Epson's stylish little printer . . . (Epson Stylus Photo R200)

Member Name: Siswell

Product:	Epson Stylus Photo R200
Date:	23/04/05 (264 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very high quality printing, Prints CD covers direct to the discs, Cheap cartidges

Disadvantages: No USB cable, Not amazingly fast

Epson as you may or may not know are one of the best producers of mass printers and are on par with Canon, HP, Lexmark and other big name brands.
I personally bought one of these printers for some very good reasons. Having just binned a Canon as it started playing up as it was a bit too cheap and no longer chearful i decided to go for a more solid so at about the £50 range (so i didn't just get the cheapest one on the market). In addition to this limit i also decided to rule out all HP instantly due there stupidly high price of cartidges due to there poor design of having expensive chips in them. Finally decided to buy the R200 as it was one of the cheaper ones, has cheap cartridges, does 5000+ dpi and what clinched it the ability to print directly on to CD's which none of its close competitors can do. As you would expect the print quailty on the expensive paper is perfect as good as, if not better, than normal photo prints from the shops and i have had no problems with it at all since buying it 3+ months ago. The print quailty on CD's is also very good its not as good as the paper prints but is however very good, its even better than some of the poor commerically printed discs! Overall its a delight to use and gives very good results with the right media. This printer also has a another smart trick of using 6 different cartiges to cut down on the amount of ink you use when doing different shades, so in theory you use less ink. One slight draw back is that this printer isnt the fastest in the world, but does have its own feed tray, but to achieve much faster rate of printing you really need to be doubling the cost so i found i can live with a bit of awaiting. Finally be warned it doesn't come with a USB cable but then most don't now, you'll need a male A to male B one which aren't too pricey if you get one online just remember to add it to your order :) other than that i can't think of thing to complain about, i'm very happy it gets 5 stars.

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