Dell Photo All-in-One Printer 926 – Disappointing Multifunction Printer

Pros

The Dell Photo All-in-One Printer 926 is a multifunction printer with in-built media card slots and USB ports; the printer delivers scannable quality photo index and has e-fax facility.

Cons

The Dell Photo All-in-One Printer 926 delivers really poor print quality; the photo  ink for the printer actually degrades the photo quality; even using Dell’s very own photo paper will not get you the best quality prints and the task speeds of the printer is really slow.

Introduction

Priced at $100 the Dell Photo All-in-One Printer 926 is a pretty affordable inkjet multifunction printer, which offers copy, print, e-fax and scan features. Seeing at the price we already were not expecting a lot from the printer, at least in terms of print quality and print speed. But the worst thing is that the printer even failed to match even our average expectations. Unexpectedly, even using Dell’s very own photo ink tanks and photo paper, the printer delivered really poor photo quality. On the contrary, if you look at Canon Pixma MP180, you will see that it’s possible to get decent quality prints even from a $100 multifunction. And if you don’t have problem, in putting just a little extra weight on your budget, you should get Canon Pixma MP460 priced at $130, it will make you even happier.

Design

The Dell Photo All-in-One Printer 926 comes in a smooth white-and-light-gray body, which is rather compact for a multifunction printer. The printer measures 11.5 inches deep by 17.4 inches wide by 7.2 inches tall, without the output tray; while with the output tray completely extended the height of the printer comes to 21 inches. The scanner lid of the printer covers an A4 size flatbed scanner and as the Photo 926 lacks an automatic document feeder, the A4 size flatbed here is biggest scannable size.

The input and paper support tray of the printer comes out from the rear end of the printer and the output tray comes out from the front end of the printer. The paper support for the printer is also positioned on the rear end of the printer; on a whole the tray set up of the printer is typical inkjet setup. The input area is protected by a low plastic guard, which deflects the unwanted objects like pens and paper clips. The input tray of the printer can easily store around 100 sheets of plain paper.

The basic control panel for the printer features menu navigation buttons Start and Stop buttons and a two-line text LCD. All these controls provide adequate control for the printer to manage several tasks for the printer. Its competitor printers the Canon Pixma MP180 also offer only a text LCD, but the slightly more expensive printer the Pixma MP460 offers a 1.9-inch color graphics LCD. The printer also has two fitted memory card readers, which accepts almost all types of memory cards, though for using some of the memory slots you will need an adapter. The printer also has a USB port on the facade.

For printing, the printer uses a two-tank ink system: the black cartridge and the tricolor cartridge. This ink system is used for regular printing.

System Configuration

Price: NA
Manufacturer: Dell, Inc.
Part Number: 222-5573
Printer Type: Ink-jet Color – Photo printer
Copier Type: Digital
Dimensions (W x D x H): 17.4 x 12.6 x 7.2 inches

System weight: 11.9 lbs
Supported Media Type: Banner, Cards, Envelopes, Labels, Plain paper, Photo paper, Transparencies, Coated paper and Iron-on transfers
Software Included: Drivers & utilities
OS Required: Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Editions and Microsoft Windows Vista,

PC Connection: Hi-Speed USB
Supported Flash Memory: Memory Stick, CompactFlash, MultiMediaCard, IBM Microdrive, xD-Picture Card and SD Memory Card
Ink Palette Supported (Colors): magenta, Cyan, black, yellow, light magenta and light cyan
Service & Support Details: Technical support – Phone consulting – One year, Limited warranty Replacement – one year – Shipment,

Performance

The Dell Photo All-in-One Printer 926 delivered comparatively fast text prints at the rate of 7.60 ppm (pages per minute), which clearly was faster than offerings by Epson, Lexmark and Canon. Though, the printer was slower with 4×6 photo prints, and produced only 0.74ppm, which almost was half the speed of Canon’s Pixma. For scanning, the Printer 926 was second slowest with scan speed of 4.50ppm for color and 4.52ppm for grayscale.

We were even more disappointed with Photo 926’s print quality. Though, the text prints were sufficiently dark and saturated, but still the edges of the characters were all jagged up after using the high quality inkjet paper. The same was the case with other prints as well, and although you can use the prints for casual uses, but it clearly was not sufficient for any sort of professional or official use. The worst thing was that even after using Dell’s own printer papers, there was no amount of improvement in the print quality. So, there again, you don’t have a chance of quality enhancement even after using the manufacturers own papers, which is possible in most of the other printers.

Support

The Dell Photo All-in-One Printer 926 gets one year of standard warranty from Dell. Though, if you want you can upgrade to two or three years of coverage. The toll-free telephonic support is also available 24×7 and for online support you have Dell’s support website offering user forums and e-mail support.

You even can get product-specific support from Dell’s Web site in the form of online user guides, a troubleshooting tool and drivers and software downloads. You can also get the basic how-to tips too, for example how to change the ink cartridge.

Word from the Experts

The Dell Photo All-in-One Printer 926, despite being priced lowly at $100 is a disappointing multifunction printer. You can easily get a decent printer for the same money.