Kodak ESP 9

A high initial price, but a low total cost of ownership



COMING FROM THE COMPANY that practically invented photography, Kodak's $299.99 ESP 9 should be expected to excel in photo printing and scanning. It does. But the ESP 9's 36-page automatic sheet feeder, automatic duplexer, and superior text quality also make it an excellent small office/home office (SOHO) machine. And despite its initial high price tag and its slow print and scan times, the ESP 9 is a winner for those who value quality output, simple operation, and low media costs.

Except for a thin yellow stripe over the control panel, the compact and curvy ESP 9 is Darth Vader, 2001-monolith black. The 3-inch LCD is sharp and easy to read, and the buttons on the 10-inch, touch-sensitive control panel respond readily to your fingers. One warning: The bright electric-blue lights around the controls make the identifying labels difficult to read in subdued light.

Underneath the panel is a well-designed, virtually goofproof paper tray that can accommodate 100 8.5x11-inch pages or 40 sheets of photo paper, plus a second tray for up to 40 5x7-inch photo sheets. The trays can automatically sense what media you've inserted and adjust accordingly.

The ports are on the back, recessed so cords won't be jammed against a wall or backstop. On the lower right in front are two memory-card slots, one for CompactFlash and the oth( for a variety of cards, plus a USB port for PictBridge-enabled digital cameras and key drives.

On initial power-up, the simple-to-follow menu guides users through setting the time and date, installing printhead and in cartridges, and establishing wired and wireless connectivity. One neat feature: Unlike many printers and multifunction printer (MFP) models, the ESP 9 doesn't require that you attacl a network cable to set up Wi-Fi.

As for ink, the printer uses two cartridges: black ($9.99) and five-color ($14.99). While the color cartridge must be replaced when only one of the color reservoirs runs dry, Kodak says that the cartridges' large capacities translate into low costs per page. 2.3 cents for monochrome and 6 cents for color on standard 8.5x11-inch paper and 9.6 cents for each 4x6-inch photo. That's significantly less than any other color inkjet or MFP. There are even greater savings with Kodak's Photo Value packs, which bundle a color ink cartridge with Kodak photo paper. Kodak boasts that its photo media has an archival life of at least 120 years, a claim backed up by Wilhelm Imaging Research. We encountered our one setup problem when we began printing our test photos: No yellow ink appeared on the page.

We cleaned the printhead, checked the nozzles, and ran th alignment tool, and when the MFP reported everything was OK, we printed a test page—still no yellow. Installing a new color cartridge didn't help. The printer began performing correctly only after we removed and reinstalled the printhead. Photo print quality is very good. Images are bright and have plenty of contrast, with generally pleasing though not entirely accurate colors. With 3,840 nozzles on the printhead, the ESP 9 is capable of very fine text and image detail, so monochrome type is clean, dense, well formed, and very legible, even down to 3 points in size.

Scanning, meanwhile, is about as easy as it gets, thanks to Kodak's EasyShare software, and Kodak's scanner driver lets you simultaneously scan multiple snapshots and automatically save them to separate files. Still, advanced users may become frustrated because the panel has only a handful of basic controls and options. As for quality, our test scans were very good, with excellent dynamic range, though colors were slightly warm. Performance is slow, however: Our 8x10-inch test image scanned in 53 seconds, while a single text page took 41.3 seconds.

Printing photos and text is just as slow. Our 10-page text-and-graphics document printed in 1 minute and 2 seconds in draft mode, with quality text mode taking 7 minutes and 22 seconds. A 20 page text-only document printed in 1 minute and 54 seconds in draft mode and a yawn-inducing 10 minutes and SO seconds in quality mode. The only bright spot was our 4x6-inch test photo, which printed in a respectable 41 seconds.



If you print only occasionally, the savings on media won't offset the up-front costs of the device, and if speed is a critical factor, Kodak's ESP 9 will likely be too slow for your needs. But it's a winner for users who want quality, simplicity, and long-term savings on media. —Daniel Grotto & Sally Wiener Grotta

Computer Shopper March 2009