An easy to use photo printer and scanner for the home
Kodak’s home photo printers tend to be sold on value: they may be more expensive than some others, but prints cost less so in the long term you’ll save money.
The latest product in the line is the multi-function ESP 7250 which offers full colour printing and scanning and has a number of flexible features that make outputting images a breeze.
Setup was straightforward using the quick-start guide provided – we were able to configure the printer for use in minutes.
As well as connecting directly to the computer’s USB port, it can also attach to a home network using the built-in wired or wireless connections. These were again simple thanks to the step-by-step prompts that appear on the full colour 2.4in display on the front of the device. It’s also possible to print photos directly from a digital camera, USB memory key or a memory card without the use of a computer.
The device has a 100-sheet main tray along with a 40-sheet tray that can hold 6x4in and 7x5in photo paper.
Kodak also supplies its Home Center software suite, which can walk you through the process of selecting a photo for printing, editing the photo by enhancing it to correct for poorly-lit environments, red-eye and other common problems and finally sending it to the printer. All of this makes for a product that is easy to configure and use.
We were extremely impressed by the photo printing results which were indiscernible from professional prints. Document printing wasn’t quite as impressive: at standard quality text was fairly sharp but in the faster draft mode text was too faded and characters were sometimes misaligned.
The main problem with the ESP 7250 is that it’s slow: during our tests we didn’t get close to the 29 pages per minute (ppm) claimed by Kodak. Even in the fastest ‘draft’ mode it only managed 10ppm (it’s half as fast in normal mode). A top-quality A4 photo took 120 seconds and a 6x4in photo 30 seconds.
