Best affordable Mac If you want Apple's OS X experience, but don't want to pend thousands, the Mac Mini gives you a great desktop experience for under $500 to start. Inkjet and laser printers have become more affordable and increasingly full-featured. View our ratings and reviews and browse our buying guide to find the best printer for your home or office. OfficeJet Pro 8720 Wireless All-in-One Photo Printer. The best printer on the market. Easily copes with the demands of home and office. Rivals machines costing five times as much. Currently, the best office printer is the HP LaserJet Pro 500. Wiki researchers have been writing reviews of the latest small business printers since 2016.
Your guide
If you’re a photo enthusiast ready to make the leap to creating your own gallery-quality prints at home, the most flexible option is an inkjet printer. After spending a total of 76 hours of research and side-by-side testing during various iterations of this guide, the best inkjet printer for making long-lasting, high-quality photographic prints up to 13 inches wide is the $800 Epson SureColor P600. It delivers professional-quality color prints, black-and-white photographs that are as close to traditional darkroom prints as any comparable digital method you’ll find, and uses pigment inks that produce photographs more fade resistant than anything you’d typically get from an online print service. The P600 lets you print on a wider variety of media than rival models from Canon and its touchscreen control panel makes changing settings and performing maintenance faster and easier than with previous Epson printers.
Our pickEpson SureColor P600
The P600 delivers excellent print quality and solid performance along with a flip-up color LCD touchscreen for faster setup and maintenance.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $787.
The SureColor P600 13-inch wide inkjet printer (the measurement refers to maximum paper width, not the size of the unit) is one of Epson’s newest pigment ink desktop inkjet printers sold under the SureColor moniker (which is slowly replacing Epson’s highly-regarded Stylus Photo-brand). At a street price of nearly $800, the P600 is no impulse buy, but it offers a nine-color pigment-ink formulation (UltraChrome HD), high-capacity ink cartridges, roll paper printing, a paper feed designed for thick fine art media, and a dedicated black and white (B&W) printing mode alongside conveniences like a tilting touchscreen control panel and built-in Wi-Fi connectivity to go along with its wired Ethernet and USB ports. If you’re after the convenience and high degree of control that printing at home offers, you’ll appreciate the outstanding quality, print longevity, and nearly limitless paper choices that the P600 offers.
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Also greatCanon Pixma Pro-100
The Pro-100 makes great-looking color prints for personal use but because it uses dye inks, its photos are susceptible to fading over time.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $370.
If you’re not comfortable spending $800 and print longevity isn’t your top priority, the $379 Canon Pixma Pro-100 is a great lower-priced alternative, offering great-looking color prints and faster print speeds than any of the photo printers we tested. Like our top pick, you can print on sheets as wide as 13 inches. The Pro-100 uses dye inks, which deliver very rich, vibrant colors on glossy paper surfaces, but the resulting prints are more susceptible to fading than those from a pigment ink printer.
Also greatCanon Pixma Pro-10
A great buy when its price drops below $500, the Pro-10 makes excellent and long-lasting prints. Its B&W output can’t quite match that of our top pick. And if you print on thick fine art matte papers you’ll have to settle for a smaller printable area as well.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $700.
If our main pick goes out of stock (or you’re willing to sacrifice a bit of flexibility for a lower operating cost), we recommend the Canon Pixma Pro-10. Like our top pick, it uses pigment inks for maximum longevity of your prints. And it’s per-print cost is about 20 cents less than the Epson’s. But even so, with fewer black ink dilutions (shades like gray and light gray, for example), its black-and-white output is capable of as much fine detail in highlights and shadows as the P600. Disappointing, though, is that the Pro-10, like all recent Pixma Pro models, requires a wide image border —1.2 inches on all sides—when printing on thick fine art matte papers. On the same media, the P600 can print all the way to the edge of the paper.
Everything we recommendOur pickEpson SureColor P600
The P600 delivers excellent print quality and solid performance along with a flip-up color LCD touchscreen for faster setup and maintenance.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $787.
Also greatCanon Pixma Pro-100
The Pro-100 makes great-looking color prints for personal use but because it uses dye inks, its photos are susceptible to fading over time.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $370.
Also greatCanon Pixma Pro-10
A great buy when its price drops below $500, the Pro-10 makes excellent and long-lasting prints. Its B&W output can’t quite match that of our top pick. And if you print on thick fine art matte papers you’ll have to settle for a smaller printable area as well.
Buying OptionsBest Printers For Mac Computers
*At the time of publishing, the price was $700.
The researchWhy you should trust me
I’ve been covering printers and camera gear here at the Wirecutter since 2013 and have worked as a professional photographer and digital imaging consultant for almost 15 years. I also ran my own digital printmaking shop for a nearly a decade, producing photographic prints on wide format inkjet printers. I’m on the faculty of New York City’s International Center of Photography and lead photography workshops around the country.
Why an inkjet printer?
Out of the thousands of entries that turn up in an Amazon search for “photo printer,” there are just a handful of models you’d actually want to consider for purely photographic output.
If you’re looking for a portable printer and only need to make postcard sized-prints, dye-sublimation printers (dyes are quickly heated from a solid form to transfer onto paper) retail for less than $90 and make postcard-sized prints at an attractive per-print cost of less than 40 cents. Mike Pasini, editor of photo enthusiast blog Photo Corners, tells me these have long made “quality 4-by-6 prints on glossy stock,” but the domestic market for these models has declined significantly as multifunction inkjet printers have become more and more capable of delivering quality photographic output.
