New Kodak Printers

New Kodak printers with cheap ink

The printer market has long been dominated by Hewlett-Packard. The company still sells almost half of all inkjet printers. Epson and Canon claim much of the remaining market share. Lexmark, a budget brand that debuted in the 1990s, now has a double-digit market share. Other experienced technology companies have been unable to successfully compete with these three. However, Kodak is using cheap ink as the sales strategy for a line of inkjet printers introduced earlier this year. Prices for its black cartridges (*est. $10) and color cartridges (*est. $15) significantly undercut the competition, and rival prices, at CarrotInk.com and Cartridge World.

The Kodak EasyShare 5300 (*est. $150) multifunction device is widely reviewed. PC World's Danny Allen says the Kodak 5300 is expensive to buy, but as cheap to use as Kodak claims. However, printing at the maximum quality more than doubles the cost per print. Allen says print quality is pretty good.

Popular Photography's executive technology editor Michael McNamara says Kodak's claim of 4 x 6-inch color prints at 10¢ each is hyperbole. For low-quality prints, he reports the cost is about 11.5¢ each. That's still considerably cheaper than competing printers, but he doesn't see the value. McNamara says using the more expensive Kodak paper to get "lab quality" raises the cost to more than 35¢ per photo, which matches what Allen reports in PC World's review.

McNamara compares the Kodak EasyShare 5300 with comparably priced printers from Epson, HP and Canon, and concludes that the Epson Stylus Photo RX580 (*est. $155) produces the best print quality and is the best value. The Kodak is not particularly competitive with other comparably priced printers in any area.

HP now offers multiple cartridge options for most of its inkjet printers. The company has introduced Standard, Value and Specialty inkjet cartridges. The Wall Street Journal reports that new, cheaper printer cartridges from HP, Kodak and others aren't really cheaper, they're just smaller, so it's worth comparing the actual amount of ink.