500DN, rivalling the speed of more expensive laser printers. It also claims that the printer’s running costs are comparable to that of a laser printer too, at less than 0.5p per page for black and white printing and just 1.89 pence per page for colour. The B-500DN costs 382.

The company has also released a high-performance laser printer called the AcuLaser M4000 for larger organisations that need high-speed, high-volume printing options. Priced at around 600, the M4000 can print up to 43 pages per minute, even at its maximum 1200dpi resolution. Its twin paper trays can hold 750 sheets of paper, and it can handle a workload of 20,000 pages per month.

Canon Selphy CP770, CP760, and Pixma iP100

Canon's Selphy CP770 photo-printer folds up into a kind of bucket shape, complete with handle so that you can carry it around with you. The CP770 costs 139, and you can buy a portable battery pack for 50.

There’s also a more conventional version designed for home use called the CP760, priced at 89. Both models use dye-sublimation technology to produce photo-prints. Canon says that this makes the photos more durable than prints from conventional inkjet printers, as each print has a special coating that protects it from water splashes or fingerprint marks.

The new Pixma iP100 is a portable photo-printer designed for travelling business users, or home users who simply want a compact printer that doesn’t take up too much space. The iP100 measures 32cm wide, 18.5cm deep and 6cm high and weighs just 2kg. It has a print resolution of 9600x2400dpi resolution and Canon claims that its rechargeable battery can print up to 290 pages when fully charged. The only drawback is that the 199 price tag seems a bit steep to us.

Lexmark Z2320, Z2650 and X4650

Lexmark has turned its attention to home users and students, with three new models that aim to provide high quality printing at a competitive price.

Abandoning the rather bulky design of previous models, the new printers are more compact and have either a black or white finish. The new range starts at just 39.90 for the Z2320, which claims print speeds of up to 22 pages per minute for black and white documents, and a maximum print resolution of 4800dpi for photo-printing.

For just 10 extra you can get the Z2650, a ‘multifunction’ printer that also has a built-in scanner, copying features and OCR software (optical character recognition) for scanning text documents.

Finally, there’s the X4650, another multifunction model that combines printer, scanner and copier in a single unit. This one is more expensive, though, costing 129.99, as it also includes wireless networking features that allow you to share the printer with other users on your home network. This model can print at up to 25ppm, and it includes the latest 802.11n wireless technology, which means that it will work well with Apple’s Airport Extreme base stations.

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