Multifunction inkjet printers come in a wide range of output sizes and provide the option of making larger 8½-by-11 prints (some can even do 11-by-17); multifunction models offer document scanning and copying as well, making them even better choices for most users who are interested in more than photo prints. While dye-sublimation printers like the Canon CP910, a portable wireless unit that spits out 4-by-6 prints on glossy paper, can boast of true continuous tone output (colors are laid down as single hues instead of being made up of tiny individual dots), the reality is that inkjet printers long ago passed the threshold of producing smooth photorealistic results when viewed with the naked eye. Today, inkjet prints can be found in the collections of the top galleries and museums.
Inkjet printers work by spraying incredibly fine droplets of ink onto specially coated paper, giving the illusion of continuous tone photorealistic output. In fact, with current technology, you need a high magnification loupe to make out the individual dot patterns. There are, of course, other methods of printing, like digital chromogenic prints that use lasers to expose photographic paper to light. Those require industrial-grade machines well beyond the realm of in-home use.
Who should buy this?
If you already own a 13-inch capable photo inkjet printer, you should probably sit tight. Photo printer technology is so mature that you won’t see much (if any) difference in print quality between a printer made today and one released even five years ago. Output from the P600, for example, is largely indistinguishable from that of its predecessor, the Epson R3000, with the exception of noticeably richer blacks when printing on fine art matte papers. The rise of social media has greatly reduced the demand for physical prints. And for those with an occasional need to print high-quality photos, many online print services exist, and are credible alternatives to a home printer. As a result there are only two players left in the American home photo printer market: Canon and Epson. And they don’t upgrade models frequently. In 2015, we’re just starting to see replacement models for printers introduced way back in 2011.
If you don’t already own a photo inkjet printer, the first thing you should know is that getting one is not about saving money. Our pick is $800, a full set of replacement inks runs more than $280, and you also have to factor in paper costs (and, of course, your time). If you’re a casual hobbyist who occasionally wants to create physical mementos of life’s special moments and milestones, there are many in-store and online print services available, many at very low prices. Simply put, if your printing needs are limited to either making the occasional lone print or churning out large quantities of 4-by-6 family photos around the holidays, you’ll save time, effort, and money by using a print service. I’ll talk more about these options a bit later.
While these 13-inch printers are marketed as “desktop” models, be aware that they will take up the majority of any home office desk. Our top pick, the Epson P600, weighs 35 pounds and has a footprint that’s just over two feet wide and more than 14 inches deep with its paper trays in their closed position. That’s just slightly smaller than the Epson P800, which can print on papers up to 17 inches wide. You’ll also need ample room both in front of and behind the actual unit for paper loading and retrieval.
But home printing is a great option for photographers who print at least a few times a month, want the flexibility of printing at any time that’s convenient, enjoy selecting from an incredibly wide range of papers on which to print, and revel in the ability to make finely-tuned adjustments to an image after evaluating an initial print. If these possibilities excite you, owning a photo printer can be a very rewarding experience.
Crafting a high-quality print that precisely matches your expectations is one of the great pleasures of photography. How do I know this? I ran my own digital printmaking boutique service in New York City for nearly a decade. Using large format inkjet printers and a range of printable media, I worked with both amateur photographers producing prints to hang in their homes and artists exhibiting their work in galleries around the world. One thing that continually surprised clients was how the same image could result in a dramatically different print depending on the paper we chose. A glossy sheet, a heavily textured matte paper, or a canvas stock will each impart its own look and feel to an image. As a result, one of my most important interactions with clients was in determining the right medium for a particular image. Owning your own printer offers flexibility in terms of paper choice that is almost impossible to match. And you can tweak your image files after looking at an actual print to ensure that the final result is exactly what you envisioned.
The size and quality of the image file you send to the printer plays an absolutely crucial role in how good the print looks. If you shoot with a DSLR like the Nikon D7200 or a high-end mirrorless camera like the Fujifilm X-T1, your image files can feature a wide range of details from highlight to shadow. Our pick, the Epson P600, can render these tones beautifully on paper, while a sub-$100 multifunction printer will yield flat areas with no detail.
Spending $800 on a printer to output files from a $300 point-and-shoot camera or $200 smartphone is like buying a sports car for trips to the grocery store.
Can you make satisfying prints with images from a decidedly more entry-level camera? Of course. Tyler Boley, a master printer and owner of the Custom Digital print shop, has actually taken photos from an iPhone and made prints as wide as 13 inches, describing the results as “quite astonishingly good.” But make no mistake. Spending $800 on a printer to output files from a $300 point-and-shoot camera or $200 smartphone is like buying a sports car for trips to the grocery store. These entry-level cameras will rarely capture fine enough detail or sufficient tonal range to exceed what much less expensive printers can render. And because you’re starting with lower-resolution files to begin with, you’re limited to how much of the image you can crop and still have enough pixels to make a large print. My rule of thumb is that for optimal results you want a minimum of 240-300 pixels per inch (ppi) at your desired print dimensions.
