I'm impressed
Written: Aug 31 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Fast, quiet, and great quality
Cons: Can be expensive to run
|
|
|
| iann's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 870 InkJet Printer |
My previous printer was about 3 years old and I won't mention which one because that would probably be unfair. It was noisy, painfully slow, the colour was cartoon not photo, the print quality was OK, and it needed cleaning nearly every week. When I started shopping for a new printer, I expected things to be a little better.
Looking around at the available printers, I was surprised first by how cheap they were and then by how good the quality of colour printing has become. Then I started to look in more detail and found slow noisy printers at every turn. That incredible print quality only seemed to arrive after 10 minutes of clunking.
Now I needed something for home and business use, that could throw out a decent photo if needed, but could also run off a couple of 30-page documents while I was on the phone. I came down to the Epson Stylus Photo 870.
I can only describe this printer as whisper quiet. When my sister uses it she keeps thinking something is broken because it isn't deafening the whole house. Then she thinks it has stuck because it stops whispering after a few seconds. Actually, its finished already. I won't repeat the numbers from the advertising blurb, but the "speed" mode is very fast and good enough quality for almost anything. The "quality" mode is more comparable to the speed of most printers, and the quality difference is only really noticeable with colour prints on high-quality paper, or with very intricate graphics.
The printer has a good plastic cover which virtually encloses the inkjet area and prevents dust getting in. I haven't had to clean it once in 6 moths of ownership. Changing cartridges is a bit fiddly and you definitely need the instructions to do it. The first cartridge took three tries to charge the colour ink heads properly, and this must be done manually with the buttons on the front of the printer. The standard printer setup tests were easy to complete and almost a pleasure when the test prints only took a few seconds each.
I prefer the USB connection over the parallel because it seems to suffer fewer problems. I can't see any obvious reason for this since there is nothing else on the parallel port, but that's windows for you. Its probably nothing to do with the printer at all.
The drivers installed the way plug'n'play is supposed to go. The driver software gives excellent control over the printing, including features like "size-to-fit" and dithering modes. The margins can be set very close to the edges of the paper if a little quality is sacrificed, but the bottom margin is disappointingly large. This is useful for printing photos on glossy roll paper and it appears the printer has been optimised for that. Its just a little annoying that a scan from A4 paper cannot always be printed back onto A4 paper without resizing.
Now all that software with comes with the printer. Can't tell you much about it because I don't use it. The stuff that I would have a use for isn't good enough for what I need, so I have other software that I had to pay money for. Sorry I can't be more help.
Epson thought they would throw one last little trick into the mix. They decided that if each print cartridge had a little computer chip in it, you could really get some good information about how much ink was left, how things were working, and so on. Nice move, but they had a little glitch with the chips and cartridges have been difficult to find. This seems to have been a huge problem in Europe, and in the states things aren't too bad now. As an aside, the six-colour cartridges give great photo quality but they don't last very long. This can be very expensive if you are printing things like colour-coded business presentations or documents with clip-art.
Overall, an excellent printer for low-volume colour work and any non-colour printing. Perfect for the home office, great for a home user who wants the colour quality or just does a lot of printing, and even usable as a network printer for a few users.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
iann
|
|
Member: Ian Nartowicz
Location: Falls Church VA
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 55 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.