Product Reviews

Not so long ago, colour printers were aimed at specific kinds of users. Professionals had high-end, high-price devices. Home users were sold crude, budget models that professionals rejected because the quality wasn't good enough. Business users were stuck in-between.

It's a sign of how far printer technology has evolved over the last 18 months that Epson has abandoned this kind of targeted product design in favour of a 'one size fits all' approach. It believes its new inkjets - the Stylus Color 850, Stylus Photo EX and Stylus Photo 700 (Epson was unable to submit the latter for review) - all offer professional quality at budget prices.

The 850 is an upgraded version of last year's Stylus Color 800, and the Stylus Photo EX evolved from last year's Stylus Photo. Both machines share the same well-designed, rugged casing. They also feature dual PC and Mac ports, which can be used simultaneously, although Epson doesn't supply cables for either. The 850 has space for an internal Ethernet network card or a PostScript compatibility module. However, we tested the device 'as is' - as a QuickDraw machine on a serial connection.

Both models share Epson's easy-to-use ink cartridge system. Opening the 850's lid reveals two ink containers. A black ink cartridge and a colour cartridge (comprising cyan, magenta and yellow reservoirs) fit neatly into these containers. Closing the containers' lid locks down the cartridges for use.

When the ink runs out you don't replace the print head itself, only the ink reservoir, so the 850's head will need frequent cleaning - especially so because of the negative effect blocked nozzles have on print quality. Epson's manual suggests you clean the heads before using the 850 for the first time. We did this, but we had to go through two more cleaning cycles before the head behaved as it should. While we experienced no degradation during testing, it's likely that the print head will need cleaning more and more as it gets older, especially if left unused for long periods.

Once the print head is clean, you can see why Epson is pleased with its Micro Piezo head design. The company has improved it in the 850 and the Stylus Photo EX by reducing the size of the dots which form the image

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being printed. Outputting a 14.6Mb 32-bit 360dpi CMYK TIFF image at 1440dpi from Photoshop generated some very impressive true-black hard copy, especially on glossy paper. The printers' microweave technology, which modifies the positioning of the ink drops, eliminated banding - a common effect on budget inkjets.

Epson has enhanced the 800's print engine for the 850, so the image took around three minutes to print at 720dpi; the 800 did it in around five minutes 30 seconds. At 1440dpi, the image took 11 minutes on the 850. In fact, speed, rather than quality, is the 850's selling point and is the basis on which it's offered as an alternative to the Stylus Photo 700 and EX. The EX produced better prints than the 850, but more slowly.

The EX's ability to print on A3 paper and the higher speed of its engine sets it apart from the Stylus Photo 700. Unlike the 850, the EX and the 700 use a six-colour ink system, adding light cyan and light magenta to the basic CMYK set. This makes a difference to the image quality. While the 850's output looks fine at reading distance, up close you begin to see the dots, mainly in lightly-coloured areas like chrome wheel spokes. Here the engine has to use fairly dense dots to make the colour visible, but has to space them out sufficiently to ensure it doesn't look dithered. The extra inks smooth that process out, producing an image that's close to perfect.

The EX's printer driver also plays a part, thanks to its good proprietary colour-correction facility (it's also available with the 850, and both machines support Apple's ColorSync 2.0), which helps bring out further detail, especially with inkjet paper rather than glossy photo-oriented stock.

Comparing the EX's output with that of the Alps MD-1300 (Reviews, Vol 14 No 9, p26), the latter's non-liquid ink system does give it the edge on image definition. This is especially obvious when you print black-and-white text on the EX (or the 850). Epson may claim its machines offer laser quality, but it's a moot point - even when you output to smooth, coated inkjet paper, characters still lack laser-like crisp edges. If the bulk of your output is monochrome text and you want the highest possible quality, you'll still need a laser.

Epson is pushing the 850 as a general-purpose printer, and is targeting the EX at users who need good photographic reproduction; the 700 is for those on a tighter budget. For generating sample output to show a client how the final document will look, they're hard to beat, especially at these prices.

The 850 is the faster printer, although the quality isn't quite as good as the EX's. Still, it makes for a good all-rounder. If you're looking for a great budget photographic printer, it's hard to beat the EX. Once again, Epson has raised the standard by which others are judged.