How we picked
In seeking out the best inkjet photo printer, I spent hours poring over manufacturers’ spec sheets and reading reviews from authoritative sources. Starting with a list of dozens of photo printers I quickly narrowed down candidates to inkjet models capable of printing up to 13 inches wide (I’ll explain why in a moment). This eliminated the vast majority of multifunction printers like the $110 Canon Pixma MG7520 and $60 HP Envy 4500, which can only print on paper up to 8½ inches wide. These models also use dye inks designed to be used with ultra glossy, swellable papers (these contain a thin coating that actually swells to absorb the ink, preventing it from rubbing off). Because this absorption process is slow, dye inks can take “from several minutes to several hours to dry,” according to RIT’s Image Permanence Institute. Handle the print while it’s still wet and the inks can easily smear, meaning you’ve got to start over again.
Why limit the choices to a 13-inch printer? A model of this size obviously gives you the option of making a larger print. “The home user isn’t going to make many of these prints but a 13-by-19 print of your own hanging on the wall is a real joy you don’t appreciate until you make one from an image that matters to you…something you can look at over and over again with pleasure,” says Pasini. You can also save on paper costs by ganging up several smaller prints on a single sheet, cutting them down after you print. And even if you only print a single image per sheet, having a larger sheet area can give you a wide, aesthetically pleasing paper border when framing your image.
Shopping for a 13-inch-wide printer also eliminates the chance of choosing a dud. Any current 13-inch-wide model is going to have at least six ink colors (in individual cartridges), let you print on both matte and glossy photo papers (as well as inkjet-compatible CDs/DVDs) and will be capable of producing great-looking prints.
Armed with these criteria, I was left with just a handful of models to choose from. Some, like the Epson Artisan 1430, lack the gray inks needed to make finely detailed black-and-white prints. I brought in the remaining candidates for side-by-side print comparisons as well as long-term evaluations of their performance and reliability. For a more detailed look at what we dismissed and why please see our competition section.
How we tested
When evaluating photo printers in-house we looked at ease of use, performance and, of course, print quality. Ink usage is difficult to quantify with any precision because the amount you use is dependent on the type and size of images you print. We therefore settled on cartridge size and price, giving us a cost-per-mL figure to use in comparing operating costs between different models. We set up each printer on a home Wi-Fi network and compared speed over cable connections and wireless (the latter were a lot slower). For all other tests, we used a USB connection between the printer and computer.
We printed on both glossy and matte papers up to 13 inches wide using paper stock and (for color images) ICC profiles provided by the printer vendor. For black-and-white prints, we used the monochrome-only modes in the printer drivers at their default settings, disabling color management options in Photoshop and Lightroom. This delivered the most neutral and color-consistent output from each printer. We printed images at the printers’ default resolutions and viewed prints using professional color-corrected viewing booths. While using the absolute highest settings did, in some cases, produce more detailed results (at the cost of much longer print times), the differences were slight enough that we recommend the default settings for most users.
Using the testing methods above, we compared our photo inkjet prints to those from two online print services using identical image files. You can see the results below in our online print services section.
Print it yourself vs. online services
The decision whether to print at home or to use one of the dozens of online print providers can be a difficult one, especially since print quality can vary dramatically between them. Jim Harmer, owner of the enthusiast site Improve Photography, conducted an online print comparison among 11 national service providers. He found there was a wide range of print quality that often had no correlation to print cost.
A second challenge is that the size of print and quantity of your order can actually determine the types of services available. High volume services like Shutterfly or your local Walgreens (which offers online ordering) will be using a digital laser-based device to expose your image onto silver halide papers, typically a Fujifilm Crystal glossy or matte stock. You can order anything from 4-by-6 prints to a 20-by-30 poster. Where these outfits are most compelling, though, is with bulk orders of small prints. We’ve seen promotions offering 300 4-by-6 prints for $30!
Higher-end boutique printing companies, on the other hand, will offer “fine art” inkjet prints (which typically offer greater longevity by using pigment inks) and a wider variety of media choices. Yet the inkjet printing process is significantly more time-consuming and labor intensive than a photo lab’s laser-based printers. Therefore, most boutique print shops shy away from “onesies” like a single 8-by-10 print order, for example.
It’s not uncommon to see order minimums of between $125-250 from these high-end print shops. We’ve even seen some who require “proof” that you’re a professional photographer before allowing you to place an order on the site. So high-end inkjet printing may not even be an option if you just need to make a small print or two.
Terrance Reimer, master printer at specialty boutique lab West Coast Imaging, explains that “[with] a small team focused on the very unique needs and expectations of the exhibiting fine art photographer, it’s much more than just sending a print through an automated system. Everything is hands-on and custom. Because of that, we have some minimum order requirements for new customers.”
The big question, of course, is how home prints compare to those you can order online. To find out, we took two images (one a color portrait, the second a black-and-white landscape) and printed them as 8-by-10s on both the Epson P600 and the Canon Pixma Pro-100. We then sent identical files to Snapfish, one of the most popular online providers, and Aspen Creek Photo, a sister company of West Coast Imaging created specifically to address the low-volume needs of photo hobbyists.
The Epson P600 color print was a reasonably accurate reproduction of the digital file (main image above), displaying a neutral color balance with pleasing skin tone. The print from Aspen Creek Photo was made on a digital laser-based printer. The result was very good, demonstrating excellent detail and sharpness. The Canon Pro-100 also had great detail and printed both lighter and warmer than the Epson print. While the Epson P600 print was to our eyes preferable, we’re confident most hobbyists would be happy with a print from either of these sources.
