Lexmark printers in general have fantastic photo printing ability but as a computer retail employee for 11 months I've never seen one manufacturer have more returns, inevitably for the same thing: Paper feed problems. Also very high cost-per-page.
HPs are rock-solid, also do good photo prints and printing costs are middle of the road. The dependable choice of the majority of consumers.
Epsons likely have *the* best photo printing quality but also seem to break down more than the norm. Ink cartridge costs are high. Also, all the current Epson printer models I know clean the ink head on every startup. That's a helluva lot of ink being wasted.
Canon printers...nearly as rock-solid as HPs, who incidentally purchase their printer technology from Canon. Lowest cost-per-page of all four major manufacturers and great photo printing ability. The only caveat I'll attribute to this manufacturer is that they still use ancient ink cartidge technology, which is basically described as: Cartridge = ink absorbed into a sponge. They lower costs by not having the print head right on the cartridge but this is also a bad thing because air can circulate between the cartridge and the print head, leading to drying out.
My personal choice probably isn't relevant, because I never print photos and even with a digital camera don't see myself doing so in the future. A cheap laser printer is my answer - the Samsung ML-1410 or HP LJ 1000 perhaps. Good luck. 🙂
