Large prints at small costs (Epson Stylus Photo 1400)

Member Name: davomrmac

Product:	Epson Stylus Photo 1400
Date:	21/10/08 (181 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good price, fantastic edge-to-edge prints

Disadvantages: Can get through lots of ink (because you want to print everything)

The Epson Stylus 1400 is what I term a 'no frills' inkjet printer, that doesn't have all the flashy add-ons of other models, but gives you the opportunity to print large photos, without spending loads of money. OK, so £260 is a lot to spend on a printer, but you get a lot of goodness for that amount.

The Stylus Photo 1400 has a print head with 540 nozzles (90 nozzles per magenta, cyan, yellow, light magenta, light cyan and black). It uses six individual ink cartridges, which give a nice range of contrast and detail to your photos. I have printed a lot of my kids photos at A3 size and they look very natural. The maximum resolution is 5760 x 1440 optimised dpi and you can print on normal paper if you wish. Best results are on glossy photo paper, though you do not have to use Epson brand. It prints just as well on cheaper brands of paper too.

To connect to your computer you use the USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) Interface and it works with both Macs and PC's. The software is supplied, but worth noting that although the Stylus Photo 1400 can print direct to CD/DVD, there is no software supplied to do this with the latest Mac OS X Leopard... you have to look elsewhere. I use a little application called DiscLabel which does the job well.

You can print on the following paper sizes; A3+ A3, A4, A5, A6, Letter, Legal, B5, 4"x6", 12"x12", 8"x10", 7"x5", 3.5"x5", 11"x17". In all these sizes you can print right up to the edge. This is great, a large A3+ print is possible, edge-to-edge. The printer software warns that the printing at the edges may show degradation in quality, but I certainly can't see it.

The printer is quite large at 223mmx615mmx314mm (hxwxd), but if you can accommodate that sort of size, it is well worth it. Haging those awesome prints of photos I have taken on my wall gets a lot of comments and makes me smile a lot.

Summary: If you can accommodate a large printer, get this one

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