How we tested
A portable printer should be able to do two things well. Firstly, and most obviously, it should be able to print, and print well. We looked at details of what formats our test printers could handle, what resolutions they could deal with and any other special features.
Our print testing was done with a single document printed in greyscale and colour. Where necessary, black and colour cartridges were exchanged for those printers that required that step. While it's possible to print a passable black page with a colour or photo cartridge, it's generally of poor quality and a terrible investment in terms of the ink used. Manufacturer's claims of page counts are always nebulous at best. We weighed these claims against the mean number of pages we could actually produce in a minute, averaged over several tests.
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Introduction |
Often print speeds quoted by manufacturers will be for large runs of draft printing. For our printing tests we opted not to use draft modes; while they will produce the fastest text, except in the most extreme circumstances they're not of a quality you'd want to hand on to other people in a travelling environment. Most users will generally just click "Print" and not assess printer settings, so we used normal printing settings on plain paper. Where a printer was capable of additional printing styles as a feature, it was noted.
The second factor to consider with a portable printer was how portable it actually was. This isn't just a matter of having the smallest printing box, however. If the paper tray is huge and unwieldy, or the power supply is a 3kg millstone, then the smallest printer in the world suddenly becomes the least convenient to carry around. We assessed printers on their size, weight, and overall ease of transport in working out the benefits and drawbacks of each printer.
2%
4%
my BJC-55 just can't print in color with my Nokia 9210. I'm using Canon Bubblejet (BJ mode) driver.