Epson Stylus Photo 925 Inkjet Printer
Written: May 31 '03
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Pros: Excellent print quality and card readers
Cons: Drinks ink and has typical print head clogging problem
The Bottom Line: I wouldn't recommend this printer, for the main reason it isn't cost effective.
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| opinionated3's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo® 925 InkJet Printer |
I recently found myself on the lookout for a new printer for my wife. This is because the Epson C80 that our kids were using finally died. The computer situation in our house starts with my wife's PC and goes down to my kids and finally falls to me. This means when something new needs to be purchased for any of the computers in our house, my wife's PC gets the upgrade and the component or peripheral that comes out of her PC is put into the next computer in line.
For this reason I found myself looking for a new printer for my wife and my kids would get the Epson CX3200 my wife has been using. My wife only had two requests when it came to her printer. First thing it had to be a Photo Printer not a Photo Quality Printer. The second thing it had to be able to print directly from the memory card from our digital camera. The second of the two requests actually helped me to narrow down my choices to two printers, the Epson Stylus Photo 925 and the HP Photosmart 7350.
Since I have been partial to Epson inkjet printers for many years I ultimately chose the Epson Stylus Photo 925.
The Printer
I went down to our local CompUSA and picked up the printer and brought it home.
After getting the printer home and pulling it out of the box. The printer came with almost everything I needed in the box with the exception of the USB cable. I made sure that I purchased one with the printer. The contents of the box includes; The Epson Stylus Photo 925, power cord, easy setup instructions, Basics Guide, software CD and Epson Photo paper starter kit.
Epson makes it easy to setup the printer and depending on the operating system you are using on your PC. As I said we have WindowsXP installed on my wife's PC and it had no problem locating the USB connection. I popped in the CD and loaded the software and drivers and away we went. For those users that don't have an USB port, the Epson Stylus Photo 925 also comes with a parallel port so you can connect it to the parallel port on the back of your PC. The CD also has the drivers for most of the popular Operating Systems like, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP and Mac OS.
After sending the usual Windows test page to ensure the printer and PC were communicating. I was ready to start printing to my new printer. The first thing I wanted to test out was the card reader feature of my wife's new toy, I mean our new printer. My wife just finished taking some pictures of our three kids and she popped out the Smartmedia card and I put it in the card reader slot and pushed the button.
I fully expected to be waiting for quite some time for the 8" x 10" picture to print. But, to my surprise in about a minute or two I was holding a high quality picture of my three kids. As I expected the Epson printer didn't disappoint me, I have always been impressed with the quality of Epson inkjet printers. All of the colors were crisp and very bright. At it highest resolution which is 5760 x 720 dpi or dots per inch, this printer rivaled my Epson C80 inkjet printer. Of course that resolution can only be achieved on premium photo glossy paper.
Just like most Photo Inkjet printers the Epson Stylus Photo 925 uses 6 colors to create the Photo image it prints. The secret is that Photo printers use two extra colors than your typical "Photo Quality" inkjet printer to achieve that top level print quality. You find the colors light magenta and light cyan added to the typical tricolor cartridge to make the color mixing that much more precise.
The speeds and resolutions that are published by Epson are designed to give you a best case scenario and you must take that into to consideration when comparing different printers from the many different manufacturer. All of the companies that make printers always advertise the highest speed attainable by their printer in hopes to sound so much faster then their competition. Then when you start reading closer and seeing the fine print of what the printer will actually print. You just might be amazed at how slow the printer actually is. Not only that, but to achieve the highest resolution that the inkjet printer can print. You have to use a premium photo paper and the printer will automatically adjust the print quality to the highest setting. Have found this to be true with my Epson C80 and I am guessing it is the same with the Canon and all the other leading brands of inkjet printers. Since this is a photo printer Epson lists it's print speeds in how fast it can print a specific size photograph.
