Epson Stylus Photo 700

Running costs for the Stylus Photo 700 are another improvement. According to Epson's figures, this would certainly appear to be true, with both black and colour cartridges offering respectively greater page yields of 540 A4 pages at five per cent coverage, and 220 A4 pages at five per cent coverage per colour, with resolution set to 720dpi. What these figures mean is a minimum cost of 2.8p per mono page and a minimum of 8p per colour page, although full-colour photographs will cost more.

If you're going to be printing mainly text with a little colour now and then, the Stylus Photo 700's speed and average text quality will be a disappointment. A price tag of £271 means it's not the cheapest printer on the market, but if you're after the ultimate photographic and business graphics output, as well as competent printing on cheap paper stock, the Epson Photo 700 is hard to beat.

Author: Jonathan Bray