A good value for money printer. (Epson Stylus Photo 900)

Member Name: Chewystu

Product:	Epson Stylus Photo 900
Date:	13/10/03 (569 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Value for money, Good range of print options, Mid-range priced cartridges

Disadvantages: To utilise the CD/DVD print option you have to place the printer with plenty of room at the rear, Can be a little slow, Fiddly to use the CD/DVD print options

I bought this printer from PC World recently, the RRP being £150.00 but the sale price being £99.98.

The Epson name initially attracted me to the printer, but the CD/DVD printing option where you can print directly onto a suitable CD/DVD, I shall go into more detail about that in a moment.

I am running XP and the driver installation is very easy - just stick the disc in and off you go. Follow all the prompts and but DO NOT turn on the printer until prompted to do so, otherwise XP gets very confused!

Once all the software is installed it is plain sailing really. There are plenty of print options covering type of paper (glossy, normal, etc) size of paper (A4 down to A5, etc) and there is also an option to print double sided (although I havent yet tried this out!).

THe CD/DVD printing is a little more fiddly. You have to place the disc on the special tray provided, push the paper thickness lever to open and then feed the tray into the lower rear section of the printer - so make sure wherever you put your printer you have easy access to its rear (I initial had it on a bottom shelf and couldnt actually get to the rear loading section so some forward planning as to placement is required). You feed the tray into the printer, and line up the patterns on the tray with the printer rollers, lock the paper lever down, press the load button and off you go!! Special software is included to load a pictuer for the CD and it is best to use this, not that I know of any other software that will work with the tray.

The print cartridges are realtively cheap, being about mid-range priced. They do seem to last a fair while, although I havent yet come to the end of the cartridges that come with the printer on purchase, which do not usually seem to be a long lasting as the ones you buy from the shops.

I was particularly impressed with the reproduction of photographs onto decent glossy paper - I used Kodak glossy but cant comment
on any other paper makes - but to get a good picture it does take any between 2 and 4 minutes - not a problem if you are not in a rush.

To summarise;

a decent mid-range printer, offering value for money and good options. I would recommend this printer to someone who is looking for an all rounder that prints good photographs, but I do not think the quality would be good enough for a serious photographer. As a post-script the printer supports both USB and Serial connections which is quite handy if you only have a couple of USB ports.

Summary: