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Epson Artisan 810

Roberto Baldwin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:14:57 -0600

All-in-one printers do everything, but usually at the expense of excelling at any single job. Not so with the Epson Artisan 810, which quickly spits out high-quality photographic prints and also ably takes care of your scanning, copying, and standard printing needs.

The printer uses a tray that accommodates a variety of different paper sizes, including legal, 8.5x14 standard, and various user-definable sizes, which we didn’t have any problems switching between. It also includes a dedicated slot for 4x6 or 5x7 media. You can also print on ink jet–ready CDs and DVDs. The Artisan features print resolutions up to 5760x1440 dpi.

The 810 is speedy--by the time we walked across the room to even wait for our prints, they were already done. The printer has an RPM (Resolution Performance Management) mode that will give you the highest-quality prints available, but it comes at the expense of speed. We noticed the greatest improvements using RPM mode when printing grayscale images with smooth gradients between light and dark. The regular photo mode was more than adequate for point-and-shoot images, but higher-res DSLR shots also showed marked improvement with RPM prints.

Back in Black.

For standard document printing, the Epson produced crisp fonts and pages nearly shot out of the printer. The 810 gave us between 37 to 40 PPM, depending on the amount of included text, and churned out 4x6 photo prints in 8 to 12 seconds. Double-sided prints took longer, but the printer features a built-in duplexer.

The Artisan 810, like most printers, also serves as a card reader and gives you the ability to print directly from memory cards without a computer. We especially like the ability to print out a contact sheet with thumbnails and choose which images to print full size. You can also add frames and create greeting cards directly from the printer itself--a nice touch if you need a card pronto.

All of this memory card–based printing is controlled from the 7.8-inch touchscreen. The screen is home to the easy-to-use UI that controls printer settings and its many features. Setting up the printer, including Wi-Fi printing, was quick and painless.

Epson Stylus Photo R2880

Arthur Bleich — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:30:00 -0500

The R2880 churns out stunning prints at a good price.

There’s good and bad news about Epson’s wide-carriage Stylus Photo R2880, successor to the four-year-old Stylus Photo R2400. First, the good: It’s more robust than the R2400 and puts out the most gorgeous color and black-and-white prints up to 13x19 inches (13x44 inches for panoramas) we’ve ever seen. The bad: Photo Black and Matte Black cartridges still require swapping when using different paper surfaces.

The R2880 also weighs almost 27 pounds and takes up quite a bit of space: Its physical footprint is 24.3 inches wide by 12.7 inches deep (20 inches with its top-loading sheet feeder extended). You’ll need even more room behind it, though, if you use roll paper (holders included) or load single or heavier (up to 1.3mm thick) art-type papers through front or rear single-sheet feed slots. A tray for printing on specially surfaced CDs and DVDs comes with the printer and a pair of USB 2.0 ports allows a two-computer connection, though only one can print at a time.

Following Epson’s quick-start guide, we shook each cartridge a few times and then snapped in Light-Light Black, Vivid Light Magenta, Light Cyan, Light Black, Photo Black, Cyan, Vivid Magenta, and Yellow in that order (we kept Matte Black close by for later use). A press of the Ink button fired up the printer, after which we installed the software without a hitch before connecting the R2880 to our Mac.

We began by printing our 8x10 inch test image on Epson’s Premium Photo Paper Glossy at the three resolutions suitable for photos: SuperFine 1440, Photo 1440, and SuperPhoto 5670. Each has a High Speed option that allows the printhead to lay down ink in both directions of travel, instead of just one; we ran each resolution in both modes.
Unidirectional output speeds were: SuperFine 1440, 3minutes, 12 seconds; Photo 1440, 4 minutes, 39 seconds; SuperPhoto 5760, 8 minutes, 7 seconds. Bidirectional times for the same resolutions were 1 minute, 36 seconds; 2 minutes, 29 seconds; and 4 minutes, 14 seconds, respectively. Eyeballing our six prints carefully, all appeared equal in quality. But looking at them through a powerful loupe revealed some minuscule variations. Nevertheless, Photo 1440 at High Speed gave us excellent results on most papers, along with reasonable printing times.

The R2880 is one of the quietest printers we’ve used--we could hardly hear it at 6 feet away. Prints show no color shifting (metamerism), color layering or bronzing, and Epson’s Ultrachrome K3 pigment inks have a predicted print lightfastness of up to 205 years under glass, but humidity, heat, and air contaminants could shorten that.

Most impressive was the quality of prints we output on different Epson, Red River, and Hahnemühle papers using the R2880’s Advanced Black-and-White mode. They easily equaled or surpassed the finest silver halide prints we’ve seen, offering rich, deep blacks with an extraordinary tonal range that could only be described as stunning. It was also easy to simulate sepia, platinum, selenium, and other traditional toners.

Ink consumption when printing uni- or bidirectionally at SuperFine 1440 or Photo 1440 was about the same. At $13.29 per cartridge, we calculated the average cost of ink for an 8x10 inch print at those four options to be 80 cents ($2.50 for a 13x19 inch photo) though it could be higher or lower depending on the percentage of dark or light areas in an image. SuperPhoto 5760 used about twice as much ink when producing museum-quality, exhibition images on fine art papers.

