Are printers in the sub AU$100 space actually worth buying? We check out four low-cost printing options in our Australian review.

If you've wandered into any IT store recently, you've probably seen a stack of forlorn printers with a big 'Manager's Special' sticker on them, along with a sub-AU$100 price point. The natural reaction to this kind of largesse is to become suspicious -- surely a printer that cheap must come with some severe limitations, or be end-of-line fodder for the less cautious? We were curious to see exactly what kind of performance you could expect from these budget line units, so we've lined up four models from the four major consumer printing vendors.

	Budget printers  Introduction  Canon i250  Epson Stylus C43UX  HP Deskjet 3550  Lexmark z605  How we tested  Editor's Choice  Specifications

Common accepted knowledge is that with really cheap printers, what you actually pay for is the ink, in the same way as with razorblade manufacturers, where the handles are cheap but the actually useful part -- in that case the razors -- will cost you a bucketload. While it's undoubtedly true that the inexpensive nature of these units makes ink comparatively expensive, we've uncovered units with ink replacements that cost as little as AU$13.95, so there's clearly some room to move in terms of ink supplies. Page yields for cartridges do still remain on the lower side, however, and if you're used to more expensive units having cheap running costs, the cost per page of some budget units may leave you in a little shock. Ultimately, these are units best purchased by casual printers rather than anyone who needs a consistent and heavy printing output.

Buying a budget printer is all about compromises. While all of the printers in our roundup are what could be deemed 'photo capable' (although none of them are genuine photo printers), none of them are capable of borderless printing. One of the units on offer comes without a paper output tray, while two others are notably noisy in operation. The best approach to take is undoubtedly to work out which compromises you're prepared to live with, and purchase accordingly.

While for less than AU$100, you can't expect too much, we've got to say that of all the models we've looked at, the i250 is without a doubt the ugliest of the bunch. That might not matter too much to you  when making a printer purchasing decision, and certainly the i250 proves the maxim that beauty is indeed only skin deep, as it turned out the best photo prints in our test group and kept neck and neck with the HP DeskJet in speed terms.

	Budget printers  Introduction  Canon i250  Epson Stylus C43UX  HP Deskjet 3550  Lexmark z605  How we tested  Editor's Choice  Specifications

Aside from the lack of physical beauty, the i250 is also severely lacking in one other important area, and it's the i250's absolute achilles heel; it doesn't come with an output paper tray for stacking finished prints, which are instead spat out directly onto whatever surface happens to be in front of the printer. Depending on where you intend to place the i250 that may not be an issue, and for a relatively nominal AU$40 more you could upgrade to the similar i350 which does feature a paper exit tray, along with the capability for borderless prints.

Unlike every other printer in our roundup, the i250 lacks a setup poster, instead bundling in an installation leaflet. It's a tad confusing, however, as the same leaflet is used for the superior i350 printer as well -- for some time we were wondering where the printer out tray mentioned in the leaflet  was in fact. The i250 also differs from every other printer in our roundup in that installing print cartridges is a two-step affair. The i250 uses a permanent but removable print head that slots in before the black and tricolour cartridges can be inserted. It's an interesting move for a budget printer, but one that allows Canon to offer its actual ink cartridges at a substantial price discount compared to its competitors. Canon's driver offering is easy enough to follow, and the company completes the package with utitities for easy photo and web page printing, although these are optional installation components.

The i250 and HP Deskjet 3550 jostled for first place in our text printing tests, with the Canon managing our colour prints just a tad faster but black text prints a little slower. Where it beat the competition handily was in speedy photo processing; our test A4 image was visually the equal of the Epson Stylus C43UX's in terms of quality, but in only four and a half minutes, the i250 absolutely blew away the field in time terms.

As mentioned, the i250 uses a distinct print head that makes the physical cartridges cheaper than those of competing printers -- Canon doesn't have to build in a new print head for each new cartridge, essentially. Black cartridges come in at AU$13.95, while colour ones cost AU$29.95. With expected page yields of 300 and 170 pages respectively, that works out to a very cheap 4.65c per black page or 17.6c per colour page, making it solidly the cheapest printer to run in our comparative group.

We like the i250 a lot, and if it weren't for the lack of an output tray, it would simply walk all over the competition. For most users, however, we suspect that'll be a rather large issue to overcome.

Canon i250 Bubble Jet Printer
Company: Canon
Price: AU$99
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1800 021 167 Epson Stylus C43UX

If you were to judge the value of a printer purely on how large and intimidating it looks, the Epson Stylus C43UX would seem like excellent value; it's easily the largest printer in our roundup, and arguably the most striking in visual appearance, with a combination two-tone grey and black facing. Actual installation involves just a tad more work than with most of the other printers in our tests, inasmuch as the paper tray is a seperate component. Like the Canon i250, the C43UX doesn't use a seperate power brick, choosing instead to incorporate its power adaptor within the body of the printer itself, although it does use a slightly chunkier power cable to light itself up with. Where Epson did draw our admiration was by including a USB cable with the C43UX; with every other printer in our roundup you've got to add a few dollars (or already have a spare cable) before you can begin printing; the C43UX really does work out of the box with what's already supplied.

