Product Reviews

Epson's Stylus Photo R2400 is the latest dedicated photo-inkjet for photo enthusiasts and professionals looking to produce high-quality, fade-resistant colour and black-and-white borderless prints up to A3+ (13 x 19in). The overall style and size is similar to the recently introduced and long overdue A3+ Stylus Photo R1800, but it adds a number

of interesting extras.

Foremost of these is the Ultrachrome K3 ink technology as seen in the company's large-format range, such as the terrific A2 (17in) Stylus Pro 4800 and recently announced A1 (24in) Stylus Pro 7800. In addition to the usual diluted magenta and cyan inks for improved skin tones and pastel colours, Ultrachrome K3 features three black inks for improved black-and-white reproduction. Just as the now-obsolete Stylus Photo 2100 featured swappable matt black and photo black inks depending on the intended media, as well as a permanent light-black, so too does the Stylus Photo R2400. However, the new model adds a new 'light, light black' to an impressive-looking eight-ink print head.

In theory, the greater the number of different inks, the wider the colour gamut and so better colour accuracy and finer gradation. Epson is keen to point out that the pigment ink is a new formulation, and certainly the cartridges aren't interchangeable with those of the older model.

The build and design are broadly similar to those of the Stylus Photo R1800, with a telescopic rear sheet-feeder and somewhat fancy, but slightly flimsy, spring-loaded output tray to the front. Thankfully, once they're collapsed, both fold flush with the exterior to provide protection from dust working its way along the paper path to the delicate print head. Closing and folding away the trays is impractical with a printer that's used frequently, but getting into the habit between jobs will pay dividends if you suffer from dust-smeared prints or you've endured an unexpected print head failure.

As with

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most Epson printers, the Stylus Photo R2400 comes with a manual roll-feed adaptor for borderless printing on media up to 17in wide. This is a significant plus for the majority of users but, alas, Epson has dropped the detachable, automatic paper-cutter on consumer models, and has also done so with Stylus Photo R2400. Completing the line-up of supplied accessories is a flat-path CD-printing tray. The plastic plate is inserted into the manual media slot located at the front behind a pull-down panel, and this also accommodates extra-heavyweight or thicker media up to 1.3mm.

Looking beyond the front tray and some ill-fitting buttons located on the fascia, build quality is good, but the plastic exterior doesn't feel particularly robust. Setting it up is undemanding using the native printer drivers under Mac OS X 10.4, and Epson's Darkroom Print utility is worth having if you plan to experiment with black-and-white prints.

There's also another opportunity to fine tune monochrome prints from the printer driver using the normal OS X Print dialog. As well as the choice of resolution up to an optimised 5760dpi depending on the media selected, there are four presets for colour tone under Advanced B&W Photo: neutral, warm, cool or sepia. By far the more versatile option is under Colour Management, where there are several sliders to adjust the optical density and shadow/highlight tonality, as well as overall brightness and contrast. However, access to the same colour toning selections and additional tone curve presets could be confusing at first. There's also a small preview pane and colour-tone picker, but there's no effective soft proofing option if you turn off colour management.

We suspect that most users will probably want to work in a colour-managed workflow, though, and print from Photoshop using the profiles for Epson media. Some people will go further still and calibrate the printer and create their own custom profiles for their favourite paper.

The printer supports FireWire and USB 2, both of which offer speedy - albeit not blisteringly fast - printing. Print times vary with media, but A3+ prints averaged a respectable five minutes at best in our tests. Printing colour images from Photoshop using Epson media, there was the slightest trace of a magenta cast, but this was easily corrected. Moreover, black-and-white prints were some of the best we've seen from a consumer printer. While the Epson Stylus Photo R2400 may not be the fastest or quietest A3+ printer around, we can still heartily recommend it.