Dell 1350cnw Color LED Printer

Small enough to fit on a desk to use as a personal color printer in any size at your office, but capable enough to use as a shared printer in a small office or workgroup, the Dell 1350cnw Color LED Printer delivers laser-class output quality and speed in a surprisingly small package. It also delivers a balance of speed, output quality, and features that are impressive enough to make it an Editors' Choice.

Design and Features:
Not moderately twice the price of the Konica Minolta magi color 1600W ($180, 4 stars), which is aimed primarily at personal use, and a little less than half the price of the Xerox Phaser 6280DN ($649, 4 stars), which is clearly aimed at a small office or workgroup, it not only offers a middle ground in price but also in other key features as well, most notably speed.

At 8.9 by 15.5 by 11.8-inches (HWD), the 1350cnw takes up less desk space than many ink jets and is actually smaller than the 1600W in every dimension. It also weighs little enough, at 23.4 pounds, that most people should be able to move it by themselves.

The printer offers both Wi-Fi and wired network support. Setup on a wired network it's mostly standard fare, except that the automated installation can be a little confusing. In my tests, when the program searched the network, it found two choices for the one printer and waited for me to choose one, with no indication why I should pick one or the other.

Dell says the program normally returns only one choice, and the company is still looking into the issue at this writing. In any case, if you run into the same problem, and you're not highly knowledgeable about network printer issues, you may need to call Dell tech support to get through the installation.

Polaroid Grey Label GL10 Instantaneous Mobile Printer

It never happen to me that one day I had be reviewing something designed by Lady Gaga, much less that the something would be a printer. But that day and that something are both here, in the form of the Polaroid Grey Label GL10 Instant Mobile Printer ($169.99 direct). How much Lady Gaga, or more precisely Haus of Gaga, actually had to do with the design in her role of Creative Director is unclear, but Polaroid has certainly come up with a stimulating portable photo printer.

Built around a much enhanced, second-generation ZINK technology, the GL10 carries forward most of what was good about the first-generation Polaroid Pogo Instant Mobile Printer while enormously improving on its shortcomings. The result is a much more attractive product, not even counting whatever touches Lady Gaga threw in on the industrial design side.

ZINK technology, which we have also seen in the Polaroid Pogo Instant Digital Camera and Pan digital Portable Photo Printer, is still new enough that you may not be familiar with it. Briefly, the name is short for zero ink, the point being that paper is the only thing you need to load in the printer. The ZINK paper includes its own ink (in the most generic sense) embedded in the paper as clear dye crystals. The printer creates an image by using heat to activate the crystals, so they'll show color.

The GL10 differs from earlier ZINK printers in two key ways. The first generation printers were limited to 2- by 3-inch photos. The GL10 prints at 3 by 4 inches. More important, the image quality is far better.
The Polaroid Grey Label GL10 Instant Mobile Printer delivers far better-looking photos than Polaroid's first-generation ZINK printer—and larger photos, too.