	Budget printers  Introduction  Canon i250  Epson Stylus C43UX  HP Deskjet 3550  Lexmark z605  How we tested  Editor's Choice  Specifications

If you're someone who likes watching the printer work, then the C43UX will be right up your alley; a transparent area on the front of the printer cover allows you to watch the print heads dart to and fro as they print out pages. It's a slightly noisy unit, albeit not quite as audible as the HP DeskJet 3550.

Text output for both our plain text and colour document pages was exceptionally crisp and clear, but there was a major catch -- it was also remarkably slow. A single page of plain text took 39 seconds to output, some 15 seconds slower than the nearest competition, and even multi-page printing didn't improve matters much. If you can spare the time, though, in the text printing category -- where, to be honest, printing quality was quite close between all units -- the Epson ruled the roost in quality terms, but at the absolute cost of time.

Where the C43UX really fell flat was in our A4 photo printing test, where it took a whopping 36 minutes and 9 seconds to complete printing, eight and a half minutes behind the Lexmark z605. To put that in perspective, the Canon i250 managed the same test in four and a half minutes complete. Again, quality wasn't an issue -- there was little difference between the i250 and C43UX in photo printing quality terms with both producing prints that were better than we'd expect for a printer in this price range -- but you'd want to have a large cup of coffee on the go before starting most photo prints on the C43UX.

Epson's black and colour cartridges sell at competitive prices, only just pipped at the post by the cheaper i250's cartridges. A single black cartridge will cost you AU$18.95 while the colour equivalent  comes in at AU$30.95. With expected page yeilds of 330 and 180 pages respectively, that works out to 5.72c per black page and 17.2c per colour page. Those are very solid figures, making the Epson run second only to the Canon i250 in terms of running costs.

We like the quality of the Epson Stylus C43UX's print output a lot; in a very close field it edges ahead of the competition in normal print text quality in both colour and black, and matches up well with the Canon i250 in photo print quality terms. The big limitation however is that the underlying printer itself is sluggish at best, making it a great unit if you're prepared to wait, and a poor unit if you're not.

Epson Stylus C43UX
Company: Epson Australia
Price: AU$99
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 361 054 HP Deskjet 3550

We suspect that HP's designers were trying to go with the motif of a rolltop desk with the HP Deskjet 3550, but in the end the unit they've produced has more than a touch of a breadbin to it. We were somewhat tempted to see what it would in fact do with a chunk of thick grain bread, but demurred at the last second. The 3550 is a relatively small printer -- in some dimensions smaller than the Lexmark z605, although it is heavier, but still within the semi-portable, semi shiftable category.

	Budget printers  Introduction  Canon i250  Epson Stylus C43UX  HP Deskjet 3550  Lexmark z605  How we tested  Editor's Choice  Specifications

Like every other printer in our roundup, there's little expertise needed to install the HP Deskjet 3550, and like most HP devices the driver installation is quite painless and reasonably useful for the novice printer wanting to get to grips with a possibly unfamiliar technology. The one problem that struck us was with the unit's power supply. The 3550 is the only unit in our roundup to use an external power brick, and it's a bit of a beast to boot. It's heavy and large, and at the printer end it uses a custom connector, meaning replacement could be both expensive and difficult -- compared to the Canon and Epson printers, which both use quite standard power cords, this is something of a drawback.

The 3550 is the only printer in our roundup not to use a simple drop-down printing mechanism where paper loads in from the top. Instead, the 3550 feeds paper back in a loop similar to that found in most photocopiers, so that paper feeds in from the bottom and spits out just above where it initially fed in. Aside from the photo paper, we didn't test the 3550 with very heavy stock paper, but it's a factor that could play against the 3550 if you needed to print on a lot of thick card stock, for example.

The 3550 managed very solid comparative performance in text and colour page printing in our tests, blitzing every other printer in text printing by a very nice margin indeed. It couldn't quite manage the same feat in colour page printing, coming in second to the Canon by around four seconds per page. There was a cost for this speedy performance, however, as the print mechanism used by the 3550 is markedly noisy -- just a tad moreso than the Epson Stylus C43UX, probably due to the 3550's smaller body being less able to absorb printing noise. In photo printing the HP 3550 also came second to the Canon i250 in speed terms, and while it managed to avoid falling into the extremely slow trap of the Lexmark and Epson units, photo quality was only average at best, and according to the HP's driver information, it appeared to eat up an alarming quantity of the unit's ink for each print.

Ink cartridges for the HP Deskjet 3550 come in at AU$34.45 for the black and AU$40.45 for the tricolour cartridges, with an expected yeild of 220 and 190 pages respectively. That equates to around 15.65c per black page and 21.2c per colour page. Those are reasonable prices for what is a budget printer, although both the Epson Stylus C43UX and Canon i250 are cheaper to run again.

Like most of the printers in our roundup, the HP Deskjet 3550's appeal also comes with a certain amount of compromise. If you're after a simple text printer with some colour capabilities, however, it's a solid option.

