Product Reviews

Epson's new range of inkjet printers is several months old now, and we've already looked at the Stylus Photo 870 (reviewed issue 68, p159) and the A3 Stylus Photo 1270 (reviewed issue 70, p166). The Stylus Photo 875DC sits at the high end of the A4 range, underneath the top-end Stylus Photo EX, and is the sister printer to the 870.

Offering the same 1,440x720dpi, six-colour printing system as the 870, the 875DC also delivers minuscule 4pl (pico-litre) drops on the page. Essentially this means that the dots are now invisible to the human eye, and enables the 875DC to produce some incredibly natural-looking photos. Helping to deliver these fantastic images is the unique edge-to-edge printing feature, which uses a roll of photo paper to minimise wastage.

It also has one extra trick up its sleeve. The main distinction from the 870 is the DC suffix, which stands for Digital Camera. This equates to a bulge on the top-right corner of the printer, which houses a PC Card reader. This will accept PC Card adaptors for CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick and ATA Flash. As standard the 875DC comes with a Type 1 CompactFlash reader, and a SmartMedia version will set you back a further £42.

Unlike the 870, the 875DC has lost a parallel interface, relying instead on a single USB connection. This provides connectivity for Macs as well as PCs, with drivers supplied for Windows 98, 2000 and MacOS. We were yet again disappointed to find that despite boasting all of this, a USB cable wasn't included as part of the package, meaning a trip back to your local computer store.

This feature set makes the 875DC a direct competitor to the HP PhotoSmart P1100 (Quality award, issue 67, p132). However, while the P1100 has built-in CompactFlash and SmartMedia readers, the 875DC is able to offer a wider range of connectivity to suit practically any digital camera available today, albeit at an extra cost. For added functionality, the card reader appears as a virtual drive in Windows Explorer, so you can transfer digital images or any other kind of data onto your hard drive.

Installation was a convoluted procedure, requiring both the PC and printer to be off before connecting them up, thus defeating the hot-pluggable advantage of USB.

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After following the setup guide instructions step by step three times, we gave up and successfully installed the printer manually.

A good selection of software is bundled, including Adobe Photoshop 5 LE, Epson Photo Reproduction Lab and PhotoQuicker. The latter is a simple yet powerful application that includes filters to add some sparkle to your photos and allows you to print multiple images from the card reader. One major disappointment was that unlike the PhotoSmart P1100, there's no way of printing photos direct from a CompactFlash card without the need for a PC.

We ran the demanding PC Pro print tests on the 875DC to find out how it coped with a variety of tasks. Taking 14 minutes, 26 seconds to complete the 25-page text test in standard mode wasn't an impressive start. At 1.73ppm this was a far cry from the 9ppm Epson claim in Economy mode. Text quality was disappointing on plain paper, being noticeably feathered, and although the speed improved in Economy mode, the quality dropped even further.

On coated paper - incurring extra expense - text was almost faultless in our desktop publishing test. Likewise, colours on our CorelDRAW test on coated paper were sharp and vibrant. Only the tiniest amount of banding was evident, and solid blocks of colour were just that, showing absolutely no graininess. Colour transitions were smooth, aided by the six-colour cartridge. Composite black and greyscales were also impressive, with no yellow or greenish tinges to them. On plain paper, our colour test looked noticeably grainier, but was still an impressive effort.

The area where the 875DC really shined was in printing photographs. This is precisely what it was designed to do, and having seen the 870's output, we weren't surprised. The result of printing our test photo was exceptional. Colours were accurate and, on the sample Premium Glossy Photo Paper, the image looked much more life-like than other printers' efforts. Even in areas of low contrast, the 875DC managed to retain a high level of detail.

One final bonus offered by Epson's latest range is ten years' lightfastness when printing using its own branded Premium Glossy Photo Paper and Matte Paper. This opens up new possibilities, meaning you can hang your prints on walls without the colours fading rapidly.

Billed as a dedicated photo printer, and considering that the 875DC excels at this task, we weren't too worried about the long print times and relatively poor quality on plain paper. What was of more concern was the price tag of £271. Considering that the PhotoSmart P1100 costs just £255, has the extra parallel port interface and prints wonderfully on any paper type, the 875DC can't justify this extra cost. Unless your digital camera uses unusual media, or you just have to have edge-to-edge printing, the HP is the better buy.