Mobile printing can be a pain, whether you head to the copy shop or find a hotel business centre. Our Australian review examines five different options for printing on the road.
If you find you need to create printed copies on the move, you've generally got one option; pay a large sum of money to somebody, be that a hotel business centre or the local printing centre. If you find yourself continuously in this predicament, however, the cost of getting pages printed will quickly stack up, and it may be worth looking at purchasing a mobile printer.
Printers in this category are still predominantly inkjets; it's much easier to make a small ink printing head than a laser one, and the use of cheaper commodity parts keeps the prices within suitably tolerable levels. An inkjet may still sting you with the prices of the replacement inks, especially if you need to print a lot of colour pages, although over time you'd still see a decent return compared to the cost of having colour prints made up for you.
These five printers fall into two distinct categories. There's three truly portable mini-printers suitable for shoving into a briefcase or laptop bag. Then we've looked at two different inkjet printers that could conceivably be placed into a suitcase or similar bag. These last two aren't the only ones in their class; many inkjet printers now have relatively small footprints. The advantage with buying a small-but-regular inkjet is that you don't pay the absolute premium price that the very small portable printers carry.
Ultraportables
Canon BJC-55
Canon brings the smallest printer in our roundup to the fore, although users will pay a premium price for keeping things this small.
Canon BJC-85
The BJC-85 offers the cheapest printer in the ultraportable range, but the price you pay is in having somewhat older technology.
HP Deskjet 450
If there's a technology that HP could bolt onto the Deskjet 450, then it's been done, from bluetooth printing to compact flash card reading.
Luggables
Canon S200SP
Canon's S200SP is a small printer with surprisingly cheap ink refills.
Lexmark Z25
Lexmark's Z25 offers a very cheap printing experience, although it is the largest printer in our roundup.
10%
8%
my BJC-55 just can't print in color with my Nokia 9210. I'm using Canon Bubblejet (BJ mode) driver.