Pocket money printers

A quick wander around your PC superstore will tell you that computers are getting cheaper.

A couple of years ago, a top-of-the-range PC could have set you back close to £3,000. But today, even if you load your new computer with every conceivable shiny new extra, you'll struggle to break the £2,000 barrier.

The same can be said of the inkjet printer market. The vast majority of PCs have a colour printer attached to them, and not so long ago that would have been a £100 accessory.

We've rounded up some of the cheapest printers on the market; the most affordable of which will only cost you an astounding £29.

When buying a colour printer, there are a number of things to look out for. The first is cost but it's not just a case of handing over the cash and taking home your bargain buy. Inkjet cartridges have a real thirst and keeping them topped up can be an expensive business.

We've assessed the cost of the cartridges along with the purchase price in order to get the complete picture of the cost of ownership.

The other over-riding considerations are the speed and the quality of printing. We've looked at the cheapest inkjets from the major manufacturers, so speed is not a major factor but if waiting for your prints is likely to wind you up, it's worth some forethought.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the quality of the prints produced. If the printed pages look cheap and grainy, your printer won't seem like much of a bargain.

If you don't have a printer or are looking to retire an elderly model, the choice at the budget end of the market has never been better. All the printers here cost less than £50 and we've put them through their paces to see if you can really get a quality print from a cheap printer.

Canon i250
On a purely superficial level the Canon i250 is the prettiest printer in our test, but most people will be aware that with an inkjet printer beauty is not a major factor.

It was immediately apparent that the set-up literature supplied with the Canon badly lagged behind that of the Epson we tested. A handbook took the place of a quick set-up sheet and, while it was adequate, it proved far more difficult to refer to than a poster.

After the printer had been liberated from its tightly-packaged box, we set about getting it going. Installing the cartridges was hassle-free, as they were clearly labelled and, consequently, difficult to get muddled up.

The Canon was the joint-fastest text printer on test, managing around five and a half pages per minute. It was also the fastest photo printer on test, pushing out an A4 photo in four and a half minutes.

In terms of quality, however, things weren't quite so rosy. Although the text quality was superb, the photos suffered from washed-out colours and some banding. Under close scrutiny, some dottiness was also evident but, for printing the occasional snapshots, it should be fine.

In terms of its running costs, the Canon was the star performer again. With pages of text costing 3p each and colour documents around 6p, this is the cheapest printer to run that we tested.

Replacing both black and colour cartridges will cost £18 but the relatively small number of pages that each can manage means that they will need replacing more often than some of the more expensive refills with other printers.

Although it is jointly the most expensive to buy, the cheaper running costs should balance things out quite quickly.

Epson Stylus Colour C44+
Epson is an old hand at making home-user inkjet printers and we expected to get some good results from its budget model. We weren't disappointed.

Setting up the Epson was a little long-winded thanks to drivers that took an age to install. That said, the driver is comprehensive and allows for fine-tuning prints, which can only be a good thing, and the set-up documents were straightforward. Installing the cartridges also proved a simple task.

The C44+ reproduced, without doubt, the best photos among our test printers. On glossy paper, the colours were excellent, detail was sharp and there was no evidence of any banding or dottiness in the image.

We were prepared to overlook the fact that it took just under 19 minutes to produce the photo as the results were superb for a printer costing just £35.

On a less positive note, the text quality from the Epson was pretty poor. We noticed that the edges looked jagged compared with the others. The fact that black text looked decidedly grey, and that the Epson was the slowest text printer here, meant that it was pushed out of the running for top honours in this test.

The C44+ was also the noisiest device on test too, which pushed it even further down the list. As the printer costs a mere £35, we would forgive slightly higher running costs but we were disappointed to find that the Epson was, along with the HP, the most expensive colour printer to run.

Colour pages will set users back around 10p per sheet, which is more than the Canon and the Lexmark. 4p per page for text documents is reasonable.

HP Deskjet 3550
As well as being the smallest printer we tested, the HP 3550 was the easiest to set up, thanks to an excellent set-up guide and simple software installation.

Once the cartridges were in place, it performed a test print and calibration of the print heads to ensure a crisp output. In all, it took around three minutes to install once out of the box. There is only one button on the printer, with most of the controls managed using the driver software.

