Printers: new harder scores

We decided that it was time to take a second look at multifunction inkjet printers, and the result has been some much tougher scores.  Simply being able to print a document quickly enough without too many problems isn't good enough any more, and is now the standard we expect if a printer hopes to earn three stars.

To get four stars, printers need to have other strengths: a cost per page that's below average (around 12.5 p per page), do their work quietly or enjoy some other bonus like WiFi, duplex printing or a touchscreen interface …

From now on, the only products that reach five stars will need to have a low cost per page, and then either produce excellent results on every single test, or good (but not necessarily perfect) printing overall, with extra features to make up for any problems.  By that we mean really useful extras that we still don't see often enough, like macros, fax capability, document loaders or incredibly low running costs.

At the other end of the scale, printers that are greedy with consumables, need to be plugged into your computer and come without duplex printing or a  touchscreen are much more likely to fall to two stars, or even lower.  That's even more true if they struggle to produce either quality or speed with office or photo printing.

In short: the stars have come tumbling down on our printer tests ...

We're not finished yet

We've already adjusted the scores, but things won't stop there.  The whole Product Survey needs to change as well, with products from the 2008-09 product ranges gradually being replaced by those from the 2009-10 collections. 

Next, we'll be working on making each one of our tests more uniform, dividing them up into different uses, as well as making it easier to compare the cost per page of different printers.

For looking at the cost of ink and other consumables, we've tried several different methods over the past year.  Each time we thought we had hit upon the best way to measure it, but we've ended up with a lot of confusion.  Sometimes we use the cheapest prices we could find online for a particular cartridge, but we also used to ask manufacturers for their recommended prices.  What we learned is that the prices often change very quickly and that online stores often don't follow advice from manufacturers about prices.  We needed to find another way to do it, and we decided to use a real, attainable price from a reputable online store.  When we asked our readers, Amazon seemed to be a site that a lot of you trust--and it also carries a very large collection of cartridges and other accessories.  That's why we're going to be using Amazon's price for cartridges when we have to calculate the cost per page.  We hope that that will be more representative of how much you're likely to pay than in the past.

Plenty of printers now have a lower final score than they did this time last week, but it's perfectly possible that, after looking at the problem some more, we'll decide that even more can't stand up to more recent competition ...

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