Comparison of HP & Epson printers
Written: Jan 03 '02 (Updated Jan 23 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to set up, good quality prints
Cons: Doesn't ship with everything necessary to set it up, hard to find paper, bad software
The Bottom Line: Worth it if you need large, borderless high quality prints. If 8x10 is the largest print you need, go with a cheaper HP.
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| kclemson's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 1280 |
I recently purchased an Epson 1280 so that I could have two photoprinters - one, my HP Photosmart 1215, remained at home. The Epson was to stay at work. That way I would never be without the ability to print amazing quality photos from my digital camera pictures (I'm kind of an addict..)
I've been very happy with the HP, it makes excellent prints and HP has a great supply of various types of paper. The only reason I didn't purchase another HP was that I had seen the commercials about borderless printing and started reading up on the Epson line of printers.. I read review after review that just oohed and ahhed over the quality, the 6 color prints, the 13x19 prints, etc. So I decided to take the plunge and switch brands to the Epson. I chose the 1280 over the less expensive model (870 I think) because I wanted the ability to print larger prints such as 13x19.
I ordered it from http://www.cdw.com with two day shipping, and eagerly set it up when it arrived.
Gripe #1: It doesn't come with its own cable to connect it to your computer - not USB, not even parallel! What a cheap move by Epson, the cable would have cost them an extra $8 for a $500 printer.
Gripe #2: I went to three stores (Office Max, Office Depot and Fred Meyer) looking for Epson photo paper, as I had read on the web that prints on non-Epson paper may not turn out as well. Office Max had the largest selection of paper, but even they had only two kinds of Epson (one is a "glossy photo quality paper" - don't be fooled, it's just a normal sheet of paper that's glossy. The other was Epson Heavyweight Matte.) I bought those two, and stared longingly at the wall full of so many different kinds of HP and Kodak papers - heavyweight glossy, 11x17, 4x6, different kinds of matte, greeting card paper, etc.
Installation
Setting it up was a breeze, took 5 minutes. Unwrapped everything, plugged it in, connected it to my computer (with a USB cable I went out and bought (grumblegrumble)), put in the ink cartridges and hit the On button and it took a couple of minutes to charge the ink.
I slid in the "Glossy photo quality paper" and printed out a full size image from my camera, 3.3 megapixels, using Adobe Photoshop on my machine. The quality of the image was good, but I couldn't see any obvious differences between it and some prints from the HP I had hanging on the wall. They all looked very good. Of course since the paper I used wasn't a heavy card stock, the ink weighed down the paper and crinkled it up a bit. Not making that mistake again.
Prints
The prints are, quite simply, stunning. You need to use the highest quality paper (I highly recommend Epson Premium Semi-Gloss - note the Semi, the premium glossy is a bit off in my opinion) to get the best results, and I recommend learning about ICC profiles and monitor calibration (as I did) if you are serious about wanting large, crisp, wonderful prints.
I had a lot of fun printing out various samples from 4x6 up to 13x19, my door at the office is covered in these pictures and they're quite a head turner when people walk by.
Software
Next I decided to install their software. I have been extremely happy with the HP photosmart printing software. It is so easy to use, has a nice standard windows layout with which I am instantly familiar, and is just generally a smart WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) image management program.
The HP software is so great I keep a ZIP file with the installer on my laptop, just in case I ever need to print a photo on another machine and don't have the right software (I'm not a huge fan of Photoshop's interface). The HP software also has some basic image editing capabilities, however I always modify my photos in Photoshop before importing them into the HP software.
Now, on to Epson's software... To its credit, Film Factory tries to be easy and usable - printing out pictures is a multi step process and you are walked through each step, with the ability to skip through steps you don't need to perform. For example, selecting the photos to print (adding them to the roll) is usually step 1. Retouching the images might be step 2. Step 3 might be "Print Assignment" which basically means, "Choose print options" such as print size, printer to use, media type, etc. The last step is print which gives you a nice print preview and lets you make some final changes to the image, such as move it around on the printed page.
The types of prints you can do, from the main menu, are: Standard prints, index prints, duplicate prints, album pages, greeting cards, sticker prints, combo prints, print image matching. Some of them are immediately obvious (index prints is a nice touch), but others made me scratch my head. Why should I have to go to a completely separate menu process to print duplicates? Why can't I just choose that at the end of the process right before I click Print? What if I want to print duplicate index prints? I haven't figured out if that's possible yet.
Gripe #3: Overall, however, Film Factory sucks. It has the most confusing, cluttered, non standard UI. It tries to be friendly by using terms most people are familiar with, such as a "roll" of film (each roll holds pictures, and you can operate on a roll such as print out the pictures on roll or whatnot). The icons and terminology used are unique and, compared to the HP software, ugly. HP has some beautiful, simplified icons that make it easy to tell what a certain button does. Epson has big icons with primary colors and tiny pictures.
Film Factory has some arbitrary limitations that annoyed me. For example, when you create a new roll, you have to name it. Why the heck do I have to name it? I don't want to print out the name of the roll anywhere. Why can't it just assume a default name, no name at all, or just number the rolls.
Another stupid limit that annoyed me was that if I don't "select" a picture in the roll, and go to print things, it says "Hey wait, you didn't select anything. Do you want me to select all the pictures in the roll?". I think it should just assume that I didn't realize I had to 'select' anything and yes, go ahead and select them all, as I surely don't mean to print a blank sheet of paper (or maybe a blank sheet of paper with the roll name on it! :-). Additionally, I had no idea I was supposed to select the pictures, because the way you select something is by clicking on it, and then its background goes yellow. A basic interface such as a checkbox like even shutterfly.com uses would have been more appropriate here. Anyway, those are two minor complaints but a lot of minor complaints can stack up after time.
The CD has two programs on it - Film Factory, and Epson Photoquicker. Photoquicker is a lot better of a program and as the name suggests, is a nice, quick way of printing out photos. I was able to figure out how to use Photoquicker very quickly, and the user interface, while not windows standard, is not as gaudy and all around ugly as Film Factory.
You can change layout options, add captions, etc, and with a few clicks print out great prints. It has options for various types of paper and paper sizes, and thus far I have had a great time printing out wonderful quality borderless prints up to 13x19!
One last minor negative:
As I mentioned, it's difficult to find much Epson paper in stores, so I assumed I'd be able to get it easily on the web. There's certainly more of a variety, but even Amazon.com doesn't keep half of the varieties I want in stock, such as the 5x7 borderless. I did end up finding plenty of paper on Buy.com however.
Summary:
Easy to set up, good quality prints (but that was expected considering the price). Chintzy software, not a great selection of paper in stores. I'm giving this printer 4 stars because it really does make great prints, and in the end, that's what's important.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kclemson
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Member: KC Lemson
Location: Redmond, WA
Reviews written: 24
Trusted by: 11 members
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