Product Reviews

Epson was one of the first printer manufacturers to push colour into the mainstream with its AcuLaser C1000 (see Reviews, issue 90, p129), which although only featuring the basics cost just £899. Plenty of others have chipped in since, offering more affordable and better specified colour printers, such as HP with its superb Laserjet 2500n (see Reviews, issue 99, p134). Taking the fight back to HP is Epson's new AcuLaser C1900 WiFi, which ups the specification and also includes a wireless print server.

Like the Laserjet 2500n, the C1900 features a four-pass colour engine capable of delivering 16ppm (pages per minute) in mono and 4ppm in colour. A fast 300MHz processor is standard and Epson includes 32MB of RAM, which can be upgraded to a whopping 1GB thanks to the use of standard PC133 memory modules.

Aside from the included 802.11b print server, you also get standard 10/100BaseTX Ethernet plus USB and parallel, which covers all the bases. Paper handling is good too, with a side-mounted 200-sheet multipurpose tray, and a secondary 500-sheet tray that slots in underneath.

So far so good, but we wish Epson had put the same amount of thought into the installation procedures. While an installer is provided for single-user installations via USB or parallel, there's nothing for network installations, which forces you to plough through the PDF manuals on the CD. Thankfully, the instructions are fairly clear, and the WinAssist utility makes configuring network settings easier. However, we hope Epson takes a leaf out of HP's book in the future and provides a Wizard-driven network installation routine. Installing the printer using the wireless print server was a similarly manual experience, although, to be fair, the instructions were clear and I had no trouble setting up an ad-hoc (peer-to-peer) wireless connection to a WiFi-equipped Compaq notebook.

For general performance testing, I installed the C1900 on a small network using the standard 10/100BaseTX Ethernet port. Testing began with a simple 25-page plain text document, which was churned out in just over a minute

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and a half for a flawless 16ppm. The text quality was good, although it was marginally less sharp than the Laserjet 2500n and also slightly heavier. The 25-page colour letter test was also printed at the full engine speed of 4ppm. Colours were strong and accurate, but text again lacked the fine sharpness of the 2500n.

The 12-page Excel document is a more rigorous test of the printer's ability to reproduce colour, with its shaded backgrounds and fine-point text often proving too challenging. The C1900 handled it well, though, layering sharp text over a vivid yellow background. Charts and graphs also looked superb with stronger colours than the Laserjet 2500n. Performance was on the nose again too, finishing in three minutes flat - a minute ahead of the 2500n.

Next up was our 20-page PDF newsletter, which mixes high-resolution photos and graphics with text in a variety of fonts and colours. The C1900 remained unphased, printing the document in just under five minutes at the standard settings - five minutes faster than the 2500n. The quality was good too, with smoother graphics and a more accurate colour balance than the 2500n, although fine italics were slightly distorted. Upping the print settings to the full-resolution enhanced mode cleared this up while still maintaining the same high image quality. Print speeds hardly suffered either, dropping to 3.6ppm.

The C1900 continued to impress with our five-page report, giving real impact to colour graphs and tables, although the text quality still lacked the refinement of the HP.

Although not necessarily the domain of laser printers, good photo reproduction is still an important factor, particularly if you intend to produce DTP newsletters. The C1900 struggled initially with our standard photo test, over-saturating skin tones. However, adjusting the settings in the driver managed to tame this.

Running costs are reasonable too at 1.35p per A4 mono page (at 5 per cent coverage) and 8.9p per colour page (at 20 per cent coverage). A number of options are also available, which include a 6GB hard disk for £395 and a duplex unit for £252. The C1900 is also available as a base model without the wireless print server for an aggressive £695.

There's no shortage of competition in the sub-£1,000 colour laser market and Epson's early foray into the field has paid dividends. The C1900 is a superb printer, beating the Laserjet 2500n in almost every aspect of colour printing. The text quality isn't quite as professional-looking as the HP, but the difference is minor. Next on the list for Epson should be a more user-friendly installation experience, but once installed the C1900 won't disappoint.