Dell wants to ride the wave of colour - both in photos and corporate documents - to greater market share in printers. The Round Rock, Texas, company, which has been making a run at the printer market since 2003 is emphasising the photo-handling capabilities of its all-in-one inkjet photo printer line for consumers this holiday season with the release of two new models. The top-of-the-line Photo AIO Printer 944 reviewed here is excellent value for money considering it offers print, copy, scan and fax functionality, but its paper handling and performance is lacking and it takes forever to print high-quality A4 photos. If you want a stylish package with lots of features it's fantastic value, but there are much better products for not a lot more money which offer far superior print, copy and scan quality.

Pros: Attractive cost & design; flatbed scanner; fax; LCD & card slots
Cons: Poor print & scan quality; slow print speed; faxing requires PC


The entry-level Photo AIO Printer 924 (£59 ex. VAT) is aimed at users with basic needs, and the Photo AIO Printer 944 (reviewed here), is better suited to home and small office users. The new multifunction printers come with photo capabilities, including PictBridge, and sport a relatively stylish and compact design. Designed primarily for colour print projects, the Photo AIO Printer 924 and Photo AIO Printer 944 also offer the ability to scan, copy and print in colour. The 944 adds PC-dependant fax functionality.

Each all-in-one device weighs 5.9kg and has a relatively small footprint of 445x290x437mm, making them suitable for home or small office use where space is at a premium. With a new arctic white-and-alpine silver design, the printers also look relatively modern. Both models are compatible with Microsoft's Windows 2000, XP and XP 64-bit, so Mac and Linux users are out of luck.

The models are relatively fast and offer claimed print speeds of up to 20ppm (pages per minute) in black and up to 16ppm in colour for the Photo AIO Printer 924 and up to 20ppm in black/16ppm in colour for the Photo 944. However, in our tests a a 6x4in. Borderless photo took 2m 52s and an A4 borerless photo took a staggering 8m 44s. The Photo AIO Printer 944 further adds a USB memory card slot and a 2.4-inch LCD display for enhanced standalone photo printing. They both come with 32MB of SDRAM memory and a single USB 2.0 high-speed port, and have a maximum monthly duty cycle of 3000 pages-per-month. The printer's have an expected life of 18000 pages.

The printers have a relatively low print resolution of 1200x1200dpi pixels and up to 300x300ppi scan resolution at 48-bit colour (600x600ppi in black and white). Both offer a PictBridge port, 8-in-2 memory card slots (Compact Flash I/II, Microdrive, MMC, SD, Memory Stick, Smart Media, xD-Picture Card), and USB port, allowing you to print photos direct from a digital camera without the need for a computer. They also include an automatic paper sensor that can sense plain paper, photo paper or transparencies. The sensor automatically adjusts the print settings to deliver optimal print quality.

Each all-in-one device ships with a USB cable and Optional Character Recognition (OCR) software - courtesy of ABBYY - which allows scanning of printed documents for editing with any word processing program. Other software includes Dell's Ink Management System, which alerts you when ink runs low, with a direct link to Dell's 24/7 online ordering service.

Setting up and configuring the printer is relatively easy, although you do have to navigate its on-screen menu immediately to set the menu language. You also have to insert two print cartridges, making sure you place the black and colour/photo tanks correctly into the their respective slots. Usefully the on-screen menu informs you if you have made an error, which helps to reduce paper wastage. The operator panel buttons allow you to scan, copy, and customise documents independently from your computer. It displays scanning, copying, faxing, and printing options as well as status and error messages.

The silver arrow buttons are used to navigate menus and menu items, decrease/increase number of copies, change the selected mode, and navigate photos on photo card or digital camera, while the select button lets you choose an image to be printed (in Photo mode) and initiate a paper feed by holding the button for 3 seconds.

There's also a Start button to initiate a copy, scan, or fax, Cancel button to stop a scan, print, or copy job in progress, and a Menu button to enter or exit a menu. The Cancel button is also used to eject a page, exit a menu and return to the default settings. While fairly easy to operate, it was unclear at times whether we had to press the Select or Start button, which often resulted in us navigating through a seemingly never-ending range of options.

The Photo AIO Printer 944 offers borderless colour inket printing using a 6-colour print process, which is impressive for an sub-£100 printer. Media sizes supported are also praiseworthy, comprising Bullet, Letter, Legal, Executive, Statement, A4, B5, A5, A6, postcard (4x6-inch), index card (3x5-inch), Hagaki card, L, 2L, and Banner.

It also supports standard paper, photo/glossy paper, coated paper, card stock, envelope, transparencies, labels, banner, and iron-on transfers, so is much more flexible than a regular inkjet printer. On the downside, the 100-sheet paper-input tray is a little aggressive and the paper guides - which need to rest against the edges of the paper - are quite difficult to move. The paper-out tray is virtually pointless too, as there are no edges to support outputted media.

Copying documents using the operator panel is a snap and the range of options are relatively comprehensive. For instance, you can choose copy quality, select paper size, select the original document size, lighten or darken your document, as well as reduce or enlarge your document. There are also borderless printing options, you can select the colour depth and scan resolution, auto-crop the scanned image, straighten images after scan (deskew), sharpen blurry images, adjust the brightness of an image, and adjust the colour correction curve (gamma) of your image. Of course, you can also enlarge (up to 200 per cent) or reduce a copy and set the number of copies (1 to 99).

Sending a fax is a little more complicated because you need to have the printer attached to a computer that is equipped with a modem and has Microsoft's Fax utility installed. Once installed, you can place your document on the scanner glass (making sure the upper left corner aligns with the arrow on the printer), enter fax mode on the printer and then press the Start button. Alternatively, you can use the supplied All-In-One Center software to initiate the scan. To receive a fax you'll have to make sure that you've setup Windows' Fax Console or Fax Service Management utilities. [6.5]

BIOS, Oct 21, 05 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In All-in-One printer