Rating:

Is it worth the price?

It is currently selling for approximately US$150, and at that price, it is a great home printer. It’s not a professional printer, so don’t expect it to act like one, but as a home photo printer, it is fantastic.

Would I recommend this to a friend?

I would, and I have (in fact, my wife is continually wanting mine… don’t tell her, but I think I’ll get one for her for her next birthday). This is a great printer for someone who does some home photo printing.

• Great photo quality
• Easy to install and set up
• User-friendly software
• Great phone support
• Convenient printer/copier/scanner
• Great value for the price
• Large, 3-inch LCD screen
• Computer-free photo printing from memory cards (CompactFlash I, II and Microdrive; Secure Digital; Multimedia; xD-Picture Card; Memory Stick & Memory Stick Pro)
• Low-cost ink cartridges
• Low cost-per-print

• Fairly large and heavy for a home printer
• Can’t get it to print on standard #10 envelopes properly
• Scanner isn’t fantastic
• Fairly loud for a home printer

Review

First Impressions:

I have to be upfront right from the start here. I was given the printer by the great folks at Kodak as a thanks for running a Kodak contest here on the Corner in late 2007. Of course I said I would reciprocate and do a review as well. That being said, just because I got it for free, that doesn’t mean this will be a biased review. Initially, I was pretty impressed with the printer. It was packaged well, it looks great (especially if you have a Mac – the white and silver looks sharp), and it was really easy to hook up and install. From the moment I opened the box to the time I was printing my first print, it took less than 1 period of hockey (maybe 45 minutes), and I was very meticulous to make sure everything was set up properly and according to the manual. I did some test prints: 4×6’s and 8×10 photos, text, graphics, etc, and it all looked pretty good. I most cases, the photographs, when printed on high-quality paper looked as good as lab prints. The copier works as expected – it’s slow, but it works well and it’s easy to use. The scanner works, but the quality of the scans isn’t amazing. It’s fine for documents, but I probably wouldn’t use it to scan in photographs to print. That being said, the scanning software is pretty good, and if you’re just looking to archive some old prints, it should do the trick just fine.

Image Quality:

For a $150 printer, the image quality is fantastic. I have noticed that the colors can be slightly muted, and monotone prints sometime have a slight tinge to them, but overall, if you print on high-quality paper (I used Arctic Polar™ Gloss from Red River Paper for my tests), 4×6’s were indistinguishable from lab prints, but 8×10’s looked like they were printed on a home printer (that being said, anyone other than myself said they couldn’t see a difference – my wife included). Overall, though, I was quite happy with the image quality, and even have a couple of prints printed with the 5300 up on my walls.

Build:

As I mentioned earlier, the Kodak EasyShare 5300 All-in-One Printer is on the large and heavy side for a home printer but not surprisingly, it is very sturdy. With the exception of the extendable paper tray, everything about the printers’ build is solid and sturdy. The scanner/copier cover, unlike most home all-in-one printers, doesn’t feel like it’s going to break every time I lift it up. Even the buttons and the 3” LCD screen feel sturdy and of high quality.

Price:

The price not only of the printer, but also of the ink cartridges, is the obvious big selling point of the printer. Even on the episode of the Celebrity Apprentice that featured this printer, the main focus of the Kodak executives and the winning celebrity team was on the affordability of both the printer, and especially of the ink. I’ve had to replace the ink cartridges twice already since I started using it, but buying the black and color cartridges for $25 versus replacing 6 cartridges on my old printer at $15/cartridge (even if I’m replacing the Kodak cartridges 2 or 3 times as often) it’s still a lot cheaper. The low cost of the ink alone makes the printer a good buy, and at $150 for the printer, it’s a no-brainer: for the price, the Kodak 5300 All-in-One Printer offers excellent value.

Conclusion:

Overall, this is a great home printer. It prints fairly quickly, and it’s handy having it double as a copier and scanner. The photos it prints are near lab quality, though if I were to sell prints, I would have my photographs printed at a lab or with a professional printer. Obviously the cost of the ink is a major plus. My one beef with the printer is I can’t get it to print properly on plain #10 envelopes, and that is the one reason I still have my old Epson hooked up, but perhaps I’m just missing something. If you’re looking for a good all-in-one printer that prints great quality prints for cheap, then this is the printer for you. If you want to make outstanding prints from home, however, there are other, albeit more expensive, options out there. For Kodak’s first real venture into home printing, they’ve got themselves a winner right out of the gate.