We ordered the Snapfish print online, and with local pickup we were able to have the file printed at a nearby Walgreens. It was ready within fewer than two hours; a great convenience. The result was extremely disappointing, however. The print was overly contrasty and dark, with orange skin tones. Perhaps we could have gotten a different result from another Walgreens location, but an output that varies greatly from store to store detracts a lot from the convenience factor.
At its default ABW (Advanced Black and White) print settings, the Epson P600 print lacked a bit of detail in deep shadows but had a pleasing (if slightly cool) tone compared to the neutral tone of the original digital file (main image above). The black-and-white print from Aspen Creek had good shadow detail and a similar tint to the Epson print. In B&W mode, the Canon Pro-100 printed a bit lighter than the original with good shadow detail and with a warmer tint than the Epson print.
The Snapfish print lacked detail in both shadows and highlights, had a distinct color cast, and was significantly over-sharpened, easily the worst print of the bunch. The big surprise here was that the the 8-by-10 Snapfish prints cost $4 each, while the same size prints at Aspen Creek Photo were only $2. And the latter prints were easily more than twice as good. In addition, the Snapfish prints were automatically enlarged to make a borderless 8-by-10 print, meaning significant portions of the image were cropped on all sides.
If you choose to print online, you may well have to go through some trial and error to find a service of suitable quality. With a home printer like the Epson P600, you’re getting excellent quality that you can rely on print after print.
Our pickOur pickEpson SureColor P600
The P600 delivers excellent print quality and solid performance along with a flip-up color LCD touchscreen for faster setup and maintenance.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $787.
These are truly gallery-quality prints that can provide many years of viewing pleasure whether you’re hanging them on your own wall or selling them to others.
The $800 Epson P600 consistently delivers outstanding color and black-and-white photos that provide greater image detail and more accurate colors on prints that will last longer than anything you can get from a typical online photo service. These are truly gallery-quality prints that can provide many years of viewing pleasure whether you’re hanging them on your own wall or selling them to others. The printer accepts a wide range of inkjet-compatible media up to 13 inches wide, from photo lab-quality glossy paper and fine-art oriented sheets that mimic classic darkroom prints to CDs/DVDs and even sheets of metal up to 1.3 mm thick.
Its newly formulated pigment-based UltraChrome HD inkset gives noticeably richer blacks than previous Epson models when printing on fine art matte papers and comes in nine individual large capacity cartridges. Epson reports that in lab tests it commissioned from the Wilhelm Research Institute, prints using these inks on both glossy and matte papers have up to twice the print permanence of previous Epson inks. Accelerated print longevity tests can only provide an approximation of what you can expect in real-world conditions. So claims like “Your print will last 200 years before fading” should be taken with a grain of salt. You can take comfort, however, in the fact that the longevity performance of the P600 places it among the best consumer options for making prints that will resist fading and discoloration better than traditional analog photographic prints.
The P600’s nine-color inkset can print dots as small as two picoliters (two trillionths of a liter).
The P600’s nine-color inkset can print dots as small as two picoliters (two trillionths of a liter). In addition to the standard CMY (Cyan, Magenta and Yellow) inks, the printer uses Light Cyan, Vivid Magenta, Vivid Light Magenta, Photo Black (for glossy media), Matte Black (for matte papers), Light Black, and Light Light Black.
You’ll find similar “light” ink dilutions among competing models in this price range, all surpassing the four and six-color inksets of sub $200 photo printers. These additional inks expand the range of colors the printer can produce and allow for smooth transitions in both light and dark areas of the print that show very fine details. If your only digital printing experience is with an inexpensive multifunction printer, you’ll immediately notice the difference in prints with the P600; accurate colors in landscapes with subtle details, portraits that show smooth skin tones in shadow areas and black-and-white prints that are pleasingly neutral in appearance, without garish green or magenta color casts.
The P600 uses large 25.9-mL cartridges. With a street price of $32 per cartridge, this works out to an ink cost of $1.28 per mL, not quite as cheap as our alternate pick, the Canon Pro-10. The P600 has a much lower operating cost than multifunction printers, which have smaller cartridges that can cost more than $2/mL for ink.
The P600 comes with detailed setup instructions. After unpacking the 35-pound printer you’ll spend a fair bit of time installing the ink cartridges (shake each one vigorously before inserting it) and waiting for the printer to prime its ink lines once you’ve done so. With the P600 Epson introduces a tilting color touchscreen display which speeds along the process with step-by-step guidance and illustrations that make setup easy; the complete setup and installation process took us about 30 minutes from unboxing to handling the first print.
In daily use the color display makes it easy to verify remaining ink levels, giving you plenty of advance notice before any of the cartridges need replacing. The touchscreen is a convenience that allows swapping inks for matte and glossy papers and routine maintenance like nozzle checks and head cleanings to be done directly from the printer. A step-by-step onscreen guide makes this easier and more foolproof than on previous Epson models. Not having to call up the printer utility on your computer to do this actually makes initiating the whole process much faster.
