Best Photo Printer Under $500
Written: Mar 17 '03
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Pros: Photo store quality prints, excellent color matching, fast
Cons: Pricey
The Bottom Line: For photo lab quality prints, up to letter size, at home, and you don't want to spend over $500, then this is the photo printer for you.
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| cebteb's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 960 InkJet Printer |
First of all, the Epson Stylus Photo 960 is, like it's name says, a photo printer. We don't use it for text and web site graphics. We have an HP LaserJet and a Stylus Color 800 for those applications.
We bought the Photo 960 because the Stylus Color 800 could, on its best day, only deliver good photo prints at 4 X 6 size, and take 20 minutes to do it. Since we acquired an Olympus C-3040Z digital camera a year ago, we have been eager to be able to produce prints of some of the beautiful photos we've taken. I researched a spectrum of photo printers priced under $500 and was swayed by the technical reviews in MacWorld. We are Mac users and Mac compatible product reviews in MacWorld have been a reliable resource in the past. Their review pointed to the Photo 960 because of the state-of-the-art, 2 pico-liter ink droplet size.
I then read reviews of the Photo 960 here and at numerous other web sites. There were criticisms from some "professional" reviewers, but user reviews generally gave the printer high praise. Based on that I did some comparison shopping and got a good deal and prompt deliver from MWAVE.
I connected the Photo 960 to my Mac via USB and installed the Mac compatible software. Printer setup was a breeze.
Epson provides samples of various photo papers with the printer, but we already had a lot of different grades of Epson photo papers. I first tested the printer with some 360 dpi ink jet paper and printed a 5 X 7 photo of my wife's flower garden. Less than a minute and I had a great ink jet paper photo, suitable as a test photo print.
I then tried various grades of photo paper , some pre-cut to 4 X 6, and the results got more impressive as the paper grade increased. The big test was a 5 X 7 of the sun setting into the Pacific ocean from a beach in Puerto Vallarta. I printed it on 8 X 10, Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper at the highest quality settings. Less than 2 minutes and I had a photo lab quality print with color that matched our aperture grille color monitor display. My wife framed the photo the next morning. Wow!
I haven't exercised the 4 X 6 roll photo paper dispenser and automatic print cutter, but all of the sizes and grades of paper I have tried have fed flawlessly into the Photo 960. Operation of the printer for auto-feed of photo paper is very straight-forward. The Epson software drivers present a rather intuitive menu when you are ready to print from whatever photo viewing/enhancing application you choose. Print setup isn't click and go, you do need to review the various setting options and know what they will do for you.
If you are looking for a photo printer, not just an all-purpose color ink jet printer, the Epson Stylus Photo 960 is as good as it gets below the professional equipment level. It isn't cheap, but, for photo prints, it won't disappoint.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 305
Operating System: Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
cebteb
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Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
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