The Kodak EasyShare Photo Print Off

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Reported by Melissa Norris

For this article, I think I'm going to start off by letting you know my background with printers. The last time I personally purchased a printer was in 2000 and I was about to go to college. I, of course, bought one of those all in one, back to school, computer packages that included a printer. And that printer was a piece of junk. It would take like 10 minutes to print my reports, which wasn't a good thing when class started in 10 minutes. And when I bought my first replacement ink cartridge for way too much money after way too short a time, I decided I was swearing off printers for good.

Shortly after that I was working at the campus copy center, so I had no need for a printer. I had access to like 12 of them. And at that point in time I was still using film cameras so I sure didn't need to worry about printing pictures.

Then I got married. My husband had a Lexmark laser printer. This baby was nice, it would just shoot those pages out. But wait! Where's the color? Wonderful, it only prints in black and white. I'm now forced to color things in with markers if I want them in color. Very classy.

So this brings me to now...I have a printer that prints color! At least thanks to the Kodak EasyShare 5300, I do. Colleen gave you the 411 about what this printer can do yesterday. And unfortunately, I can't really make a comparison to my existing printer, because of the black and white thing. So I'm going to compare just the photo printing aspects of this printer to my HP Photosmart 325 that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas, and I use occasionally to print my digital photos when I have an urge to scrapbook.

Ok the physical differences are going to be easy. The HP is tiny and the Kodak isn't. The HP will only print on 4"x6" paper (it can print 2 photos to a page, but that's the max paper size) and the Kodak can print on any size photo paper up to 8.5"x11". The LCD display on the HP is about 1"x2" and the display on the Kodak is 3" and pops up for easier viewing. They both will take USB devices (flash drives, camera cords, etc) as well as various types of memory cards. They can also both hook up to your computer for printing.

So next I decided to put them to the test. I printed 2 photos on each using the Kodak glossy photo paper provided with the printer. I printed one in black & white and one in color.

It's a bit hard to tell in the photo, but the black and white Kodak photo looks a lot brighter and a bit crisper. I believe the reason for this is that the Kodak has a black ink cartridge where the HP just has a tri-color one. That's a lot of layers of ink for a black and white photo.

In the color comparison, the Kodak photo is again, much brighter, and when you look way up close (sorry that you can't, as that would be a horrible photograph), the Kodak photo came out a lot crisper, I can see some individual pixels in the HP photo.

Overall, I like how the Kodak prints photos. I will definitely keep the HP around to take with me when traveling, and I have a friend that wants to borrow it to use at kid's birthday parties she hosts, since it's small enough to travel and pretty quick. But I think for quality photos that I will be framing, using in my scrapbooks, and giving away to others, I will definitely be using the Kodak from now on.

Here are some other likes I had about the Kodak EasyShare 5300 printer:

• First, don't forget to reset your printer settings on your computer. I was trying to print some flyers and they weren't coming out. Duh! They were still going to my Lexmark.


• There was very little packing material in the box. Which, as a green consumer, I liked.

• Everything was taped down and secure, so I didn't have to worry much about things getting damaged in transit.


• Everything was included to get you started, software, ink cartridges, and sample packs of standard and photo paper.


• The photo paper can always be stored in the photo paper holder, it just has to be pushed in to be active. And the paper holder is just under that so you don't have to worry about loading paper every time you want to print.

• The display folds up so you don't have to get up out of your chair to check your settings, look at photos on your memory card, etc.


• Pull out extender keeps papers from falling on floor when printing, but goes away so you don't bump into it when not in use.

• There were instructions printed right on the first flap of the box to let you know how to safely remove the printer from the box. Then the next thing you see when opening is the getting started guide, which has all the info you need for setting the printer up.

And some dislikes:

• Much larger than my old printer and shakes my filing cabinet when it's printing something. Most likely, will be easily remedied if I had an actual sturdy table to put it on.


• Had some trouble installing the printhead but that only needs to be done once, so once you get it, it's not a problem.


• Noisy compared to my old printer, but nothing unreasonable.


• The color flyer I printed wasn't of superior quality, but as I said, I didn't have color before so I'm not really complaining.

Overall, I am really liking this printer. The pros definitely outweigh the cons. I will probably keep my other printers around (at least until my next garage sale) in case I have a large amount of black and white items I need to print, and at least to use up the rest of the ink in my HP, I don't want to let that go to waste. I think for people who are in the market for a new all in one style printer, you can't go wrong with this one, it prints well, scans well, and looks great while doing it!

The Kodak EasyShare 5300 All-in-One Printer is availible for purchase wherever printers are sold. Or at the Kodak website HERE.