The P600 can accommodate a wide range of media. Its manual paper feed can handle media up to 1.3 mm thick, allowing you to use significantly thicker media than a model like our runner-up, the Canon Pixma Pro-10, which only accepts sheets up to 0.6 mm thick. While many users will be happy to print on more traditional, thin paper stock, the P600 will let you experiment with alternative media like inkjet-compatible metal sheets.
A few reviewers have complained of having to make multiple attempts when manually loading thick sheets through the front-feeding slot because the printer’s paper skew sensor was a bit too sensitive and kept forcing them to reload. We haven’t experienced that problem here, though we did request a replacement unit from Epson after the first P600 we were sent wouldn’t let us load through the front-feeder at all. Epson says our unit was likely damaged during shipping, resulting in an obstruction of the paper path, and the replacement unit has worked flawlessly.
You can connect the P600 to your computer via USB or wired Ethernet. The printer also has built-in Wi-Fi (helpful if you need to share the printer among multiple computers in separate rooms), and comes with a mobile app for direct printing from iOS and Android devices. These wireless options are much slower than wired printing, however, nearly doubling your print times. And if your print workflow includes using third-party papers with custom profiles, you’ll find color management options in the mobile apps much more limited than those in the desktop print driver.
Who else likes our pick
Reviewers have been uniformly positive in their impressions of the P600, not surprising since it shares so much in the way of features and performance with the much-loved Epson R3000.
Computer Shopper reviewer William Harrel finds the P600 to be a worthy successor to Epson’s previous photo printers. “If you look back over the six-year span of these [Epson] machines,” he writes, “you’ll see that while they have changed considerably in terms of ease of use and other features, the one constant has been their excellent print quality.” He also extols the virtues of having a professional quality printer at your disposal, saying for “semi-pro photographers, [or] other types of artists...this is one of those products that can make you giddy with anticipation...wait until you see what it can do for your photos and fine art. When you’re in creative mode, few things are as valuable as having the ability to print trial runs, or the ability to make changes and then print them immediately.”
Keith Cooper of Northlight Images calls the P600 “an easy to set up and use A3+ printer that produced excellent quality prints for colour and black & white.” He appreciated the convenience of the tilting touchscreen display, saying “From a usability point of view it's a definite step forward.”
Vincent Oliver at Amateur Photographer likes the convenience of seeing the printer’s ink levels displayed by default on the touchscreen. Of the printer’s durability, he writes “The overall build quality of the SC-P600 is of a very high standard, with sturdy trays that don’t give the impression they are going to fall apart with heavy use.” He was especially impressed with the P600’s monochrome output, saying “The black & white photograph on our test print maintains good shadow and highlight detail, and has the feel of a quality darkroom print.”
David Stone of PCMag likes that you don’t need to print at the P600’s highest-quality (and much slower) 5760 dpi mode to get outstanding results. “Even with the driver set for Speed [mode], the output quality for both graphics and photos is superb, and easily in the top tier for inkjets. The improvement for the Maximum Quality setting is visible...but for most people most of the time, the Speed setting should be more than good enough. For people without a trained eye the difference may not even be visible.”
Writing for Popular Photography Andrew Darlow was impressed with the performance of the Ultrachrome HD inkset. “In assessing image quality,” he writes, “one of the SureColor P600’s greatest strengths is the density of the deep shadow areas. This counts among its chief advantages over every other pigment inkjet printer we’ve reviewed to date. The increased density was noticeable with all the media we tested...monochrome prints made using Epson’s Advanced Black and White mode (built into the driver) produced stunning results on all the papers we tested.”
Luminous-Landscape editor Michael Reichmann was particularly impressed with the darker blacks the P600 produced on matte papers. “Printing on various rag papers using the Matte black ink I was immediately taken by how much richer the blacks were. This is a really big deal – at least it is for me – because I prefer printing on slightly textured rag papers, but usually don’t because the blacks are not rich enough. Well – now they are. This new ink set rocks when it comes to Matte black.”
Flaws but not dealbreakers
A long-standing complaint about Epson printers is the costly ink purge involved when switching between Matte Black and Photo Black. They share the same ink line to the print head. According to Epson, this causes about three mL of ink to be flushed from the ink line. The P600 does offer an econo mode option for making the switch that wastes less ink, but you’re still throwing out perfectly good ink every time you switch. Canon’s printers, by virtue of having separate ink lines for each of their black inks, offer a much more seamless and less costly switch between matte and glossy papers.
The P600 will certainly feel slow if you’ve only used document printers. In our tests at the 1440-dpi setting, an 8-by-10 glossy print took 3 minutes and 18 seconds from paper feed to finished print. While this falls right in line with what dpreview found for the rival Canon Pixma Pro-10, it is slower than our runner-up pick, the dye-ink Canon Pixma Pro-100, which we timed at a brisk 1 minute and 37 seconds even at its highest quality setting.
While Wi-Fi connectivity is convenient, be aware that its use leads to the slowest possible print speeds. The 3 minute 18 second print time I just mentioned was with a USB connection. Using a Wi-Fi connection on my home network, the same print took 5 minutes and 44 seconds from paper feed to print eject.
While the P600 can print on any number of papers, Epson has always stubbornly refused to provide media settings or ICC profiles for any papers other than their own, requiring you to seek out these profiles yourself from paper manufacturers’ sites. Canon, by contrast includes third-party paper profiles in both its print drivers and on its website, an approach we’d sorely love to see Epson adopt.
