Choosing the best printer for your needs may be tricky. You’ll find that there are several kinds of printer features to look at, each designed for different types of consumers. The numerous technical specs for print resolution and speed confuses people. Generally speaking inkjet printers are best at printing good quality pictures and laser printers are good at rapidly printing documents.

When purchasing a photograph printer the brand names to consider are: Epson, HP, Canon, Lexmark and Xerox.

In this article I’ll shortly review a basic photo printer in addition to an all-in-one photo printer, with all the extra features. The printers I recommend in this article are all able to print photos to a sufficient quality, that one can’t discern between the printouts and an ordinarily developed photo.

Canon SELPHY CP800

If you are looking at photo printers in the sub £100 range, you can’t go wrong with this model. Compared to other printers, in this range, it’s consumables ( ink, paper ) is cheaper.

It has a 6.2cm (2.5 inch) LCD screen, this lets you easily change the printer’s setting as well as preview images from a memory card. Unlike with many printers you don’t need to connect your memory card or camera to your PC. You can connect them directly to the printer. The SELPHY has software that does automatic image optimization and red-eye correction, when you print directly from a device like a Canon camera.

The SELPHY is very compact, which is nice if space is an issue, for instance when used by travelers or use in a small office. When this printer prints a picture it seals it with a glossy layer. The idea is to seal out moisture and preserve the picture for longer. Canon claims that these printouts will last for 100 years, in a photo album.

The Canon SELPHY is a basic photo printer, it does one thing and does it well.

Lexmark Platinum Pro905

With the Platinum pro we are looking a feature rich all-in-one printer with features like scanning, copying and faxing. It’s a good option for a small business or home use, probably not fast enough for larger businesses (printout can take up to 10 seconds). You can connect to the printer via ethernet or wirelessly. Because the Lexmark uses the newest wireless technology you get better range than with older wireless printers.

The printer has a large touch sensitive screen. You can use it to connect to the internet and download images directly onto the printer.

The device has 2 paper input trays so you can use 2 different kinds of paper. The trays take 300 input and the output tray takes 50 printouts. The input tray for scanning, faxing and copying documents, can hold 50 papers.

The Platinum Pro905 was created to be environmentally friendly and to use less energy than it’s competitors.

A nice extra is that Lexmark gives you a 5 year warranty with this product.

One drawback with the Lexmark is that it doesn’t look that sturdy. If you drop it, it will probably break.

I hope you enjoyed reading best photo printer 2012, you might also like to check out wireless printer reviews 2012.