Regardless of which type of printer (See our Buying advice on printers for more information.) you select, consider the following before settling on a specific model:

Weigh ink costs. High ink costs can make a bargain-priced printer a bad deal in the long run. With many tested models, a 4x6 cost 30 or 35 cents; on others, it was 45 or 50 cents--up to twice what you might pay at a photo lab. For 8x10s, costs ranged from 75 cents to $1.45, a huge difference. Don’t choose a printer solely because of low cartridge costs, though. Kodak is touting the low cost of cartridges for its new EasyShare 5300, a $200 all-in-one, but our tests showed that photo costs were comparable to those of other printers--35 cents for 4x6 photos and $1 for 8x10s--and print quality was middling.

Look for convenience features. If you’ll be printing snapshots as well as 8x10s and text pages, a second tray for 4x6 paper is handy. And make sure you don’t have to swap out black to use photo ink. A few models still require that.

Take claims with a grain of salt. Advertised speeds are often higher than you’ll get in normal use. Our tests yield realistic speeds you can compare across brands. A printer’s resolution, in dots per inch (dpi), can be confusing as well. All things being equal, the more ink dots a printer puts on the paper, the more detailed the image. But dot size, shape, and placement affect quality, so don’t focus only on resolution. The same holds true for ink colors. Some inkjets use up to eight photo inks. Theoretically, a wider range of colors can improve a printer’s flesh tones and color gradations, but that hasn’t always been the case in our tests.