Epson Stylus Photo Color Printer

This stylish photo printer from Epson is meant for the professional printing needs of photo studios, advertisement agencies and designers. It is a six-color inkjet printer and prints directly from flash memory devices like Compact Flash, Microdrive, Smart Media, and Memory Stick. You can also connect external storage devices like a Zip drive to take photo prints directly. But, the printer can only recognize JPEG image files and not other image formats. It has a small LCD screen to select and print images directly from external media. To connect to a PC you have the USB interface. The maximum resolution for photo paper is 5760 dpi and for plain paper it is 720dpi. It can print on continuous roll paper for printing banners or complete sets of photos and there is an in-built auto cutter to separate individual photos. 

In our tests, it gave very good quality color print outs with the image being sharp, crisp and showing vibrant colors. But the print speeds were not that great with a full page A4 size color image taking 4:13 mins to print. This is all right if you want good quality images and time doesn’t really matter. Coming to monochrome text, the text prints were not very crisp but still we were readable up to 2-point font, which is good. This implies this printer is not meant for text prints but if there is text along with image, the printer can print it fine.

Snapshot Price :  Rs 26,150 (one year carry-in warranty) Key specs : Good quality photo prints Contact : Epson India, Bangalore Tel : 5321266-70 E-mail : gsuresh@eid.epson.co.in

The black cartridge which gives you about 500 pages in economy mode is priced at is Rs 1060. The color cartridge is for Rs 1170, which gives 30-40 A4 size colored prints.

Overall, the printer is very good for taking colored photo prints but not for text printing. But, its price of Rs 26,150 and running costs are slightly on the high side.

Anoop Mangla