Epson Perfection V30

Leslie Ayers — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:09:29 -0500

Beneath the Perfection V30’s low physical profile lurks powerful scanning chops.

Recession or no, time is one of our most valuable resources--second only, perhaps, to money. With the Perfection V30 scanner, Epson offers up a way to digitize hard-copy photos and documents that doesn’t suck you dry of time or money. That is to say, this sucker is fast and cheap--in a good way. The V30, a lightweight flatbed scanner with a conveniently flat lid so you can set a stack of papers on top of it without them sliding off, measures 17 inches long by 11 inches wide by 1.6 inches tall, so it fits nicely on a desk or side table--though the included power and USB 2.0 cables are only 6 feet long, so be sure your Mac and power outlet are close enough to reach.

Setting up the V30 and getting started scanning is a 10-minute deal, especially if you eschew a lot of the “extra” bits of included software, such as ArcSoft MediaImpression (a photo-creativity app) and Abbyy FineReader Sprint Plus (for optical character recognition). We skipped those at first and just installed Epson Scan, which is a bit fiddly--and not very pretty to look at--but lets you control what image format your scans are saved in, where they’re saved, and what kind of filters (dust control, descreening, and so on) are applied, saving you time in an image-editing app later on. The FineReader OCR software could come in handy for anyone scanning text documents that need to be converted to editable files--and in our testing on a dozen or so text docs, the OCR worked well.

The V30’s speed is impressive--and it’s whisper-quiet. A 300 dpi scan to PDF of a full-color magazine cover took 47 seconds. The same page scanned as a 25MB TIFF file took 1 minute, 33 seconds. Scanned as a 1MB JPG, it took 56 seconds.

The V30 has just four buttons: Power/Scan, Scan To PDF, Copy, and Scan And Email, a handy feature that scans a document according to the specs you’ve set up in Epson Scan, then launches your default email app and lets you choose a small, medium, or large version of the scanned image to send as an attachment.

Although it’s not advertised as a photo scanner exclusively, the V30 does an excellent job scanning color photos. The scanner works natively with Photoshop, so you can import a scan directly by choosing File > Import > Epson Perfection V30/V300. The scanning area is only 8.5 by 11.7 inches, though, so your scanned images are limited to those dimensions.

Epson WorkForce 600

Leslie Ayers — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:47:00 -0600

It does everything but make coffee—and looks great doing it.

Rarely do we run across an all-in-one printer as capable, affordable, and easy to use as the Epson WorkForce 600. On top of that, the device—which prints, scans, copies, and faxes—is attractive enough to share desk space with a MacBook Pro, iMac, or Mac Pro, without sticking out like a soccer mom at a death-metal concert.

Setup is a breeze, although you should decide from the outset whether you want to network the WorkForce 600 via Wi-Fi or a wired 10/100 Mbps Ethernet. If you just want to connect the printer to one Mac to get started right away, it’s a simple matter of installing the Epson software, connecting the device to your Mac via a USB cable (not included). Photos print beautifully on the machine at impressive speeds, depending on the print size and options selected. Most 300-dpi 4-by-6 images we printed at Best Photo setting (with High Speed also checked) came out in about a minute and a half, give or take a few seconds. Larger shots, such as an 8-by-10 portrait with a highly saturated background, took longer: 2 minutes, 42 seconds, in that case. Copies of full-color presentation slides printed nicely and took just 18 seconds apiece. And scanning the same color slides to PDF files took less than 30 seconds each. Printed photos came out beautifully and showed true-to-life color and accurate skin tones.

The device also offers plenty of options for bypassing a computer and printing directly from a flash memory card, PictBridge-compatible camera, or even a USB flash drive—though the USB slot on the front of the device requires a drive with a slim form factor, due to the port being inset from the face of the printer. Because of its networking abilities and built-in Wi-Fi, the WorkForce 600 is ideal for a small business or workgroup of a handful of computers. But for only $200, it’s an awesome home printer too. It doesn’t handle paper wider than 8.5 inches, but for most standard photo print sizes, including panoramic shots, the WorkForce 600 more than pulls its own weight without making you wait, delivering drop-dead gorgeous prints and offering a slew of business-savvy options, like double-sided printing, optical character recognition (OCR), and enlargements up to 400 percent.

Epson Artisan 800

Arthur Bleich — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:53:00 -0600

This compact beauty packs a punch.

All-in-one printers have gotten a bad rap. Sure, they can print, scan, copy, and even fax, but usually their talents are a mile wide and an inch deep. But lucky for us, times have changed. All-in-one printers’ capabilities have improved, and the new do-everything machines are good-looking to boot. Beautifully finished in high-gloss black, Epson’s Artisan 800 all-in-one looks more like a fine musical instrument than the print/scan/copy/fax solution that it is.