HP Deskjet 3550
Company: HP Australia
Price: AU$99
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 23 47 Lexmark Z605

Lexmark's z605 Colour Jetprinter is the smallest units in our roundup of budget printers, measuring 13.4 x 40.3 x 21.55cm and weighing in at an extremely portable 1.77kg, nearly 250gm lighter than the next heaviest unit. As such, it'd make a good portable unit if you were on a constricted budget, although naturally there are even smaller alternatives. The z605 is finished out in grey and black tones, giving it a more serious, business-like finish -- or, depending on your viewpoint, a rather dull and pedestrian one.

	Budget printers  Introduction  Canon i250  Epson Stylus C43UX  HP Deskjet 3550  Lexmark z605  How we tested  Editor's Choice  Specifications

Installation of the z605 was practically identical to each of the printers in this roundup. The z605 uses a curious external power adapter that plugs fully into the back of the printer -- so quite why they didn't take the approach of the Canon i250 or Epson Stylus C43UX and simply integrate it within the body is a mystery to us. It does, however, avoid the clunky power adaptor solution used by the HP Deskjet 3550. Our only other complaint against the z605 is that the paper adjustment arm is quite tight, and in our tests it tended to bend photo paper a tad unless in exactly the right position.

Lexmark's printer driver was arguably the easiest to use for novice printer users in our test group, as it encompasses easily guiding users through printing onto multiple media types and with specific applications (text, photo printing and so on). Like every printer in our test group except the Epson, a USB cable isn't supplied, so you'll need to factor that into the total cost of the z605.

The z605's printing performance saw it place third in our printing tests, still well ahead of the very slow Epson unit, but behind the speedy Canon and HP units. Print quality for text pages came in at the bottom of the pile, albeit in a very close race indeed. Text pages had a slight tendency towards smudged text, and our test photo looked rather ordinary. The Epson printer was admittedly even slower at photo printing, but at least there was a good quality result at the end of our wait with that unit.

The z605 has a unique approach to printer consumables within this price range. While every other vendor sells a single black and single tricolour cartridge, Lexmark offers both in two varieties, for users seeking moderate or high yeild printing results. The black cartridge will set you back around AU$33 for the moderate version (205 page) or around AU$47 for the high yeild variant (410 pages). That works out to around 16.1c/page or 11.4c/page respectively for black text, using Lexmark's own yeild figures. Colour cartridges cost around AU$36 for moderate and AU$51 for high yeild units, with page yeilds of 140 and 260 pages respectively. That works out to around 25.7c and 19.6c per page depending on cartridge type. Even with the high yeild cartridges, though, the z605 is still the most expensive printer to run in our comparative feature.

Ultimately the Lexmark z605 doesn't really stand up all that well against any of the given printers we've reviewed here, except in that it's smaller and lighter than most of them, making it only recommendable if you're looking to do a small amount of printing with a unit that may move around quite a bit.

Lexmark z605
Company: Lexmark
Price: AU$99
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 362 192

	Budget printers  Introduction  Canon i250  Epson Stylus C43UX  HP Deskjet 3550  Lexmark z605  How we tested  Editor's Choice  Specifications

Aside from examining the difficulty of setup and any other physical factors, all of the printers in our roundup underwent a series of tests to examine printing quality and speed over plain text, complicated documents with colour elements and photo printing.

Our single page text test used a simple full A4 page of text printing from Microsoft Word to examine the amount of time it took each printer to churn out a single page of ordinary text. While many manufacturers list maximum page per minute details based on draft printing modes, we tested with what each printer described as 'normal' printing quality to get an idea both of printing speeds and normal printing quality of each unit. The ten page text test used the same page printed consecutively to test the throughput of the printer over a period of time, so that any document caching or PC issues could be eliminated from the timed tests.

Our single page colour test was similar in operation to the single page text test, but instead using a corporate document that included colour elements and tables. Like the text test, printers were set to normal quality and assessed on both speed and print quality with a single timed page and ten-page test to elminate any possible PC bottlenecks.

Our photo printing test was performed on a single shot of only average quality, in order to stretch any photo optimisation these printers may contain to the limit. Printing was done through Adobe Photoshop elements and performed using each manufacturer's specified glossy photo paper with any photo enhancements turned on -- we can't see anyone printing on photo paper not wanting to improve their photographs as much as possible, and wanted to see how and if the enhancement process had any effect on overall printing times.

Editor's Choice: Canon i250 Bubble Jet Printer
Highly Commended: Epson Stylus C43UX

	Budget printers  Introduction  Canon i250  Epson Stylus C43UX  HP Deskjet 3550  Lexmark z605  How we tested  Editor's Choice  Specifications

Our Editor's choice for budget printers was an extremely hard one to pick, as with every printer in our tests there were compromises to make and problems to be overcome. Our eventual choice, the Canon i250 has a fairly major one -- no output tray -- but excelled in print quality and especially in print speeds across all of our printing tests. It's also the cheapest unit to run by a good margin, something that's going to be quite important in the low-cost sector.

The Epson Stylus C43UX is an excellent unit when it comes to churning out quality prints, but is hobbled by some extremely slow print speeds -- we really can't recommend it as a photo printer, for example, unless you're very patient indeed. Its relatively low running costs and included USB cable, however, do make it a very good value unit.