The Best Bargain for a Photo Printer
Written: Sep 02 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Stunning photo quality printouts, value price
Cons: Not so stellar text output, slow print speeds, expensive media and ink cartridges
The Bottom Line: This is by far the best photo printer for the money.
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| richardchiu's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 820 Inkjet Printer |
When I saw the flyer at the local computer store advertising the Epson Stylus 820 Photo for $150 CDN, I was a little skeptical at first. I didn't want to believe that a photo printer at that price could produce high quality photo printouts. Especially considering I paid more than double that price for an Epson Stylus 875DC Photo only a year ago!
But since I was looking for a value inkjet printer for my other PC, I decide to give the 820 Photo a try. The first thing I noticed about the 820 was it had a significantly smaller footprint than my 875DC. The plastic also seemed to be somewhat cheaper looking but this was expected since the 820 Photo was much less expensive.
Installation/Setup
Installation was a breeze as the step-by-step poster Epson provides is very clear and easy to follow. All the necessary drivers and software is on the included CD. One important thing for Windows XP users to realize is that XP comes with the drivers for the 820 Photo so you don't have to install it from the CD. However, the driver that comes with XP does NOT allow for 2880dpi printing. It also lacks the Epson Status Monitor utility to check the ink level and perform head cleaning on the printer so it's highly recommended to install the drivers and software from the CD anyways.
Text Quality
After setup, I printed a test page containing text and compared the output quality with the 875DC. The text output quality looked the same when printed on plain paper. The text was not sharp with dithering and smearing visible on the edges of letters. Using inkjet coated paper along with a higher printing resolution significantly increased the text quality but print speeds are dramatically slower. It should be noted that these printers aren't meant for high quality text output so if you plan on printing more text documents, get a laser printer instead. But if you're reading this review, chances are you're in the market for a photo printer anyways.
Photo Quality
Next, I printed an outdoor photo that had bright colours and varying contrast. I used the sample photo quality paper included with the printer and set the resolution to it's max: 2880x720dpi. I printed the same photo on the 875DC at it's max resolution: 1440x720dpi and compared the two prints. I was quite surprised to see that the 820 Photo produced a slightly sharper output with nice colours and saturation! I concluded that the increased resolution on the 820 helped it acheive this level of quality. However, unless you look really closely, it's hard to tell which printout was produced by which printer but nevertheless, I was impressed with the photo quality the 820 Photo was able to produce.
Cons
There are some downsides with the 820 Photo besides text quality on plain paper. The first is speed. It took over 2 minutes to print the 4x6 photo and the printer is quite loud, much more so than my 875DC. However, if you don't mind waiting, the end result from the 820 Photo is quite spectacular. Another downside with the 820 Photo and every other photo printer for that matter, is cost of media and ink cartrideges. Photo paper usually costs about $1 for a 8.5x11" sheet but using the right media paper is essential for producing the best quality prints. I personally recommend genuine Epson paper since I found they produce the best results and the prices are comparable to other papers.
If you're looking for a bargain photo printer, you'll be hard pressed to find a better quality printer than the Epson Stylus 820 Photo. It produces stunning photos and is probably the least expensive photo printers available. Stop waiting for prices to go down on photo printers and go grab a 820 Phot for yourself.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
richardchiu
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Location: Calgary, AB, Canada
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 1 member
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