As a photo printer, the HP proved itself capable of producing some good results. The photo produced by the HP did suffer from slight banding but other than that, the prints were sharp and had good colour. That said, the prints were noticeably darker than those from the other printers.

The worst feature of the prints was the time taken to produce them. With every A4 print taking 23 minutes to emerge, this was the slowest we tested for images.

For printing documents, however, the sharp text and speedy five and a half pages per minute make this the best performer. As a budget all-rounder, the HP looks to be the top performer on test but we were disappointed that the running costs for the HP are so high.

The cartridges cost £35 to replace, which makes them the second most expensive, but the relatively short life of the cartridges means that the cost per page is very high, at 7p and 10p a page respectively for text and colour prints.

As a result, our advice is to give the HP some serious consideration before buying it, as what you gain in print quality you might find yourself losing in running costs.

Lexmark Z601
If something looks really cheap it usually is. The Lexmark Z601 looks really cheap, so no prizes for guessing that the Lexmark package is actually pricier than it appears.

You can take the Lexmark home for £29, but you'll be going straight back to the shop again as there's no black ink cartridge supplied with it.

That may not sound too bad but a black Lexmark cartridge will set you back £26. That makes the total cost of the Z601 £55 to actually use it. Consequently, you could argue that it's the most expensive printer on test.

The little Lexmark doesn't really perform like the most expensive printer here. Four and a half pages per minute print speed for text is pretty good and among the printers assembled here, the eight and a half minutes taken to produce an A4 photo isn't too shabby either.

Text quality is very good but the problem lies with the quality of the photo printing, which is by far the poorest here. The prints suffer from terrible graininess and the edges are blurry, even though the colours are bright and vivid.

Setting up the Lexmark is pretty simple, thanks to the well-designed set-up poster. The ink cartridges are colour co-ordinated, which makes mixing them up virtually impossible, although the lack of any actual labelling is a pity. As with the HP, there is just one button on the printer control panel.

Replacing both cartridges will cost £49, which sounds extortionate and, in terms of the price of the printer, it is. That doesn't tell the full story, however.

The Lexmark is in the middle of the group for print pricing as the ink cartridges have a high capacity. This means that, on balance, the 6p for every page of black text is quite expensive, it is mitigated by the 9p for colour prints, which is the second cheapest.

DECISION TIME

The Epson C44+ demonstrated that a cheap printer is capable of producing impressive photos. Despite this, its poor text performance meant that we couldn't justify giving it our coveted award.

The Lexmark Z601 is the cheapest printer to actually buy, but not once all the cartridges have been paid for. Because of this, we feel that Lexmark is not really playing fair. In any case, the Z601 was fast but its photo-print quality was the worst we tested.

In our recent printer tests, Canon printers have done well and on running costs, speed and looks, the i250 is a very good printer.

Sadly, like the Lexmark, the photo output isn't that strong and, while we accept that Canon doesn't market the i250 as a photo printer, it isn't as good as the budget options from other manufacturers.

In the end, the best budget printer we tested was the HP Deskjet 3550 but we aren't about to lavish unqualified praise on it. It is small, attractive and capable of producing superb prints. On the downside, it is a very slow photo printer and the running costs were the most expensive on test.

We feel, however, that the overall performance of a printer is more important than the running costs. We have chosen to recommend the best performing printer - but keep an eye out for those refuelling costs.

Budget buyers beware
Although it's tempting to try to save as much money as possible when buying a printer, there are a couple of things you should look out for.

First, you may see Apollo, Xerox and Sharp inkjet printers in some shops, but our advice is to steer clear of these brands, no matter how attractively priced they are.

In all cases, the companies that make these printers have pulled out of the market and won't be producing any more models. For Xerox and Sharp models, that may mean difficulty tracking down refills and when found, they are likely to be expensive.

The Apollo models use HP cartridges, so getting refills should be easy, but the performance of Apollo printers doesn't measure up to the standards of modern budget printers.

The same applies if somebody offers you a second-hand inkjet. Check the price and availability of refills before buying. Bear in mind too that new models can be quite cheap anyway so don't waste your money shelling out too much for a second-hand printer.