Epson Style (Epson Stylus Photo R800)

Member Name: kxyzle

Product:	Epson Stylus Photo R800
Date:	01/03/06 (434 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Many Functions, 8 Cartridges

Disadvantages: Noisy

Thinking of buying a new printer? Well with the Epson Stylus Photo R800 you would be happily investing your money. For a photo printer when it first came out it wasnt very cheap at £300. But now it has come down in price and you could pick one up for around £195.

The printer uses 8 cartridges to print which are:Black T0541 Photo Black, T0548 Matte Black
Colour T0542 Cyan, T0543 Magenta, T0544 Yellow, T0547 Red, T0549 Blue, T0540 Gloss Optimizer. And compatibles can be found for £10.99 compatible or for the originals £89 from their website, (some others offer the originals for around £44). The truth is that you dont realistically spend that much money at a time for example, the Matte Black cartridge can print around 400 pages at 5% page coverage. The advantage of having so many smaller cartridges is that if the red runs out you only have to replace the red so in effect you only pay for what you use; unlike in most conventional printers where if a certain colour runs out the whole thing has to be replaced.

On the downside one of the disadvantages is that you wont want this printer in your bedroom to print out the morning newspapers! When printing it does tend to be noisy. 45dB(A) (ISO 7779) to be exact. I have had many printers in the last few years from many different manufacturers and have never met a printer which is as noisy as this one, but i suppose it isnt intended to be whisper quiet its designed to print and thats exactly what it does.

This printer does everything that youcould possibly want it to do, it boasts a 5760x1440dpi print quality and can print on many many different types of surfaces. It even comes with a cd tray so that cd's and dvd's with the specially designed surfaces can be printed onto directly. There is a borderless featuer which for the first time to my knowlegdge allows the average person to print on the whole page rather than with the minimum margains.

Epson provied a disk with their own software and this is what can be expected, its nothing more than a few easy to use programmes for beginners so i wouldnt reccoment them to people buying this printer for commercial reasons, but if you are a mother wanting to print off photos of the family holiday then this software is ideal for you. It offers enhancements such as red eye reduction.

Print speeds from the manufacturers are never what the consumers find. Epson state that the print speeds are as follows:
Black Text (Economy Mode): 17 ppm
Colour Text (Economy Mode): 8 ppm
Photo Bike Image (Fine Mode): 39 seconds
However i have found that these are a little inaccurate. For a page of text i would say 14-15 ppm. Colour text 5ppm and to print a standard 6"x4" photo i would say 39 seconds is about right.
All in all this is a great piece of kit and would highly reccoment it to anyone.

Minimum System Requirements:
Windows® 98: Pentium 500MHz or higher 128MB RAM or more 150MB or more free HDD Space
Windows® Me: Pentium 500MHz or higher 128MB RAM or more 150MB or more free HDD Space
Windows® 2000: Pentium 500MHz or higher 128MB RAM or more 150MB or more free HDD Space
Windows® XP: Pentium 500MHz or higher 256MB RAM or more 150MB or more free HDD Space
Mac OS 8.1 - 9.2: 150MB or more free HDD Space, MacOSX: 300MB or more free HDD Space

Summary: Great Printer ifnot a little bit too noisy.

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