First Impressions:

The first thing you notice with this printer is the unusual exterior color. It is kind of a soft white with gray accents. Very different from most of the competition's gray and black offerings and frankly it looks quite good sitting on a desk. The good looks are necessary because the printer is a bit larger than its competitors. The front of Kodak has 2 USB ports and a card reader for a variety of memory cards. The paper tray has a separate compartment for photo paper. The only real problem with this setup is that you have to manually engage and disengage the tray so that the printer uses the right paper. If you want to print a document but forget to disengage the photo tray then you may end up with a nice photo print of your document. There is a green light that comes on to let you know the photo tray is engaged. As long as you don't learn to ignore this light you should be fine.

The top of the printer is graced by a generous 3 inch display and 3 large buttons for Copy, Scan, and Photo options. There are other smaller buttons for menu and other features but overall it is a pleasing design that does not appear complicated or fussy.

Installation:

The Kodak comes with a software cd and a quick startup guide but sadly no detailed instruction manual (there is an electronic manual on the cd). The guide was easy to follow and it has pictures to show how to install the print head and cartridges but this is where my trouble began. I followed the instructions exactly and when I closed the cover I expected to have that warm fuzzy feeling of starting up a new gadget, sadly this was not to be. The printer's LCD showed that there was an error in installing the printhead or ink cartridges and to reinstall them. I tried again only to get the same message. I tried this over and over again with no luck. Finally after about 12 tries (yes I have a lot of patience) the gadget gods decided to have pity on me and the printer finally reported that everything was ok. After this initial hassle, the printer never reported any further problems with the printhead.
I later contacted Kodak and was told that sometimes it takes a few tries to get a "good seal" between the printhead and the cartridges and a new firmware update is supposed to improve matters as well. Fair enough, but if Kodak had included a printed manual that stated this maybe there would not be so many complaints on the internet regarding the printhead problem! Once the ink is loaded you load the software on your pc and connect the printer when instructed to do so... fortunately the software and driver installation was flawless.

Printouts:

Excited by the prospect of printing pictures at home for less than what it costs at most stores and devlopers, I quickly pulled an SD card from my camera and put it into the Kodak. The pictures loaded quickly and the screen allows you to scroll and select the prints you want. I loaded some generic Officemax photo paper and hit the photo button and began my first print. It took about 30-40 seconds and overall the photo came out pretty decent though slightly grainy but the end of the picture was noticeably faded, as if the ink had run out. The same thing happened on the next 2 prints. I did some troubleshooting and decided to try the option to clean the printheads (I guess all that time fiddling with the printhead during installation allowed the ink to dry on the surface). Once printer finished cleaning its heads the fading issue was gone and the pictures were very good. Even though the photo paper I used was very cheap, the prints rivaled those I had done at a local drugstore which is to say decent quality though not the best I have seen.

My next test involved using premium paper for photos. I managed to buy a box of Kodak Ultra 5 star paper at Staples on sale for less than $12 dollars. This is the highest rated paper made for the Kodak and the printer is able to read a watermark on the back of the paper and adjust itself accordingly. Printouts with this paper were excellent. Far better than the drugstore printouts, rivaling some of the better online photo processors. As long as the image was of good quality the photo printout was excellent. I also tried some 4 star Kodak paper and found the quality to be very similar to the 5 star. Side by side you could maybe tell the difference on close inspection (the 5 star paper seemed very slightly more saturated) but honestly you could not make out the difference unless you were really looking for it. I did not have Kodak 3 star paper (the lowest and cheapest recommended) but the prints I made on the generic Officemax paper turned out very decent, more than adequate for showing to friends and family and about the same quality as the 1 hour drugstore prints.

Before buying this printer, I had read some online complaints at some "professional" sites that stated the prints with the Kodak were "draft quality" and to get professional quality prints it would cost over 35 cents a photo. I found this to be far from truth. The prints with the Kodak value pack (that include 4 star paper and a color ink cartridge for $20 should be very good quality and would only cost 15 cents a picture ($20 dollars ÷ 135 prints). Maybe if you print 12 megapixel shots and pull out a magnifying glass for closer examination you would be displeased, but for average home users the prints are good using cheap paper and very good to excellent with 4 star paper.

I also printed some text documents on ordinary (read cheap) white paper and the printer was very fast (albeit noisy) in draft mode though the printouts did look grayish rather than black. The characters and minor graphics turned out to be of usable quality but nothing to write home about. I tried the same document in Normal mode and the printer slowed down considerably. The printouts were much better in this mode with nice blacks and a more refined appearance though there was still some very slight banding in pictures and graphics. The fine quality was slower than normal mode but the prints were very good with far less banding. The normal mode should be adequate for most uses but the fine mode will definitely serve you well for presentations. Kodak estimates that printouts will cost 2 cents a page for black and white text while the competition averages 3-4 cents. It doesn't sound like much of a difference until you realize that at 4 cents a page the competition's text printouts cost DOUBLE what the Kodak costs!

I have done some tests with the ink cartridges and determined the amount of pages/photos that can be printed from both the color and the black cartridge. This information will be posted in my follow up lens in the near future (I will provide a link to it at the end of this lens once it is completed).

Scanning and Other Features:

The scanner on the Kodak 5300 is pretty fast and accurate though it maxes out at 1200 dpi. It does not give many options about what you can do with your scans and the software does not include any character recognition programs. One nice feature is that you can place several photos on the scanner bed and it will scan the images in one pass and separate the images into different files. A time saver when you have a lot of photos to scan. Another great feature is that you can save scans directly to a memory card thereby bypassing the need for a computer when you want to save electronic copies of some documents without having to wait for your computer to boot up.

The copy feature generally works well though the printer definitely take longer than most to initialize (between 15-25 seconds). This can be irritating if you need a quick copy on the run.

The printer also allows you to print from USB thumb drives as well as a variety of memory cards. It even lets you transfer images from the memory card to the computer. There are 2 USB ports up front so you can use the optional bluetooth adapter while using a thumb drive.

Features & Value:

I purchased the Kodak Easyshare 5300 for $99 from my local Walmart. I have seen it online from anywhere between $99 and $199 (Dec. 2007). This is a very reasonable price considering that most of the competition sells printers for the same price initially but the ink costs significantly more. The 5300 seems like the best value of the 3 Kodak models though they all have the same basic printing and scanning. The 5100 comes without the LCD screen and the card reader (oddly it was only $1 cheaper at my the local Walmart) although there have been some 5100 packages that come with 3 EXTRA ink cartridges (a savings of $45) though printing tasks would be much more difficult without the LCD screen menus and preview options. The 5500 model has built in duplexing as well as a 35 page auto document feeder and fax capabilities. The downside is that It has a smaller LCD screen and significantly higher price tag.

One very big omission in the Kodak lineup is the lack of network printing. Most households have more than 1 computer so being able to print from any computer in the house is becoming a necessity. To make matters worse, the Kodak drivers make it impossible to use with a 3rd party print server so there really is no way to network this printer unless bluetooth will suffice. I have heard from other users who have claimed that the Apple Airport network hub works perfectly with the Kodak lineup, though I have not been able to check this out for myself.

Conclusions:

The Kodak Easyshare lineup is very decent and honest first attempt in a marketflooded with tricks and gimmicks. There are better and faster printers on the market with many more features but nothing comes close in terms of respectable print quality at a low purchase price and low per page printing price. As long as the Easyshare lineup holds up with use, it is only a matter of time before Kodak becomes a significant player in the inkjet business.