Epson R200 Photo Printer (Epson Stylus Photo R200)

Member Name: Edward_M

Product:	Epson Stylus Photo R200
Date:	07/05/05 (3613 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Separate Ink Cartridges (6), Borderless printing, CD/DVD printing

Disadvantages: Needs space at rear for CD printing

The Epson R200 is the R300's little brother. It uses the same six colour printing technology but lacks the built in card reader. As such, it cannot be used as a standalone photo printer. The technical aspects, print quality, features, etc., have been adequately covered elsewhere in reviews of the R300, so I'll confine my comments to a few personal experiences and printing tips.
I settled on this machine after becoming increasingly disillusioned (not to say utterly p*ssed off) with my aging Kodak PPM200, which had the most annoying habit of running out of one colour - generally around 90% through printing a photo - without warning. Original PPM200 ink cartridges are hard to find nowadays, and VERY expensive. Refilling is a P-I-T-A, and never seems to match the original colours. Cheaper to buy a new printer, and a new R200 cost me £85 from PC World.
Photo quality is excellent as it stands, but I would recommend downloading the Print Image Matching plugin (for use in Photoshop / Elements) from the Epson website, which also comes with a full set of colour profiles for Epson papers. Strange how no mention is made of this in the documentation that comes with the printer. Even if your digicam does not support PIMII, the plugin works equally well with Exif Print, which is standard on all new cameras.
Experimenting with PIMII reveals that it makes a big improvement to some digital pics, and little or no improvement to others. One printed landscape in particular is absolutely stunning, when printed on Ilford Gallerie smooth gloss paper (using the correct colour profile from the Ilford website). I freely admit to being a nitpicking perfectionist when it comes to colour matching and photo detail, and this setup really delivers.
The printer also produces far more photo prints than than my old machine before running out of ink; and luckily, it gives you plenty of warning when this is about to happen. Which brings me to the whole point of this review - the cost of replacement ink.
A full set of pukka Epson cartridges at PC World will set you back over £70. The cheapest I've found so far are sold by Boots, but will still cost £50+ for 6 cartridges. Various Epson compatibles are available from many websites, and cost around £18 per set.
A local consumables supplier had a special offer - a full set of R200/300 compatible 'Pro-Jet' cartridges for a fiver. Can't be much good at that price, I thought; but it did have the 'ISO 9001' logo on the packaging, so it had to be worth a gamble.
How wrong can you be? I have tried this ink on Epson Premium Semigloss, Ilford Gallerie, and Kodak Ultima paper with brilliant results; always making sure, of course, to use the correct colour profile for each paper (Kodak need you to register on their website before allowing download of the Ultima profile). Printing without a matching profile can be very hit-&-miss; and be warned, this ink does NOT work well on Ilford Printasia glossy paper. No doubt the same can be said about various other papers, especially the cheaper ones; but at this price, one can afford to experiment. CD/DVD printing is also perfectly acceptable using the standard Epson R200 profile which is installed with the printer driver. I now have a whole bagload of Pro-Jet ink cartridges, which should last me the life of the printer.
If you can source these particular refills at a similar price, I would say go out and buy an R200/300. This is home/ semi-professional printing as it should be.

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