Kodak ESP-7 All-in-One Printer Review

Performance

The Kodak ESP-7 is good printer, but it is no speed demon. Kodak says it prints borderless KODAK lab quality 4" × 6" (10 x 15 cm). photos in as little as 28 seconds and prints documents up to 32 pages per minute in black and 30 pages per minute in color. We couldn’t get the printer to live up to these claims, in fact our testing showed it to sometimes take twice as long as Kodak stipulated, especially when used over the network. The fact is, however, although other reviewers have complained about the slowness of the printer, we didn’t find that a huge drawback. Most home and small business users are willing to wait a few extra seconds if they get quality prints.

The print results of this Kodak, however, were mixed. On plain copy paper, black text was crisp and clear. However, color graphics and photos were washed out, grayish, and generally, not very pretty. However, when using Kodak plain paper, the results were quite a bit better. The problem is that most people don’t want to spend extra money on the plain paper that they use for everyday printing.

Where the ESP printer excelled in color was in printing photographs. Like the other ESP printers, it has a 2-cartridge, 6-ink system. The black ink is in one cartridge. The color plus a special photo coating is in the other.

On photo paper by other manufacturers, the color photos sometimes looked banded. We had to adjust the printer controls to work with the paper which took some time and trouble. But when used with Kodak photo paper, the Kodak printer automatically read the paper type and produced beautiful results. Kodak photo papers are bar-coded; the printer senses the code and adjusts itself accordingly.

In fact, borderless prints on high end glossy Kodak paper looked great! They easily stood up to Kodak’s assertions that they would appear to be lab quality photos.  And everything is done automatically, so you don’t have to play with the settings. The photos dry instantly and have the nicest finish that we’ve seen on an inkjet printer.

One of Kodak’s big draws is that their printers require less ink and that their ink is cheaper. The box reads “Save $110 a year on ink.”  Kodak asserts that consumers can print up to twice as many photos and documents for their money. These assertions are difficult to prove. When tested by Popular Photography and others, they didn’t hold up. However, Kodak and Popular Photography used entirely different methodologies in their testing.

In our testing we believe that the average consumers will pay less for the Kodak inks because the Kodak ink is cheaper than that from most other manufactures. A black ink cartridge costs USD 9.99 and a five-ink cartridge costs USD 14.99. However, you may lose your ink savings since you have to purchase somewhat expensive Kodak paper to get the best quality prints.

The true bargain, however, is to purchase consumables in one of Kodak’s Photo Value Packs. Each of these packs contains a five-ink cartridge and photo paper. There are several combinations including a Photo Value Pack and the Premium Photo Value Pack. If you print photos, this can really keep the cost of consumables down.

The included software and/or the touch screen lets you adjust the paper size and choose the photos you want to print quite easily. In fact, when using the software, you could easily crop a photo and still have it print in the size you requested with pretty near perfect results. Our only complaint was that we would like to be able to print smaller prints as easily as as 4” x 6” (10 x 15 cm) and 5” x 7” (13 x 18 cm) prints. Perhaps Kodak will soon realize that today there are many collage photo frames and smaller frames that we would like to be able to create smaller prints for.

Prints from this unit have been well-rated for fade resistance by highly acclaimed Wilhelm Research laboratories. In fact, Henry Wilhelm, president of Wilhelm Imaging Research stated, “The Kodak printers, pigment-based inks, and photo papers and plain paper have achieved the highest level of overall print permanence of any current consumer desktop printer system.” To the average consumer, this means that the photos printed with this printer on Kodak paper will be well-preserved for a lifetime without special care. So this is a great printer if you want to print lab quality photos inexpensively and you want them to last without fading.