Labs

Epson's Stylus Photo R285 was the best photo printer in Shopper 238's budget inkjet labs. It costs £62, which is a remarkably low price for a six-ink photo inkjet. It has few extra features other than a CD printing tray. Also, it doesn't have a PictBridge port, memory card slots or a colour screen, so it is unsuitable if you want to preview and print digital photos without using your PC.

The printer did well in our photo-printing tests, but we initially had problems with the colour profiles. Epson's default Vivid colour profile produced prints with a conspicuous red cast. All skin colours looked unnaturally flushed, and light colours, particularly yellow shades, took on a pinkish hue. The only photos that benefited from the Vivid print

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mode were very low-contrast images. The dull brown and grey shades in our low-contrast test photo challenged most of the printers here, but the R286 rendered it beautifully. For most prints we found it better to disable colour enhancement. To do this, we went to the Colour Profiles tab of the print Preferences, switched to ICM Colour Profiles and ticked the Off box. This particularly flattered skin tones and other natural shades, producing darker, more realistic colours.

Mixed-colour documents cost 6.4p per A4 page. Total 6x4in photo costs, including both ink and paper, are some of the lowest here at just 16.6p per print. However, photo print speeds were among the slowest in the group. Six 6x4in photos took 13 minutes and 35 seconds to print. Document prints were slow with poor print quality. Draft text was pale and brownish, while normal-quality text and mixed-colour prints were so fuzzy as to be almost unreadable.

The Stylus Photo R285 is a poor choice if you want a printer than can handle documents as well as photos, and its default colour settings aren't suitable for most types of photo. However, it can produce excellent results if you take the time to tweak your settings by hand or simply disable colour profiles. Considering its remarkably low price, this is a real bargain for photography enthusiasts on a budget.