Decent Printer At The Price (Epson Stylus Photo 830U)

Member Name: Peter_P

Product:	Epson Stylus Photo 830U
Date:	27/08/03 (867 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Price

Disadvantages: Not the best quality

The Stylus Photo 830U is a budget six-colour A4 photo printer with a maximum resolution of 5,760x720dpi and a top print speed of 14ppm in monochrome and 13.7ppm in colour - exactly the same as the Photo 830 before it.

The Photo 830U doesn't have the bells and whistles of Epson's more exotic units, such as roll-paper facilities, a fancy control panel, digital camera card slots, a photo preview screen and so on. However, it can print borderless A4 photos, supports Print Image Matching II for accurate colour reproduction and has a second USB port on the front of the printer for an Epson digital camera.

It comes with PhotoQuicker, an excellent application for batch printing or annotating photos and creating albums. The 830U's enhanced version has extra features for managing photos and audio clips on a digital camera connected to the printer. The cumbersome Image Framer's purpose is self-explanatory. Scan To Web is also included but, as the Photo 830U doesn't include a scanner, I'm not sure why.

In use, graininess is minimal from Normal quality upwards. As for the speed claims of 14ppm - mine reached 7.6ppm but this was achieved only by resorting to extremely low quality. Photo quality on plain paper is poor because the printer applies more ink than the paper can take, however the gloss finish and sharpness of the printouts on photo paper is superb.

The Photo 830U's best selling point is its extremely low price. It's extraordinary to get such features for £85 excluding VAT but you have to weigh that against a print quality that needs to be tweaked for some images and poor general-purpose performance.

Summary: