Labs

Much like the Canon printers here, the Epson devices share a common external design, but differ significantly on the inside.

Beginning on the outside, the cheap feeling plastics are similar to that of the Stylus Photo 1400. Again, the control buttons are less than impressive and we really feel that Epson should make an improvement here because it markedly devalues the design aesthetic. The rear and front paper trays are thin and give the impression that they may just fall off. We're sure this isn't the case, but when you compare this Epson to the sturdy Canons or the heavyweight HP, the difference in construction and design is easy to see. PictBridge isn't an option, but in addition to the USB port there's a FireWire 400 connection, so if your USB bus is over-crowded it's a useful addition. All our tests were performed with the printer attached to the USB port.

Inside though, the Epson bids to be a little different with an eight-tank system. You can get a tank of photo black to improve the monochrome performance, but this is at the

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expense of the matte black cartridge. Rather than including the tank on the print head, you have to manually replace it when you want to use it. Not a hardship, but a bit of a poor solution.

The R2400 produced some excellent results. Colours were accurate and tones well-defined, with good levels of detail in every test. It didn't perform all that well with the black-and-white shot, but still came in with a passable print. The Stylus Photo R2400 excelled with our tricky and highly detailed image of a computer motherboard. Strong colour accuracy married to fine reproduction of even the smallest components made this shot a winner.

Speeds were a bit of a mixed bag with a couple of shots taking 10 minutes to make their way out and the rest making it to the output tray in a much more respectable 3 or 4 minutes. Similarly to the other Epson on test, this is a noisy and startling device.

As with the Canon Pixma Pro9000, the Epson produced a good cross-section of images and performed well enough to impress. It produced one corking image in our fine detail test that pushed the others into the shade. In this Labs, we found that any image that stood out was clearly an excellent achievement.

However, the R2400 has some failings, with its poor monochrome performance and cheap feeling manufacture. We could allow the Epson Stylus Photo 1400 some leeway on its construction given its budget status, but the R2400 is the second most expensive model on test. If you're spending a lot of money on a printer that you're going to use on a daily basis, it has to feel up to the task and sadly the Epson doesn't quite offer that.