Long-term test notes
We've used the Epson SureColor P600 in house for just over six months without any significant issues. It still makes great-looking prints with a minimum of fuss. This result isn't surprising, as inkjet printers, particularly at this price level, can be expected to deliver years of solid service. The only real maintenance issue with pigment-ink printers arises from extended periods of inactivity: If you regularly go several weeks without making a print, nozzles on the print head can get clogged temporarily with pigment particles.
Best Photo Printers For Mac 2018 Collections
Occasionally, if our printer has been idle for more than a few weeks, we've had to run a head-cleaning cycle (an automated process) to fix the clog, but that's been the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of the time, we fire up the printer, and the first print looks great.
Budget pick (for personal use)Also greatCanon Pixma Pro-100
The Pro-100 makes great-looking color prints for personal use but because it uses dye inks, its photos are susceptible to fading over time.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $370.
If $800 for the P600 is more than you’re willing to spend, we recommend the $379 dye-ink Canon Pixma Pro-100. This is a great choice if you’ll only be making prints for personal use, as opposed to selling editions of your work. It makes vibrant, professional-looking prints faster than any other 13-inch photo inkjet we found. At less than half the cost of our top pick, users who may occasionally skip a month between making prints can more easily justify the upfront expense. Because it uses dye inks, however, its prints won’t stand up over time as well as those from a pigment inkjet, and the Pro-100 can’t handle the super thick sheets that our top pick can.
Dye ink printers produce more saturated output than pigment ink printers. The downside is print longevity, as dye ink will fade faster. If you only store your images in photo albums, Canon claims the Pro-100 can resist noticeable fading for up to 100 years in proper storage conditions. We suggest taking those numbers with a grain of salt, as they’re extrapolated estimates based on lab tests. In a paper presented at CES in 2012, print permanence expert Henry Wilhelm and his colleagues at the Wilhelm Research Institute note, “meaningful, comparative test methods for...bound photobooks may be difficult or impossible to develop – there are simply too many variables involved.”
But if you’ll be hanging prints on your wall where they’re exposed to sunlight and airborne pollutants along with temperature and humidity changes, you shouldn’t be surprised to see some noticeable fading over the months and years. By their nature, pigment inks are much more resistant to fading; if you’re selling your prints rather than giving them to family and friends as gifts, you’re much better off with a pigment ink printer like our top pick.
Another concession you make by stepping down to the Canon Pro-100 is limiting the variety of media you can print on. Our top pick, the P600, can handle sheets up to 1.3 mm thick, and it comes with a roll holder and printer driver that can produce panoramas up to 44 inches long. The Canon Pro-100 lacks any roll capacity, has a maximum paper thickness of only 0.6 mm and the printer driver limits you to a 26-inch print length.
If you like to print on fine art matte papers, the Pro-100, like all recent Canon Pixma Pro models, imposes a wide 1.2-inch image border on all four sides, limiting the size of image you can print. While I suspect the majority of users buying a dye-ink printer will gravitate to lighter weight glossy paper, this is something to be aware of.
Also great (when the price drops)Also greatCanon Pixma Pro-10
A great buy when its price drops below $500, the Pro-10 makes excellent and long-lasting prints. Its B&W output can’t quite match that of our top pick. And if you print on thick fine art matte papers you’ll have to settle for a smaller printable area as well.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $700.
The Canon Pixma Pro-10 is a great alternative to our top pick for those who’ll be printing primarily on glossy papers. It’s solidly built, has a lower ink cost than our top pick and delivers great print quality, falling just slightly short of its big brother the Pixma Pro-1 and our top pick in highlight and shadow details when printing in black-and-white mode (since it has fewer black ink dilutions). With a $700 street price, the Pro-10 doesn’t offer any significant benefits over the P600—but we’ve seen occasional price drops of more than $250, and at that much of a discount, it’s a compelling alternative.
The Pro-10 is no speed demon, printing twice as slow as the P600, but this 10-ink printer does have a very low ink cost of $1.07 per mL. It’s worth noting, however, that because of its smaller 14-mL (versus 26) capacity ink cartridges, you will be replacing inks more frequently with the Pro-10 than with the P600.
Like our top pick, the Pro-10 offers built-in Wi-Fi, wired Ethernet and USB ports and compatibility with AirPrint and Google Cloud Print, which allows direct printing from iOS and Android devices. The printer also benefits from Canon’s open embrace of third-party media, with ICC paper profiles for popular papers from leading brands like Hahnemühle, Moab, Canson, and Ilford included in the driver, with even more options available on Canon’s own web site. Epson, by contrast, supplies ICC profiles only for its own brand of papers, forcing users to seek out third-party paper profiles on their own, typically from the paper companies’ own sites.
The competition
One of the easiest ways to tell whether an inkjet printer will make great-looking photorealistic prints is to look at the number of ink colors it holds. Models that come with only four colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) are fine for graphics and illustrations but will struggle to produce smooth, accurate transitions between colors and won’t show fine details in highlight and shadow areas.
We therefore dismissed the entire lot of 4-ink all-in-one printers selling for less than $100 like the HP Officejet Pro 6830. There’s no point in buying a printer if you can get better results from inexpensive online services or in-store drop-offs at Walgreens or Costco.
