Dell Photo AIO Printer 964 - A lot of multifunction printers have surfaced on the market these days. These devices are a combination of your usual printer, a scanner, a photocopier, and a fax machine, making it a vital equipment to one’s home office.
In focus here is the Dell Photo AIO 964, where Dell stands for "All-In-One", which retails at about $150. At first glance, it appears like a slicker, smaller version of bulky photocopy machines with the insides that are similar to Lexmark P4350. It also comes with an automatic document feeder and color fax capabilities.
The Dell Photo AIO 964 is reliable on simple office operations. It scans images very clearly and would even let you scan or copy documents up to 50 pages long. However, it does a really slow job on photocopying even the simplest of documents.
Navigation is remarkably simple, with a five-way control button and a 2.4-inch color LCD. It also contains a numeric pad for fax dialing, which you can store up to 99 speed dial numbers; as well as four media slots compatible to all major digital camera memory card formats; and a direct-print port for printing straight from a PictBridge-compatible digital camera. You could also plug in a USB flash drive to print any images it contains, a rare feature among all-in-one printer. On the down side, you need to buy a separate USB cable or wireless adapter from Dell.
One major flaw on Dell Photo AIO 964 is, of all things, its print quality. On photo paper, the results yield with a shade lighter than the actual image. On plain paper, the black cartridge produced fuzzy text with narrow banding across the characters, as well as lacking alignment. This problem applies even on papers that are manufactured (and obviously recommended) by Dell. Although you can avoid banding by putting the printer to its highest setting of 4800 dpi, the photos produced are still lacking.
As discussed before, its speed is a concern. Although AIO 964 can print at a notable speed when producing text documents on plain paper, photo printing-as well as scanning and copying-are at a leisurely pace.
Overall, the Dell Photo AIO 964 is a decent home office equipment. However, if you are planning to use this for printing family photos or business presentations, it is best to look elsewhere.