Kodak EasyShare 5300 All In One Printer

Can Kodak crack the printer market?

Reviewer: Doug Harman
Review Date: 2 August 2007
Manufacturer: Kodak
Price as reviewed: £139
Latest price: £0.00

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8/10

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Full Review

2 August 2007 - Kodak’s launch of the EasyShare 5300 was hailed as a boon for consumers because Kodak has taken a lead on the cost of consumables. Kodak claim the 5300 has 50% lower running costs than competing products.

It’s black in cartridge costs £6.99 and a combined five-ink colour tank containing the cyan, magenta, photo black, yellow and special clear sealing inks costs £9.99. The net result is a claimed print cost of around seven pence pre print, on a par then, with “typical” high street print outlets.

All well and good, and it is extremely good to see a manufacturer of Kodak’s perceived consumer clout to be taking a lead on the thing that is the highest cost in home photo printing. But, is the new all in one printer, copier and scanner any good?

The 5300 is actually a rather bulky looking machine but its build quality, is, in all but the articulated paper supports, is very good. A nice 3-inch LCD graces the top right of the printer and its accompanying controls are while at first glance complex, they are simple to master and well sign-posted.

Connections include dual USB2 ports on the front (for PictBridge/USB/EXIF print compatible cameras for example) and a set of memory card slots for most popular memory cards. The 3-inch colour screen helps you to set up direct prints and sort through images and you get Kodak’s PerfectTouch Technology built in for quick and dirty (basic) image enhancements on the fly.

Software included is great for Windows users but meagre for Mac users plus, I also found the software to be buggy. The printer dropped connection with my G5 iMac on two occasions for no apparent reason and Kodak obviously need another firmware revision (there’s been one already) to sort this out.

No printed manual means you need to read the PDF-manual on screen or content yourself with a quick start. The two ink tanks slot home easily and getting started is quick once the drivers are installed on your PC.

Ditto the installation of the two ink tanks; while most manufacturers are now using separate tanks, Kodak put six inks (or rather five inks and one sealant ink) into two cartridges. The down side of this is, if the yellow runs out, you have to throw the other remaining unused inks out too.

Kodak claims a 4x6-inch borderless print can be printed in 28-seconds… In my test, it’s around 1.5-minutes using top-quality, Kodak ULTRA Premium glossy photo paper and highest quality print setting. Kodak says there’s no “draft” print mode on the 5300, but even so, getting to their speed claims entails sacrificing quality for speed using a more basic document print setting.

And as for speed, scanning is fast and efficient but you’ll need to use the supplied Kodak Home Centre software (you can’t scan directly to Photoshop for example. Also copying was rather inconsistent with colour quality and print density would vary between copies of the same document. And you cannot directly copy a photo-quality copy of a photo. You’ll need to scan to a file and then print it at photo quality, so the scanner is more a business tool in that sense.

In terms of photo quality output things are good and certainly only a very close inspection of prints will reveal to you the slight graininess of the output but colour is well rendered and black and white copies are surprisingly neutral, mine having only vary subtle blue hue to spoil an otherwise good performance on that front.

Text quality is okay on good inkjet paper, but plain A4 paper text becomes fuzzier round the edges but acceptable fro most writing tasks nonetheless. Overall, then you have a user-friendly device that saves money over time on consumables and provides results that are well above average.

Verdict

Apart from niggles on the software and Kodak’s software enforcement of scanning routines (the software can even send you to Kodak’s web site for prints!) the Kodak EasyShare 5300 has plenty to commend it… and Kodak for trying to drive down print prices.

After all, the key factor in buying the 5300 is also its key selling point 50% les consumable costs. Rather than have a £50 all-in-one with inks that costs as much, if not more when you come to replace them, here you get a pricier proposition out of the box but one which, when it comes time to buy more ink and paper, does not leave a nasty taste in your wallet.

Comments

The only issue I see is Kodak's distribution model -- if you were running an office supply store and made a fortune selling ink, would you sell the kodak line? I have seriouos doubts that the line will attract adequate sales channel representation - buy it at your own risk -- it may not be around in a few years. Posted by Robert C Shepard, USA
I have used Kodak 5300 printer for about 8 months. The print quality became mediore after one month use. Now, the black no longer prints. I called Kodak for help, they put me on hold. After 1 hour, I gave up. According to Kodak website help, I needed to buy a new printer head. I am going to discard the Kodak printer. I am disappointed.

Posted by Tshien Ma, SE, USA
my daughter was brought a kodak printer for university,the first time she used it it didnt work. we were told by kodak it needed a new part. got the part went back to university .Has now come home again and printer stopped working suprise! rubbish.Will bin this printer. customer services rating 0/10 Posted by angela lloyd, united kingdom
I have had this printer for about 1 year, it has already had one print head replacement and is looking as though it needs another one. I am very disappointed in this printer and will bin it when I get a different make ink jet very soon. Posted by Shirley Nicol, UK
A good idea but not executed very well in practice. After minimal use, the black does not print. I've tried all the diagnostics with no joy but refuse to waste my time trying to contact Kodak by 'phone. Like other manufacturers they don't really want to speak to their customers, presumably to save on staff costs.I'll be getting another make of printer e.g. Epson soon. They know we aren't going to waste more time to get satisfaction from them and clearly aren't bothered about losing our future custom. We need more easily enforceable consumer rights. Posted by Robert Daniels, England
Worst printer I have ever had, already been replaced once, now the black is banding. The ink only last a few months and I hardly even use it. No it looks like a new print head which are a consumable, glad I did not get rid of my trusty HP, the ink cost a fortune but it has worked for 10 years without a problem. Never buy Kodak again, their Indian customer support is the worst I have ever used. Posted by Tony M, UK

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