Vibrant Epson "Color 900" (Epson Stylus Color 900)

Member Name: fairscup69

Product:	Epson Stylus Color 900
Date:	05/08/00 (612 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast with brilliant colours.

Disadvantages: not cheap

Epson has built an enviable reputation over the last couple of years for the quality of its printers, particularly when it comes to the reproduction of photos. The Stylus Color 900 whilst maybe a little expensive for home is a great printer. Epson's inkjets are based on piezo-electric rather than thermal technology, which the company claims is the reason for its ability to produce the smallest ink droplets in the industry - three picolitres. Technobable like that doesn't mean much to me either, all I'll say is that the colour picture turn out brilliantly. The disadvantage is that the 900 can take up to two minutes to prepare itself and charge the ink after being switched on, the Stylus Color 900 makes few concessions to aesthetics, and dominates a large area of desk space. The front panel sports a total of three buttons, with power, resume and a control to execute print-head cleaning or move the heads to the right position for cartridge replacement.

The 900 is fitted with separate black and CMY cartridges. There's no option for a photo cartridge, and the cartridges are only designed to be removed once the ink is depleted. As well as the standard parallel connector, there's also a USB interface. This is a boon for using the unit as a second printer on one machine, but there are no speed advantages - this is limited by the printer itself rather than the interface. You won't have any worries about speed, however, as the 900 is a seriously fast printer - no hanging around here once it's printing.

When using coated paper, the quality of output is stunning: Colour definition and vibrancy are superb, and quality of photo reproduction certainly doesn't suffer from the lack of a dedicated photo cartridge, giving the great results with almost invisible dots and faithful colour.

If you're looking for a plain-paper printer the Epson Stylus Color 900, perhaps isn't the best, but its quality on coated media and i
ts amazing turn of speed make it one to consider. I use this in tandem with my Kodak DC280 digital camera, so it really does come into it's own. For those of you who have a digital camera and wish to print your pictures, then this is the printer you want.

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