Epson Stylus Photo 1200 (Epson Stylus Photo 1200)

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Product:	Epson Stylus Photo 1200
Date:	01/07/00 (387 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Razor-sharp, large-format photos; supercompetitive price.

Disadvantages: Relatively slow; some text printing problems on plain paper.

In a world full of pocket-sized PDAs and miniature cell phones, it's hard to find many top-tier hardware products that won't fit easily in your briefcase. One exception, the Epson Stylus Photo 1200, offers high image-quality scores to match its mammoth dimensions and supersized prints. Best of all, you won't pay a gargantuan sum for the privilege: this king-size offering comes with a highly competitive price tag.
Wide Load
The Stylus Photo 1200 prints extralarge documents bigger and better than those we've seen from other photo-quality ink jets. Its input tray holds sheets as large as 13 by 18 inches or as tiny as 4-by-6-inch postcard paper and letter-sized envelopes. And Landscape format takes on a new meaning with this printer. With special banner paper installed, the Stylus Photo 1200 prints panoramas up to 44 inches long. Other photo ink jets typically top out at 11-by-17-inch (tabloid-sized) output.

Epson printers traditionally perform well in output tests, so we weren't surprised by the Stylus Photo 1200's high marks. The jumbo-sized contender suffered no measurable loss of quality due to its mammoth proportions, earning excellent ratings for color images on both plain and coated paper. When printed on coated stock, type remained just as crisp and clear as that of its best competitors, but the gentle giant couldn't match the straight-A scores of the Lexmark Z51 when printing text on plain paper. Our jury rated the Epson's plain-paper text output fair, finding the smallest fonts fuzzy and out of focus.

Takes Its Time
Like luxury cars and enormous athletes, large-format printers rarely break speed records.Given that, the Stylus Photo 1200 still seems rather poky. The HP DeskJet 1120Cse prints text at 16.2 seconds per page, considerably faster than the Epson's 40-second time in the same test.

But the Stylus Color 1200's strength, of course, lies in its ability to produce clear, lar
ge photos, and there the Epson's results rise head and shoulders above its competitors. The printer uses both a black and a six-color cartridge to produce extraordinarily sharp photos. Surprisingly, this technology offers a low cost per page as a bonus--about 29 cents per color page and 6.1 cents per page of text. Although not as cheap as HP's rating of 4.8 cents per text page, this figure's certainly less than the Lexmark 3200's $1.03 per color page and 11.8 cents per text page.

Epson's Connections
Whether you are using a PC or a Mac, tower system or laptop, Epson offers all the right connections. The 1200 comes equipped with Centronics parallel, 8-pin mini-din (that lets you print directly from the Epson PhotoPC 750Z digital camera), and USB ports. The bundled software suite, Epson Digital PhotoLab Pro, features Adobe PhotoShop 5.0 LE, making photo editing a snap.

The Epson Stylus Photo 1200 offers unprecedented photo-quality output in a large-format printer. And with its low $499 price, Epson clearly occupies a class of its own. If you need supersize photos, consider the Epson Stylus 1200.

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