STYLUS CX5800F P/C/S W/ FAX 20PPM BLK 19PPM CLR 48-BIT

Pros: text quality, print quality, features

Cons: speed on highest quality

Summary: Wow! A terrific printer... finally! I did so much research trying to find the right printer. I needed laser quality text, great quality photos/graphics (the things I print use graphics with photo quality effects on them, so they might as well be photos). I didn't care too much about speed. At first I thought I needed a laser to get the laser quality text, so I bought a OkiData color laser. It had great speed and good looking text, but the graphics were really poor, so I returned it. Finally the CX5800 came out and it the 'official' reviews looked like it had what I needed, plus the extra features of a copier and fax (it's got a camera memory card reader too, but I don't use it). So I bought it and I can confirm, WOW, it is amazing. The black text is definitely laser quality - in fact, it looks better than the laser I had. And for graphics/photos, it is also stunning! Previously, when I had a business letter that I needed to look top quality, I would print it on glossy photo paper for best results, but this printer does such a great job on plain paper (for letter head with logo) that I'm fine just sticking with plain paper.

One word of note, if you try to print n Fellowes Neato labels, the printer will indicate a paper jam, even though there isn't any. The work around for this is to just put the label sheet in upside down (i.e. normally you'd feed the top of the label sheet into the paper tray, but just flip it around so you feed the bottom of it into the paper tray) - this solves the problem.

I am so happy with this printer... finally, top quality print, with fax and copier features! I print everything using the highest quality settings, and it's actually pretty fast... an 8.5 X 11 business letter with color logo letter head takes about 30 seconds. And CD labels, full color, matte paper, take about 2 or 3 minutes. On ultra premium glossy paper, an 8.5 X 11 full color photo does take a little bit of time.. about 8 minutes or so (so if you're planning to print tons of these, you might need a faster printer), but wow, the results are worth it.

One thing I should mention is that it probably burns through ink pretty quickly, although I'm not sure as I just purchased it and haven't replaced the ink yet.

For comparison, I've owned three printers... an Epson stylus photo 1200 (which is a top of the line large format pro graphics printer), an Epson C42UX, and the OkiData printer which I mentioned above. The 5800 is better than all of them.... incomparably better!