4" x 6" Photo in 50 seconds (our actual print speed was over a minute)
8" x 10" Photo in 1 minute 40 seconds. (our actual print speed was over 2 minutes)
Standard black and color speeds are:
8 ppm (pages per minute) Black
8 ppm (pages per minute) Color
Like I said all these print speeds are best case scenario's and it still depends on what you are actually printing. The complexity of the image you are trying to will also change the actual print speed of the image. If you are printing out a simple email, it is going to print pretty close to the 8 pages per minute in black and white draft mode. If you are printing a combination of black and white text and a simple color graphic you print speed will be reduced. Just so you know this is nothing new to inkjet printers, this has always been the case and pretty much always will.
As you can tell by the rather sluggish print speed, this is not a speed demon printer. But of course Epson Inkjet's have not been really known for being fast or quiet. It seems that Epson is more worried about having the best darn print quality in the business and will take the hit for their slow and noisy tendencies.
The paper also plays a major role in how your image will look when it is finished. This inkjet printers are very smart nowadays, it know how to adjust the print quality just by selecting plain paper. It knows that when you select photo glossy paper, that it will adjust the resolution to it maximum setting of 5760 x 720 dpi and you will get a great picture. The printer is able to handle a wide range of different paper (plain, inkjet, glossy and banner) and it will handle envelopes, transparencies, labels, cards and iron-on transfers.
Borderless Printing
If you are looking for a printer that will help you avoid the annoying white border around your pictures then you have found the right printer. Some printers boast of being able to print borderless 4"x6" prints and other can't print borderless at all. The Epson Stylus Photo 925 will do borderless on 4"x6", 5"x7" and 8"x10".
Card Reader Function
This is where the this printer sets itself apart from the other Epson Stylus Photo Printers. Epson included the ability to just pop in the memory card from most of the popular digital cameras and print pictures without having a PC attached to the printer. This is done by placing the memory card into one of the memory card adapters that are included with the printer and pop it into the corresponding card slot on the bottom right hand side of the printer.
By using the small monochrome display screen you can select from a wide range of corrective features to alter your images. Now mind you to make changes you need to have this printer attached to your PC or you may purchase the optional 1.6 inch color LCD screen to allow you to view your pictures before you print them. It only takes a few seconds to transfer the images from your card to the printer and you can select which images to print.
Special Feature
Epson included a neat little feature with this printer and for some this might be the deciding factor of buying this printer. This feature attaches a roll paper holder and feeds the paper into the back of the printer. It has a built-in cutter system that will allow you to define the exact length of your print up to 44" in length. This roll feed and cutting system is similar to what you would find on the higher end inkjet plotters from Epson.
How big is this printer?
With the exception of the large wide carriage inkjet printer most of the Epson inkjet printer are fairly small and don't take up a lot of desk space. The biggest problem is that it still feeds paper from the top of the printer, this means that it has to be placed on top of stand. The actual dimensions of the printer are 19.4" L x 11.4" W x 9.0" H and it weighs 14 lb.
What my wife liked about the printer.
As with most of the Epson inkjet printers we have had over the years the Epson Stylus Photo 925 was impressive right out of the box. The print quality just blew her away and the ease of use made her really happy. The fact printer was able to read the memory card that she uses in our Olympus digital camera was a plus. It was also a plus that it can read most of the popular memory cards using the card adapters that comes with the printer.
What she didn't like about the printer.
Right out of the box she noticed that Epson still hadn't fixed the clunky paper feeding noise. This is mainly because of the top paper feeder and until they figure that out it won't ever change. This same annoying top feeder also made it a pain to place this printer on a lower shelf of our printer stand. The last thing she didn't like about this printer and it ultimately led to it's return to the store was that it started to develop the dreaded print banding. To clear up this condition you need to complete a series of print head cleaning cycles. This wouldn't be bad if it didn't use up so much ink to do each cleaning cycle. This is because all Epson inkjet printers have the printhead attached to the printer and not in the ink cartridges. Unlike in the HP Inkjet's if you have problems with print quality, you can just toss the cartridge and put a new one in and you would be ready to go.
My final recommendation
I wouldn't recommend this printer for the main reason that you are already paying over
$200.00 for this printer and then you add on the extra cost of the ink cartridges. This makes it not very cost effective since there other options available. I would recommend the HP Photosmart 7350 and for another opinion checkout this review of the HP Photosmart 7350.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 205.00
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
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