Canon Pixma Home TS9160
QUALITY PHOTOS WITHOUT THE HASSLE.
HIGH-END PHOTO PRINTERS are great, but are overkill for most home users. Likewise, that super affordable all in one printer doesn’t really cut it for printing out quality photos at home. The Canon Pixma TS9160 attempts to provide the best of both worlds — it’s a copier, printer and scanner, but uses a six-ink system. The TS9160 is a little different from the competition, and adds photo Black and photo Blue to the normal Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and document black inks. The advantage is that the printer can produce a wider range of colours to more accurately show off your pictures, as well as reduce graininess. It works, too, and the photos are noticeably better than a standard printer, but of course not quite on par with very high-end photo printers, or the better lab prints.
The TS9160 can handle paper size up to A4, has a 4,800 x 1,200dpi resolution and spits out a 6 x 4-inch photo in about 30 seconds. It can connect via Wi-Fi or USB and can print directly from an SD card. It can also connect to a smartphone, handles cloud printing, and can customise photos with text, frames and other decorations. The printer features a large 5-inch touchscreen, which was by far the nicest interface we have used on a printer. It’s also great for churning out documents and can feed paper in from the front or rear.
A full set of high-yield cartridges costs around $130, so per 6 x 4-inch photo, expect to pay 30–40 cents, plus paper costs.