Kodak ESP7

A photo printer is an essential weapon in any digital photographer’s arsenal, and a multi-function device offers full colour printing, copying and scanning as well as direct access to memory cards and digital cameras without needing to be connected to a computer.

The new ESP 7 from Kodak fits the bill nicely, being a compact if rather uninspiringly designed device with a few useful tricks up its sleeve.

In addition to its multi-functional nature the device is capable of double-sided printing, offers wired and wireless network access as an alternative to the USB connection and has what is supposed to be an ‘intelligent’ paper tray. The printer can not only detect how much paper is left so you’ll know whether you’ll need to reload to complete the job, but also the type of paper being used, which allows it to automatically adjust quality settings for the best results.

All of these features worked very well and with the effective layout and choice of controls on the exterior, which complement the 3in colour screen when printing direct from a camera or card, made it one of the easiest we’ve found to set up and use.

In terms of quality and performance we were managed to get around 15 pages per minute (ppm) in draft mode, which produced reasonable documents, but it was a lot less than the 32ppm claimed by Kodak – that’s normal in the industry, though, as manufacturers tend to quote speeds that real users never see. Quality, however, was extremely good and some of the full-sized A4 prints we produced (which took around two minutes each) were all but indistinguishable from those made by a professional service.

Unfortunately it did seem to get through the ink at some speed, but since Kodak has priced its cartridges reasonably at £7 and £10 it should still be relatively cheap to maintain. While the ESP7 is also fairly expensive going by its list price, we were able to find it for £100 less online at the time of writing.

If high-quality photo printing is your goal this is a very tidy device that’s easy to use and offers great results.