It was time to replace our old Epson all-in-one. Since I bought the Epson, our printing needs have changed. If I want a high-quality print (which usually is also an oversized print as well) I will send it out to Image Kind to print for me. We are not printing near as much stuff these days which meant I often had to clean the heads (and eat up a lot of ink in the process) before I could print a decent copy. We were using a lot of ink – rather expensive ink – just to get ready to print. So, before buying a new printer, I did some ink research. I found that ink cartridges for the Kodak ESP310 model all-in-one was almost half the price of my old Epson. Looking a bit closer I found the Kodak cartridges didn’t print as many pages per cartridge as the Epson, but that is somewhat nullified when I’m wasting ink to clean print heads.
The ink costs got my attention, but the printer features helped convince me to buy it. This is a wi-fi printer. By that I mean not only can I print directly to it from my iPad, but also that it is not physically connected to anything by the electrical outlet. It connects to our home network wirelessly. This gives me the extra advantage of being able to locate the printer across the room from the router and computer. And, not only does it print wirelessly, it scans wirelessly too.
I don’t like Kodak’s scanning app as much as the old Epson app, but I do most of my scanning through other apps – Paperless or my graphics programs – so it’s not a big issue. Wi-fi scanning is slower, but the advantage of having it located where there’s more workspace makes me more tolerant of the speed.
I’ve had my Kodak for three months and I’m quite pleased with its performance. The colors are sharp and the print quality is quite acceptable. I don’t yet know how well the colors last, but I’m not using this printer to create heirlooms. I don’t think I’d recommend it for high-traffic or high-quality printing, but if you’re like me and your printing needs are low, this printer is definitely worth a look.
You’ll find the printer selling at Amazon and Target for $70. The ink combo pack (black cartridge and color cartridge) sells at Amazon for $28.
