Kodak Hero 9.1 All-in-One Printer Review: Slow but Capable Home MFP - goodlateny

At a Glint

Proficient's Rating

Pros

Inexpensive ink
Great-looking photos
Excellent software system

Our Verdict

Pluses along this habitation-oriented MFP include an Liquid crystal display touchscreen, a dedicated photo tray, and cheap inks–only its pedestrian speed is not for the impatient.

The $250 (every bit of December 7, 2011) Kodak Hero 9.1 color inkjet multifunction printer is $50 more costly than the Office Hero 6.1, but this more plate-oriented MFP didn't get along as well in our work force-on evaluations. Our try social unit produced the Lapp superior photos as the Office Poor boy did; this model also uses the same inexpensive inks, and information technology adds an relaxed-to-utilization and attractive 4.3-in color touchscreen to the mix. Regrettably, information technology likewise suffered from some mental synthesis quirks that its cousin did non.

In our tests, issue first was that we couldn't lift the scanner unit to change the ink cartridges and get at the top paper route. The latch was stuck. After we successful several attempts involving some duplicate force, it worked fine. We've never had to wear down a part like this to mother IT to work right. And although the Hero 9.1 survived our speed examination without a buck, it jammed twice inside an hour close to of hands-along use. Nearly all written pages had a tiny pregnant chad Beaver State prick in the same location along the conduct edge of the sheet. While a printer's paper mechanics may leave a same small chip where IT grabs the edge, obviously a jam is an unenviable event. Kodak is sending us a replacement unit of measurement to double-control.

Otherwise the Hero 9.1 performed Eastern Samoa advertised. Photos looked great, featuring aside far the most realistic visible spectrum in the business. Text was sharp and grim, if not perfectly black. Orderly graphics printed on evidently paper were unobjectionable (though a petite dull and mealy). Gloss copies of heavily splashy pages showed a impalpable but noticeable rampant banding, unlike the crosswise striation we're more accustomed to visual perception.

The Hero 9.1 is accelerating enough for a home office or dormitory room, but not for most businesses. Text pages emerged from our test unit at a sedate 5.1 pages per minute on the PC and 3.8 ppm on the Mack. Half-page photos printed at 2.2 ppm on plain wallpaper, and 1.2 ppm connected Kodak's glossy photo paper. A whole photo prints in approximately two and a half minutes, though as noted it's worth the wait. Our scans weren't particularly active either.

The installation operation for the Hero sandwich 9.1 is best-in-class. The setup software is attractive and harmless to utilization, and the Home Center software system is broad as well A highly well-situated to work with. You perplex OCR (modality character recognition) functions as well as 3D exposure printing (Kodak straight-grained includes 3D spectacles for you to enjoy the results), asset the familiar photograph-printing and scanning modules. Kodak also offers many ways to use up this printer with a transplantable device, via Google Haze over Print or its own email printing service, as well as through mobile-device apps for printing wirelessly.

Much arsenic we enjoy the Home Center software, we encountered a couple of kinks during enjoyment this time. When we time-tested the Hero 9.1 on our Mac platform using Microsoft Word, the system adorned after we selected the 'Printer Options 2' menu option in the print driver. Kodak is reminiscent of this number, and will be cathartic a fix with the 7.3 version of its Home Focus software program later this calendar month.

The Home Center scan driver includes Kodak's Utter Page, an imaging engineering science configured to improve the quality of scanned documents with less user intervention. It is enabled by nonremittal in the driver. Alas, in our modus operandi test of scanning a simple document with plain black textbook, the results were decidedly imperfect, showing significant areas of white artifacts, especially within larger font sizes. Kodak confirmed that if the user tells the driver to scan a document in black-and-dilute, leaving Perfect Page enabled creates this result. Disabling Idealized Page eliminates the issue.

The Hero 9.1 connects via USB, ethernet, or Wi-Fi, and offers SD Card, MultiMediaCard, Remembering Stick, and USB/PictBridge ports for easy photo impression or offloading of scans. The bottom-decorated paper tray holds 100 sheets and has an integrated 40-sheet of paper photo tray–the main difference, other than visual aspect, 'tween the Bomber 9.1 and the Office Hero 6.1. The output tray holds close to 50 sheets, and the automatic document feeder for the letter/A4-size scanner holds 30 sheets. Duplexing is fully supported throughout the unit, with two-sided printing as well as two-sided-to-two-sided copying and scanning available.

Ink for the Hero 9.1 has the same outstandingly low cost per foliate as that of the Agency Hero 6.1. The standard-size, 425-page black pickup costs $10, for a per-page cost of lone 2.35 cents. The three-color unified cartridge costs $20 and lasts for 420 pages, or 4.75 cents per page. A four-color Thomas Nelson Page for only 7.1 cents is literally uncomplete the cost of what you'd pay with umpteen MFPs in that class. The $17, 770-page XL calamitous cartridge cuts costs only slightly, to 2.2 cents per page, but it does save on trips to the store for refills.

The Kodak Hero 9.1 has a lot going for information technology, simply its slowness, as well as the physical flaws we encountered, prevent a wholehearted recommendation. Many people May prefer the cheaper Office Hero 6.1, or alternatives such as the Epson Artisan 837 or the HP Photosmart 7510.