Epson Stylus C80

We all know that Epson has mastered the art of photo printing, but its black inks have yet to match the quality of Lexmark's pigmented black ink on plain text printing. This isn't an issue for the home photography enthusiast, but Epson needs to produce an all-round printer like HP's DeskJet 990Cxi (see Labs, issue 77, p92) if it wants to be taken seriously by business and home users alike. So Epson has now launched its first business inkjet - the Stylus C80. It's also the first business inkjet to use pigmented colour inks, as well as pigmented black ink, but is it the inkjet that business has been waiting for?

To find out, we worked the C80 through both our black text tests on plain paper, and the results were surprisingly good. In draft mode, our 25-page letter test was completed in just two minutes, 27 seconds. This equates to 10.2ppm (pages per minute), and the quality was also quite usable, although the characters were slightly shaky and spidery. The quality improved dramatically by moving the quality slider to its highest notch, and this resulted in deep black text that could easily rival the average laser. There's only one drawback - speed. On its highest settings the C80 averaged out at 1.1ppm, so it's only worth using if you really need it.

Luckily, there's a happy medium, and this is your best bet for both speed and quality. On it's middle setting the C80's text quality was still deep black and sharp, and at 3.1ppm it's fast enough too.

Okay, so this isn't going to rival the 4.8ppm from the HP 990Cxi or the 5.6ppm from Lexmark's Z53 (see Reviews, issue 82, p158), but the C80 is still fast enough for the average user and it can push out the extra quality with a bit more time too. Black text isn't the only improvement though: what the C80 really has in its favour is its superb colour performance, even on plain paper.

Our four-page DTP test still looked at its best when printed on Epson's coated Photo Quality Inkjet paper, but it looked exceptionally good on plain paper too. The text remained sharp, the colours were clear and accurate, and even photos looked reasonable. In draft mode, the DTP document was produced in just one minute, 55 seconds, and this increased to ten minutes, 27 seconds on its highest setting.

This is great news for businesses, as the cost of specialist print media makes it impractical for day-to-day printing, especially if it gets accidentally left in the printer and wasted.

The realisation that businesses would rather print on basic plain paper has prompted Epson to produce its own range of Premium Ink Jet Plain paper, which comes in reams of 250 sheets for £2.55. This works out at just over 1p per page and is hardly going to break the bank. Ironically, however, we found that tests using our standard 80g/m2 copy paper came out looking even cleaner and less speckled. Either way, you're not looking at huge amounts of money to get good results.

Another cost-saving measure comes with the individual colour ink tanks. It looks like Epson has taken a leaf out of Canon and Xerox's books, and this was a wise step to make. The cartridges don't seem that economical at £11 per colour, but this works out at 2.75p per page at five per cent coverage in each colour, and goes up to 10.1p per page at 20 per cent CMYK coverage, once you factor in the other colours and the black cartridge. By comparison, the Lexmark Z53 works out at 13.6p per page at the same coverage.

It could be argued that the black cartridge will get more use in the office though, and £25 isn't bad for a cartridge that lasts 1,200 pages. This works out at 2.1p per mono page and puts the C80 in front of both the Lexmark Z53 and the HP 990Cxi in terms of running costs.