Product Reviews

Sitting comfortably near the top end of Epson's range of consumer photo printers, the Epson Stylus Photo 925 is a capable printer aimed at the demanding amateur digital camera enthusiast.

Print quality meets Epson's usual high standard, although the quoted 5760dpi resolution should be taken with a pinch of salt. Once a printer can print in excess of 720dpi, the resolution becomes largely academic, particularly if the printer boasts a six-colour ink system like this one.

The extra two colours, which add light cyan and light magenta to the customary cyan, magenta, yellow and black, help to produce smooth gradients and detailed light areas, and, combined with the high resolution, the CMYKcm system outputs some very nice prints.

It's easy enough to print photos. The printer is no harder to set up than any other, and, gratifyingly, Mac OS X drivers are included in the box. Less pleasingly, there are a couple of inaccuracies in the included fold-out setup guide. However, they shouldn't trip up a competent computer user. A chunky manual is also included.

The photo printing facility is easy to use. If you're a digital camera user (and frankly you're unlikely to buy this particular model if you're not), just slot in your memory card, set the output options via the LCD (such as format, photo selection and copies), press print and wait for your pages to be delivered to the paper tray.

The Photo 925 excels at printing photos, provided that you're prepared to wait for the results. Printing a single borderless 6in x 4in photo from a memory card took three minutes 42 seconds on the default High setting. While this may appear reasonable, this means it takes 90 minutes to output 24 images. Switching to Super High increases the time to five and a half minutes per print, with no marked improvement in quality.

Keeping trim

Sheet-feed media is supported, and a built-in cutter automatically trims your photos

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from a roll you attach to the back of the printer. It emits an alarming noise as it does this, but it's a welcome touch. You can realign the cutter blade if it strays, in much the same way as you would realign a wayward printhead.

While this printer produces excellent photographic output, the text printing is a letdown. This fault is endemic of inkjet photo printers, but it would have been good to see a printer churn out crisp text with the same aplomb with which it handles photos. The Photo 925's text output is without fault, but mediocre, and the printer's less-than-nippy speed performance compounds the problem.

Overall, the print quality is excellent, with smooth colour mixing and no banding. If you use glossy paper of a decent weight, few would spot it's a print. We noticed a slight, but distinct warm bias, and a tendency to be a little over zealous with saturation. This resulted in images that shone, but sometimes in the wrong way. Both problems can be remedied by experimenting with the print settings.

The printer supports a wide range of media, with slots for Compact Flash, Smart Media, Memory Stick and MicroDrive. This means that part of Epson's driver software can be used as a glorified media reader, mounting your memory card to the desktop. A USB port is also included on the back of the printer, which allows an external drive to be attached, such as a Zip drive. If the drive is attached to this port, the host computer can't see it, but the printer can and will treat it just as another memory card, allowing you to select the images through the printer's interface.

Ugly mug

The LCD interface is pleasing to use, and though you can't view your photos on it, you can buy a £67 peripheral that will. It's just a shame it couldn't be integrated, like in the HP Photosmart 230. The LCD's menu systems are intuitive, and you should have few problems navigating it: it's just a little ugly. This problem extends to the whole printer. While some may consider metal-effect plastic attractive, it doesn't seem to work with a printer of this scale. The buttons are horribly plastic, and the paper tray wobbles in a worrying manner. Components rattle, rather than clunk, into place.

This printer's text output is uninspiring, however Epson is targeting serious amateur photographers, who only occasionally want to output anything other than photos, and it gives excellent prints for the price. Its performance and positioning are solid: if only the same thing could be said for the build quality.