Review : Dell V305w Wireless Multi-Function Printer
The latest offering from Dell’s inkjet segment, V305w is touted to be filled with an array of features, and the price of the product is dead low at £55. How does it perform? We will find out today.
This latest Dell inkjet printer can scan and copy along with standard printing. Its Wi-Fi enabled by default and consists of photo centric features such as PictBridge port and memory card slots. The absence of a LCD screen and automatic document feeder are notable.
The price of the printer is cheap and so is the quality of prints. Black prints look blotchy and unevenly spread across the paper, and when smaller prints are used, the output is jagged and edges are uneven. Imbalanced colour saturation was evident in the colour outputs, for regular graphics and photos. It seemed as though the printer head was unable to handle subtle colour changes with large individual pixels showing up in places.
Print speed is decent for monochrome prints at 8ppm but is quite terrible for colour prints at just over 1ppm. Photos fared even worse with each 4” X 6” photograph taking a minute and 9 seconds to print.
The price of supplies and hence the cost-per-print aren’t cheap like the infrastructure. It was estimated that a monochrome print would cost around 3.4p including the price of paper, while the colour prints fared worse at 6.3p per print.
There is no grace for a printer that is sold as good as free with the cost of prints skyhigh, coupled with below average print quality. Even with a tonne of other features, a printer cannot be a good one if the quality of its output is up to the mark. Don’t buy Dell V305w.
About the author:
Abhinav has been blogging about printing and related technologies on CreativeCloud for several years. He is also a project manager for a large technology company.
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