What became apparent after testing all the printers is that the old adage 'horses for courses' applies. Portability is becoming important now that portable Macs weigh less than a Mini, and the two portable printers were both neat and practical for use on the road.
Unfortunately, this review is concerned with printers' colour capabilities, and the Citizen Notebook Printer II is a non-starter for any but the simplest block colour graphic. Hewlett Packard's DeskWriter 31 is much more capable for colour output, even if it is let down rather by not having a true black in its colour mode.
I liked the Colour StyleWriter 2400. It was a smart design, and its QuickDraw GX drivers promise some interesting features when more applications are written to support GX. It was just beaten by the Hewlett Packard DeskWriter 560C, which delivered deeper colours, and was rather more sturdily put together. For small office or home use, I'd say the DeskWriter has the edge in ruggedness as well as in print quality.
The Primera is a strange beast. At well over a £1,000 for the full dye-sub kit and caboodle, it needs to justify itself with top-quality output... and it does. Designers often need to supply colour `roughs' to show what a job should look like when it's printed. DTP operators sometimes need to show a client a colour proof. Bearing in mind that it's only an A4 machine, it may be enough for these uses. It was the only printer that delivered anything like photo-quality output, and its price reflects this. If you've already got a printer for letters and you've just got to have the highest quality, the Primera is worth a look.
Printer Print No. of Portable? Price Distributor
Method Colours
DeskWriter Inkjet 3 Yes £292.58 Hewlett Packard
310 (with sheet tel: 01344 369369
feeder)
Notebook Thermal 4 Yes £410.08 Citizen Europe
Printer II wax tel: 0753 584111
Colour Inkjet 4 No £468.83 Apple UK
StyleWriter tel: 0800 127753
2400
DeskWriter Inkjet 4 No £540.50 Hewlett Packard
560C tel: 01344 369369
Fargo Thermal
Primera wax 4 No £1285.46 Bannerbridge
tel: 01268 419101
Dye sub 3 No £1636.79 Bannerbridge
tel: 01268 419101