The Artisan 800 prints from a computer or directly from cameras, USB drives, and memory cards. As a standalone printer, it can restore faded photos, remove red-eye, and print multiple images on a single page. Its dye-based inks—in six separate cartridges—print brilliant color images, which Epson says will last more than 95 years. The 4800 dpi (optical resolution) scanner-copier features OCR capability, and the copier can reduce or enlarge between 25 to 400 percent. The Artisan 800 is also Wi-Fi ready—a snap to set up—and features Ethernet networking built in.

The 7.8-inch touchscreen panel features a bright 3.5-inch LCD to allow editing in the printer prior to printing. Full pages of text took only 3 seconds on the Draft setting and 8 seconds on Normal. Paper is loaded into a two-tiered cassette, and media up to 44-inches long can be fed in manually.

Photo quality options include Draft, Standard, or Best with either uni- or bidirectional printing. Using the faster bidirectional mode, a 4x6 photo took 13, 23, and 56 seconds in Draft, Standard, and Best modes, respectively. Eight-by-tens at the same settings took 31 seconds; 1 minute, 7 seconds; and 2 minutes, 15 seconds, respectively. Eventually, we found that printing on Best was a waste of time and settled on Draft for everyday prints and Standard for enlargements. Epson says all modes use about the same amount of ink—it’s just dispersed differently: larger drops for Draft, while Best mode utilizes the smallest drops. We estimated ink costs at 77 cents per 8x10 photo and 21 cents for a 4x6 print.

We became addicted to printing Index Sheets. Each displayed thirty 1-by-1/4-inch thumbnail photos from our memory cards, then we selected images to print by filling in circles with a pen. After marking our answers—er, choices—we placed the sheet in the scanner, hit Start, and the prints rolled out. File names under each thumbnail made it easy to spot our selections when printing from our Mac

Epson R1900

Arthur Bleich — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:53:59 -0500

“Landscape” takes on new meaning with Epson’s R1900.

If high-gloss color photos turn you on, the new Epson R1900 will give you a real thrill. Using long-lasting pigment inks and a special gloss optimizer, the wide-format printer puts out shiny, eye-popping photos up to 13 by 19 inches that’ll bring on the oohs and aahs.

If you already own its predecessor, the R1800, there’s no urgent need to trade up, however. The difference in output quality between the two inkjet printers is very subtle, except when it comes to flesh tones. For those, the R1900 has new orange ink formulated to capture the color nuances of lighter skin tones. In combination with its other inks—photo or matte black, cyan, red, yellow, and magent-a—the results are impressive. Adding gloss optimizer to the mix virtually eliminates the topographical effect of color layering that can occur when pigment inks are used on glossy paper.

Epson has paid attention to small details too, such as integrating handles in the R1900’s wrapping so that you can more easily lift its nearly 30 pounds from the box. There are twin USB 2.0 ports (but no FireWire or Ethernet) at the rear that allow two computers to connect to the printer, in addition to a front port for direct-from-camera PictBridge printing.

After powering on the R1900, we inserted the ink cartridges and connected a USB cable (not included) to our Mac. Then, we installed the Epson driver and used the Mac’s Printer Setup Utility to get the printer running.

We first let the printer’s stock driver run the show— with excellent results. Then, after calibrating our monitor with ColorVision’s Spyder 3 Pro, we downloaded a special set of premium-paper profiles from Epson’s site that enables Photoshop (and other color management programs) to accomplish more precise color output. The resulting prints were awesome.

The R1900 runs quietly, handles borderless output, and is extremely versatile. The printer can use roll paper via included holders, prints on CD and DVD disks, and handles thicker-than-normal papers through an easily attached loader. It also prints well on oversized third-party media: Red River’s 13-by-38-inch-long panorama papers rolled through smoothly.

Output quality is determined by three settings: Photo, Best Photo, and Photo RPM (Resolution Performance Management), each with a high-speed option. We printed a 20MB, 8-by-10 TIFF image at 300ppi on Epson’s premium glossy paper and logged output times from when the R1900 began to print. Our results with the Photo setting were unacceptable, however. Banding was evident across the image and it actually took longer (2 minutes, 32 seconds) than the Best Photo setting (2 minutes, 16 seconds). Selecting Best Photo at High Speed, the R1900 cranked a print out in 1 minute, 39 seconds. Photo RPM took 5 minutes, 16 seconds, but setting it to High Speed reduced the output time to 2 minutes, 44 seconds. Our advice is to start with Best Photo/High Speed and bump up the quality settings only if you don’t like the first results.

We also ran a test print to determine ink consumption—a tricky endeavor since photos rarely use the same amount of each ink color. After printing 35 glossy 8-by-10 prints, the Gloss Optimizer cartridge needed replacement, and at 50 prints the Photo Black, Cyan, and Magenta ran out (the other colors were still half full). We estimated ink costs at about 1.5 cents per square inch ($1.20 for an 8-by-10).

The R1900 also prints good-looking black-and-white glossy and matte prints. We noticed very slight metamerism (color casts under different light sources) with certain papers—which occurs when colored inks are mixed with black to achieve certain gray tones.