Kodak ESP 3.2 All-in-One Printer

Clearly aimed primarily at home use?with built-in templates for graph paper, notebook paper, sheet music, tic-tac-toe, and more?the Kodak ESP 3.2 All-in-One Printer ($99.99 direct) offers better than par print speed and output quality for photos, reasonable speed and quality for text and graphics, and a lower running cost than most printers in its price range, at a claimed 3 cents for a monochrome page and 9.5 cents for a color page. The combination makes it highly attractive for the price, and also an Editors' Choice.

As you might expect for a home MFP, the ESP 3.2 can only print, scan, and copy. But don't think that the focus on home use means that it's limited strictly to basics. Among other niceties, it can print JPG files from memory cards, letting you preview them first on the 2.4-inch display, and it also offers touch-screen controls, with well-designed menus that make this printer easy to use. In addition, as with the home-oriented HP Photosmart 5520 e-All-in-One ($129.99 direct, 3 stars) that I recently reviewed, the ESP 3.2 supports printing through the cloud, in this case with Google Cloud Print and Kodak Email Print Services.

If you want to take advantage of either cloud print feature, be aware that you can't use them if you connect the printer by USB, and the only network support the ESP 3.2 offers is for WiFi. If you don't have a WiFi access point on your network (and if you're security conscious you may not want one), you can't use either cloud print option.

Also pegging the printer as home-oriented is the lack of such office-centric features as a fax capability and automatic document feeder as well as the strictly limited paper handling, with a single 100-sheet tray. Even so, as with most low-cost inkjet MFPs today, the ESP 3.2 is suitable for light-duty use in a home office, or for the dual role of home and home-office printer. Just keep in mind that the key phrase in that sentence is light duty.

Speed and Quality
For my tests, I connected the printer by USB cable to a system running Windows Vista. Setup was standard fare. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software) I clocked it at an effective speed of 3.2 pages per minute (ppm). That makes it a bit slower than the more expensive Photosmart 5520, at 3.7 ppm, but essentially tied with the similarly priced HP Officejet 4620 e-All-in-One ($99.99 direct, 3 stars).

Photo speed was more impressive, with an average of 50 seconds for a 4 by 6 on our tests. In fact, the ESP 3.2 is one of the few printers in its price range that can print a 4 by 6 photo in less than a minute in its highest quality mode.

The photo speed is even more impressive when you consider that the output quality is above par. Photos from most inkjets are roughly equivalent to drugstore prints, but often at the low end of what you can expect from a drugstore. The ESP 3.2 photo quality is at least at the high end of that range, and arguably a touch better. Also, unlike many inkjet printers, the ESP 3.2 even handled our black and white output well, without any tinge of color at any shade of gray.

As with speed, quality for text and graphics isn't as impressive as for photos, but it's not bad, with text at the low end of a tight range where the vast majority of inkjets fall, and graphics absolutely par for an ink jet. I wouldn't use the ESP 3.2 to print, say, a resume or other text output that needs to convey a sense of professionalism, but it's good enough for most business and home needs.

Graphics are easily good enough for any internal business or home use. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you might even consider the graphics good enough to hand to important clients or customers who you want to impress with a sense of your professionalism.

I'd like this printer even more if it included wired network support rather than just WiFi. But that's not a major issue unless you want cloud printing, don't already have a WiFi access point on your network, and don't want to add one. In most ways?from print speed, to output quality, to low running cost?the Kodak ESP 3.2 All-in-One Printer offers lots of strengths and very few weaknesses. And it's impressive enough for the price to make it Editors' Choice even if it didn't support cloud printing at all.

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