Kodak Professional 8500 Thermal Printer

Pros: Excellent results, prints look like they are from a mini-lab.
Cons: Can only print 8x10, printing 5x7 will waste extra space on 8x10 sheet

This is a great printer. Kodak has been selling professional Dye-Sub printers for years. This is the first low cost dye-sub from that family.

The prints look like they had come from it's big brother the 8660. In fact the printer drivers are the same. The prints are perfect and fast, if you have ever used a kodak print center kiosk, then you will know what the quality will be like. This printer uses the same paper and technology.

Pros: Amazingly good resolution
Cons: Really bad for black and white prints

I cannot understand why so many people like this printer. If you are thinking about printing color prints, the result might be o.k. if you do not mind that most of the mid-tones have a pinkish cast, but this effect becomes
unacceptable when you try to get a hardly decent result on a black and white
print. I am quite disappointed with the result and if I had to buy again, I would consider my decision until Kodak add a black color ribbon to the printing process. Definitively cyan, magenta and yellow are not enough.

Pros: Speed, reliability
Cons: Print cost($1.50-1.70 per print), print quality, paper texture.

I've seen great reviews for this printer on every review site out there, and I have no idea what all those people are smoking. It is quite fast and reliable, but print quality is good at best.

We do a lot of school photography, and for the most part it does ok, but in certain situations it is simply unacceptable, and we've gotten a lot of complaints about the quality. Not only is the paper lousy, but it bleeds red all over the print. Imagine Santa Clause with a pink beard. No joke, it's that bad.

If you never plan to print anything with red and white in it, you'll probably be OK, but that is a severe limitation.