Best All-in-one Printers For Mac
Six-ink multifunction models like the $250 Epson Expression Photo XP-860 add light cyan and light magenta inks which go a long way towards creating smooth transitions in areas like skin tones and blues skies and do a much better job producing the highlight and shadow detail you see in your image on-screen.
With models like these, however, you’re limited to a maximum 8.5-inch-wide print and can only print on a limited selection of relatively thin photo papers. But the biggest drawback of these multifunction models is the pricy ink cartridges that hold only about 5-7 mL of ink. The Canon Pixma MG7520 has an ink cost of $1.86 per mL. The Epson Expression Photo XP-950 (which does print up to 11-by-17) is even worse at $2.40 per mL. For comparison, our top pick has 26 mL ink cartridges that cost less than $1.30 per mL. With these multifunction printers, you’re going to making a lot of last-minute runs to the office supply store to finish up your print jobs. We can’t recommend them if you’ll be printing on even a semi-regular basis.
The $300 Epson Artisan 1430 is a 13-inch wide dye-ink printer with light cyan and light magenta inks. It’s black-and-white output is pretty poor, though, and with inks that run $1.95 per mL, it has a high operating cost. The Canon Pixma IP8720 is another 13-inch printer with six dye inks, but one of them is used only for document printing on plain paper, making it a less stellar performer for color prints than our top picks. It also has a high ink cost of $1.71 per mL.
The Epson Stylus Photo R2000 is a pigment-ink printer that produces great-looking color prints. Its black-and-white output is a couple of generations behind current Epson models, however, and has since been discontinued by Epson.
The Epson Stylus Photo R3000 delivers image quality nearly identical to the P600, although the latter produces noticeably richer blacks on fine art matte papers. The only feature the R3000 lacks is a tilting touchscreen. It was our previous pick but has been discontinued. You can still find it at retailers (for how much longer we can’t say) but its dwindling supplies have actually pushed its price on Amazon above our new top pick’s.
Epson's 13-inch SureColor P400 has the same styling and many of the same features as our top pick and is $200 cheaper. But because the P400 uses the same 8-color inkset as the now discontinued Stylus Photo R2000, it lacks the additional gray inks that our main picks use to produce such smooth, neutral BW prints. Another drawback is that the P400 ink cartridges only hold 14ml of ink each (compared to 26ml for our top pick), which means more frequent replacement, a drawback if you print a lot.
The $900 Canon Pixma Pro-1 is very nearly the P600’s equal in both color and B&W output, and at $1/ml it has the lowest ink costs of any 13-inch pigment printer. But at $100 more than our top pick, we can’t overlook the fact that selecting a fine art media type in the Canon driver substantially increases the print margins to 1.2 inches. You can’t print an 8-by-10-inch print on a letter-size sheet of fine art paper. That’s an inexcusable limitation on a printer in this price range.
2018 Best Printer For PhotosWhat to look forward to
In February Canon released both the Pixma Pro-10s and Pixma Pro-100s upgrades in Europe and Australia. Unfortunately the only difference in the upgraded models are built-in options for printing images from cloud services like Dropbox, Flickr, and Google Drive. We have no word on whether these models will be released in the US. Even if they are, they offer no practical benefit over the current models.
Sources
Not all the printers are compatible with Mac based systems. To help you save time and money in researching best printer that works with Mac, I have shortlisted ten best Wireless printers compatible with Mac operating system including latest versions Mac OS high Sierra, OS X El Capitan or Yosemite. The list of Mac printers consists of a laser, inkjet, All-in-one and standalone configurations. Depending on the application and your needs, you can pick the Mac printer that matches your speed or volume of printing requirements. By utilizing my more than twenty years’ experience in IT industry, I have thoughtfully handpicked these printers compatible with Apple Computers and Mobile devices.
