Kodak EasyShare 5300 review

Kodak is a newcomer to multifunction printers, but that hasn't stopped the upstart making some pretty bold claims about its new ink system, including a headline price of 7p per colour print, including paper.

But this requires you to use Kodak's very thin photo paper (and buy it in bulk 180-sheet packs together with inks), and while that's fine for informal use, if you want to keep your photos for posterity, and maybe even put them out where you can see them rather than hidden away from light, you'd be better off with a better quality of media.

The 5300 did give us good print quality, even so. Detail levels were up there with the best, and as a general purpose printer that can handle occasional photo work, it's more than good enough. We were pleased by the lack of banding, but there was a noticeable reddish tint. Overall, the 5300 is merely adequate as a printer.

The scanner element, too, is good enough without giving the more established companies in the market any serious worries. Detail levels were good, but colours came out too pale. The same issue carried over to photocopying. You can adjust the darkness using the LCD screen on the front, but we can't imagine most people bothering with this if they need to photocopy images or business graphics all the time.

Thanks to that screen, though, the 5300 could be a good buy if you'd rather not struggle with software just to get some prints. The 3-inch LCD can preview what you're printing and provides a particularly simple menu system. Just pop in the memory card from your camera and you can be printing photos in no time at all.

Cost per page isn't quite as spectacularly low as Kodak makes out, and the purchase price of £140 is very high indeed. The 5300 does many things fairly well, but nothing superbly, and is joining a very crowded market full of devices that are better at everything. Canon's Pixma MP510, for example, recommended last month (Web ID: 120571) is just £75.

Still, as a device that's easy to use independently of a PC, the Kodak is worth a look.

Author: Dave Stevenson