Kodak EasyShare 5300 review

You can buy a fairly decent entry-level printer for as little as £30, but there's a hidden cost: a set of replacement cartridges can cost as much as the printer itself. In fact, some experts have estimated that the unit cost of ink exceeds that of vintage champagne.

The EasyShare 5300 range is Kodak's attempt to reduce the cost of printing. The company claims it can save you up to 50 per cent compared to similar consumer inkjets. It also reckons the EasyShare 5300 can print Kodak lab-quality pictures that last a lifetime in as little as 28 seconds.

Design
The main control panel, located on the right side of the lid, is home to 18 separate control buttons. This isn't as daunting as it may sound -- each one is suitably large and clearly labelled. There's a big, circular Start button flanked by on/off and cancel buttons, above which is a menu button and accompanying four-way cursor for navigating through the menu system.

Like most mid-range inkjets, the EasyShare 5300 has an integrated display. This particular one is 76mm (3 inches) in size and is used for displaying menus or previewing photos. Below the screen are buttons for scanning, copying and for photo adjustment. The latter lets you rotate, zoom, show a proof-sheet or to transfer images from a USB device, or from a Bluetooth device provided you have the optional adaptor.

The very front of the unit is very well-equipped -- it's home to a memory card reader supporting Memory Stick, SD and micro XD cards, plus a CompactFlash card reader. Below this you'll find two USB ports for attaching external storage devices. All of this is great for transferring pictures from a USB memory key or memory card -- without the need to use a PC.

The paper output tray is somewhat unusual. It has adjustable guides to help it spew paper in the right direction, but there's also a dedicated 100x150mm (4x6-inch) tray section beneath a Perspex panel, which can accommodate up to 20 sheets. Printing 4x6-inch photos on an A4 printer is often a daunting prospect, but not so here. It's a nice touch that we'd like to see in other printers.

The EasyShare 5300 is quite bulky. It measures 478mm wide, 224mm high and 373mm deep, so it's not the sort of thing you'd want to carry home from the shops: the box is quite large and the total package weighs a hefty 9.7kg. We don't appreciate the presence of the external power brick, either -- this is prone to getting lost or tangled. An integrated power brick would have been far better.