Best Home Printers For 2018Reviews of 10 Apple Compatible Printers1 Epson Expression Premium ET-7700
This is a cartridge free wireless inkjet printer that you can use with MacBook Pro, iPhone, iMac or iPad. The printer comes with large ink tanks with five different colors. The one-time full tanks deliver 14000 black sheets and 9000 color print-outs. This Epson photo printer comes with a dedicated photo and normal paper trays for hassle-free handling. It has a large 2.7 inches LCD screen for previewing the print before giving the print command. With inbuilt card and USB slots, you can print directly from a USB drive or memory card without transferring them to the computer. This is definitely an economical and one of the best Apple compatible printers in the long run with lowest print-cost per page. Check More Details & User Reviews
2 Brother Compact Monochrome Laser Printer
This is one of the best black and white laser printer from Brother, a leader in Laser printers. It is an All-in-one printer for home and small office that offers printing, scanning, and copying in this multi-functional machine. This MFP is compatible with iPhone and Mac. Wireless printing option allows you to print from cloud, laptops, tablets, and smartphones including the support of NFC printing. Talking about the speed, the printer offers a speed of up to 36 pages per minute. The toner-save mode and two-side printing helps you save on printing cost. Excellent value for money, buy this best Airprint printer for enhanced productivity at work. Check More Details & User Reviews
3 Canon MF416dw Imageclass
This is an All-in-one laser printer compatible to work in Mac environment. This a wireless printer that offers multi-functional features like fax, print, scan, and copy. With Wi-Fi direct option, you can print directly from your mobile device without having to connect to a network. The printer prints at the speed of 35 pages per minute. Furthermore, the printer comes with a duplexing feature for paper saving and also lets you print ID cards which is a great feature for companies. Canon Image-class has a large 3.5 inches’ color panel for easy access and helps you handle daily documentation needs flawlessly. With mobile features, 1 GB RAM and large paper-handling capacity, this is a must have printer for home and office. Check More Details & User Reviews
4 Brother MFC-L5900DW Monochrome
This is a multi-functional laser printer for Mac, Linux, and Windows OS. You can scan and print professional documents at a high speed of 42 pages per minute. Various workgroups can use Brother MFC at the same time without slowing down the functionality of this all-in-one printer. The standard toner produces a yield of 3000 pages whereas a high yield replacement toner can deliver up to 8000 pages. The security features include settings lock, integration with active directory, restriction of usage per user, secure print via PIN. The other key features include duplex-printing, large touchscreen display, and cloud printing. Check More Details & User Reviews
5 HP LaserJet M527dn Laser Printer
This is the best printer for Mac users who are looking for a laser printer. It is a fast Mac printer that prints at a speed of 45 pages per minute. HP M527dn is an enterprise-class multi-functional printer with business features for enhanced productivity at workplace. The embedded security features with 256-bit encryption restricts the outer attacks and secures the sensitive data. With the intelligent power-save feature, the printer automatically gets off when it is not in use. HP Web Jetadmin lets you monitor printer status remotely and with Jetintelligence feature, you can maximize the toner yield in the economy mode. The printer supports multiple media sizes that include a letter, legal, 8.5 x 13, envelope, executive, statement, postcard, double postcard, 5 x 8, 4 x 6, 3 x 5, and 5”x7”. Check More Details & User Reviews.
6. Brother Compact Monochrome Laser PrinterBest Photo Printers For Mac 2018 Football
This is a space saving laser printer that works perfectly with iMac and MacBook Pro with wireless connectivity. The printer features two-side printing and flatbed scanner allows you to scan and copy apart from printing functionality. It offers a speed of 32 pages per minute. The printer is compatible with envelopes, cards, letter, legal size paper other than standard A4 size. The automatic tray accepts a maximum of 250 sheets and there is also an option of manual paper feed for other paper sizes. Compatible with Apple Airprint, this compact printer is highly recommended for home and small office. Check More Details & User Reviews
7 Canon iP8720 Wireless Printer
Optimized to work with Mac OS X v10.6.8 – v10.9, this is an inkjet printer that delivers high quality print-outs at 9600 dpi. The canon wireless printer is capable to print CD/DVD covers and HD movie prints. With Google cloud print functionality, you can print directly from Chrome browser on Mac. The speed of color printing is 10 images per minute and for printing black and white prints, the speed is 14.5 images per minute. This is a complete photo printer that prints on normal as well as glossy paper without any hassles. You can print from Google cloud, iPad, iPhone, Wi-Fi network and USB cable. This is a combo pack where you get one set of the ink cartridge and 50 glossy sheets along with this Apple wireless printer. Check Price & More Details on Amazon
8 Lexmark MS817n Monochrome Laser Printer
Lexmark is a beast when it comes to sturdiness and printing speed. It prints at a speed of 55 pages per minute with a monthly volume of fifty thousand pages. Talking about compatibility with OS, this professional printer works with Mac, windows, and Linux. The printer is capable to print plain paper, envelopes, card stock, and office transparencies. The printer produces crisp and sharp print-outs since Lexmark can print in a high resolution of 1200×1200 DPI. Large workgroups can work simultaneously on this high performance machine without any lags largely due to powerful dual core processor and 2.4 GB memory. Check More Details & User Reviews
9 Kyocera M5526cdw Multifunctional Laser Printer
Kyocera is a Japanese company and has been delivering document solutions since 1948 in more than 25 countries. The printer works best with Apple Macintosh OS X 10.5 or later, windows server, windows vista and later and Linux. The printer comes with all the business-class features including stack-less duplex, 1200 DPI, 850 sheet input tray, front USB support and fast FAX. Mobile connectivity includes Airprint, Google cloud, Mopria and Kyocera mobile print. With five-line LCD display panel, you can easily configure and manage the tasks. Check Price & More Details on Amazon. Check Price & More Details on Amazon
Printers For Mac Computers10. Epson WF-7610 All-in-One Printer
This workforce model from Epson is compatible to use with Mac® OS X® 10.6.8 – macOS® 10.12.x8, windows operating systems. This is an inkjet printer that can print vibrant documents at a maximum dpi of 4800 x 2400. The front loader paper tray has a capacity of holding 250 sheets which is a great feature for an inkjet printer. Furthermore, the printer comes with an automatic document feeder and this all-in-one printer can print wide format sheets as large as 13” by 19”. The printer connectivity includes Wi-Fi, a wired network, Wi-Fi direct, NFC and mobile printing. This is an energy efficient and ROHS compliant ECO printer. Check Price and More User reviews.
Buy Wireless Printers for Mac & iPhone
The list above consists of both inkjet as well as LaserJet printers available in All-in-one and stand-alone configurations. Depending on your printing needs and budget you can pick the best printer for Mac OS environment. Which printer are you using currently and Do you have plans to buy a new one? Do share your views in the comments section.
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