Quality ink-jet for travel and office - Starjet SJ-48 Ink-Jet Printer - Reviews - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing,  July, 1992  by Cliff Roth

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Starjet SJ-48 Ink-Jet Printer

Rating:

AT A GLANCE: Excellent low-cost portable printer, but 30-sheet limit on auto feeder can make it inconvenient for regular use.

DOCUMENTATION: Good diagrams for basics like changing ink cartridges, but half the manual is devoted to control codes and Basic programs. Troubleshooting guide is minimal.

SETUP: Printer driver follows standard Windows installation. Separate straightforward installation for Bitstream fonts.

EASE OF USE: Moderate. Selecting fonts and sizes manually is difficult, but software control is easy. Paper loads easily.

SUPPORT: Free support; toll call. Repair service via local independent services.

LIST PRICE: $499 STREET PRICE RANGE: $280-$300 MANUFACTURER: Star Micronics America, 420 Lexington Ave., Suite 2702, New York, NY 10710; (212) 986-6770, (800) 447-4700

BUILT-IN FONTS: Roman, Roman Italic, H-Gothic, H-Gothic Italic; 10, 12, 15, 17, and 20 characters per inch (cpi)

SOFTWARE INCLUDED: Bitstream FaceLift Fonts for Windows adds 13 scalable fonts (Swiss Roman, Swiss Italic, Swiss Bold, Swiss Bold Italic, Dutch Roman, Dutch Italic, Dutch Bold, Dutch Bold Italic, Park Avenue, Cooper, Brush Script, Formal Script, Monospace)

DIMENSIONS: 12.2 by 8.5 by 1.9 inches

WEIGHT: 4.6 pounds with battery (4 pounds without)

WARRANTY: Two years

OPTIONS: Automatic sheet feeder SF-10CA ($90); rechargeable battery BP-10 (prints about 40 pages per charge, takes 10 hours to fully recharge; $50); carrying case for printer and notebook computer ($60)

When the Starjet SJ-48 arrived for review, I was momentarily disoriented until I discovered that it stands vertically, with flip-down plastic trays to guide the paper in and out. I tested it with the optional sheet feeder, which took just five minuts to attach. I can't imagine buying it without this option.

The sheet feeder turned out to be my main complaint about this otherwise delightfully compact and sophisticated printer. Because the feeder is limited to just 30 sheets, I had to constantly reload paper. Otherwise the printer worked like a charm. I printed hundreds of sheets and experienced no jams. One handy feature of the sheet feeder: With a quick flip of the paper tray, you can insert standard No. 10 business envelopes, or different-size and -weight paper, through the manual feed slot.

The print quality is remarkably good, comparable with that of other ink-jet printers that are several times larger. Although it doesn't yield true laser quality, this printer should be more than adequate for most business applications. It has a maximum resolution of 360 dpi.

Funky fonts. The built-in fonts worked flawlessly under Windows software and appeared instantly in the Fonts menu after the driver was installed. The Bitstream fonts proved a bit more problematic, however: Installation was a breeze, and everything printed, but there were some minor glitches (such as characters piling on top of each other when I selected large type sizes) that I never figured out how to avoid. I called Bitstream tech support; they conjectured that the problem was caused by the SJ-48's rather skimpy 28K buffer memory. Star's tech support line said there were bugs in Windows 3.0. The Bitstream instructions make no mention of getting the two products to work together.

There are only five buttons on the front panel, and trying to select fonts manually rather than through the software requires some complicated button pushing--counting beeps that the printer makes to let you know what you've selected in the menus. I wouldn't recommend using it this way. If you don't have Windows or other software that can control the printer, the default font will be 10 cpi Roman or H-Gothic, depending on its DIP switch setting.

Familiar function. The similarity between this printer and Canon's BJ-10e Bubble-Jet printer is no coincidence--they are essentially the same. The SJ-48 uses the exact same replaceable ink cartridge as Canon's BubbleJet--they cost about $25 each and have a rated life of 700,000 characters per cartridge. That's about 700 pages of double-spaced text.

Overall, the SJ-48 would be an excellent choice for someone whose home office often hits the road. The print speed is reasonably fast--83 characters per second for its 10-cpi fonts. I clocked it printing a dense page of single-spaced text in about 75 seconds, and the sheet feeder adds about another 10 seconds per page. This is slow compared with laser printers, but reasonably fast when compared to many dot-matrix models.

For occasional use, the SJ-48 offers the advantage of an extremely small footprint, and it's easy to fold up and shove aside on a cluttered desktop.

CLIFF ROTH

CIRCLE 122 ON READER SERVICE CARD

COPYRIGHT 1992 Freedom Technology Media Group
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group