Kodak ESP 9250 review

The is impressive, but the quality of the photos isn’t. While our two colour 10x8in photos looked good, our black and white image had a distinct magenta cast and lacked detail in dark areas. Things weren’t much better on our postcard-sized prints which, despite sharp detailing in the mid-tones, had lacklustre colours and an unconvincing gloss finish that imparted a magenta note to reflections. Also, the ESP 9250 couldn’t recognise the photos on the SD card we used for testing, despite virtually every other recent MFP having no such problem.

While black text looked dark and very crisp, we were surprised that Kodak’s pigmented colour inks didn’t make more of an impression on plain paper. The outline of colour text remained crisp and the detail of graphics was high, but the colours themselves remained drab and looked slightly washed out.

We were happier with results from the scanner, which was fairly quick even at high resolutions and produced sharply-focused results. Detail was well preserved in very light areas, with only the very darkest two shades on our Q-60 target being hard to distinguish. Colour fidelity wasn’t its strong point, but while images ended up with slightly richer colours than the originals, the effect was subtle rather than ruinous.

With underwhelming photos, the Kodak’s balance of features and extremely low running costs suggest it’s best left in the office. Aside from imperfect colour photocopies, it does everything a small business needs.