Put it in print

Six A4 budget photo printers on test

Image quality often seems to lose a little in the translation between screen and paper-based print. Muddy colours, blotchy skin tones and a lack of vibrancy can ruin the best of photos if you’re using a second-rate printer. For the utmost in highfidelity home printing, you need a photo-friendly inkjet printer. And for photos, nowadays it’s become a two-horse race between Canon and Epson.

Canon has long majored on combined document/ photo printers that use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) dye-based inks, with an additional pigment-based black ink for richness in document printing. Epson has more recently followed suit, with its own range of five-ink printers. Even so, Epson also still offers six-ink photo printers, with a more conventional ‘photo’ range of dye-based inks that add light cyan and light magenta to the standard CMYK mix. As you’d expect nowadays, all printers on test have built-in Wi-Fi connectivity.