LOW PRICES BOOST COLOR PRINTER SALES.

Byline: Laurie Flynn The New York Times

Though sales of home computers are beginning to slow, that doesn't seem to affect the low-price color printers that connect with them.

Sales of color printers to home computer users are continuing to surge, making this one of the hottest product categories in computing. Last year alone, color ink-jet printers accounted for $3 billion in revenues to manufacturers and retailers, according to The Hard Copy Report, a printer-industry newsletter. More than 10 million color printers priced at less than $500 were sold, up from 3.8 million units in 1994.

Behind the surge are familiar themes: fierce competition is driving prices down to once-unheard-of levels, and improvements in color technology mean customers are getting more for their money.

Just last week, Canon Computer Systems cut prices again, bringing its least-expensive color ink-jet down to $199 and its top-of-the-line model 610 to $429.

``Finally, the prices have come down,'' said Charles LeCompte, editor and publisher of the newsletter, based in Newton, Mass. ``Today almost all the printers sold into the home are color. In the home, the black-and-white printer is dead.''

Hewlett-Packard, the market leader by a considerable margin, and Epson America, a unit of Seiko Epson that is No. 3 after Canon - also have models starting around $200, a price that just a few years ago would have bought only a crude monochrome model.

A model with better color and crisper black and white for text is available for $300 to $500, and at the top end, the machines are faster, too. The HP model 855C, whose price has fallen to less than $500 from $700 a year ago, prints seven pages a minute in black and white, three in color.

``The bulk of the market spends between $299 and $499,'' said Andrew E. Tallian, marketing manager in the Hard Copy Group of HP, which also dominates the market for laser printers. ``It's considered a reasonable price to complement the $2,000 they spend on the PC.''

Manufacturers report that consumers buy under-$200 color printers and higher-quality ones in about the same numbers. But considering how well some $500 color ink-jets stand up to color laser printers nearly 10 times their price, it's those machines that may be the best buy.

Color printers are expected to remain a hot item for at least a few years, helped by the growing popularity of the Internet.

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Chart: Now in Living Color 

The number of color printers sol d in the United States jumped between 1993 and 1995 as manufacturers slashed prices and improved print quality. The vast majority of color printers sold use ink-jet technology and cost less than $500.

The New York Times