Excellent quality, full featured, easy to use.
Written: Jan 19 '04 (Updated Jan 28 '04)
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Pros: Excellent, glitch free quality, easy to use, full featured with CD and photo printing.
Cons: Maybe a bit expensive on ink.
The Bottom Line: Superior quality, full featured, easy to use. If you want HQ printing and you are willing to spend a bit more on ink I highly recommend this printer.
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| shay98's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo R300 InkJet Printer |
I am extremely pleased with this printer. I needed to replace my old Canon BJC 5000, and decided to get another Canon printer. When I went to purchase the canon the demo printer had problems loading the paper, not a good sign. I spoke with the salesperson who convinced me I needed to get this printer instead. It was $30 more than the canon but she showed me some photos that had been printed with this printer and they were beautiful, and it could print directly on printable CD or DVD discs.
I was sold so I brought the printer home and installed it - it installed like a dream. In my past experience with ink jet printers I have found every one of the ones I have owned glitchy from time to time. I have never had a glitch with this printer. It has always worked and loaded the paper perfectly each time. It prints borderless photos, full page or on 4x6 photo paper. Print quality is supreme and photo quality is absolutely excellent. I can't tell that the photos are not professional prints. All of the pictures I have printed look as good if not better than the pictures I have had professionally printed. The photo printing software that came with this printer is great too. Very easy to use and has a lot of printing options and features. You can edit photos, and print specialty stuff like album pages, calendars, greeting cards and stickers. The printer also works well with the photo printing software that came with my HP Scanner.
I was really impressed with how fast it prints, even photos. A 4X6 photo on the best quality setting takes about 1 minute 35 seconds.
The print driver software itself is very full featured. It does well on the automatic setting but if you want to you have so many settings and features you can change. Color and contrast settings, photo enhancements, watermarks, rotation, too much to go into. And it has a feature I really like, print preview. If you turn this feature on the print driver will give you a print preview so you can give the final OK before actually printing.
The CD printing is a really neat feature, and one I wasn't planning on buying a printer for but I can certainly use it. It was very easy to use, just place your disk in a tray, insert it into the printer, design your label and click print. It printed perfectly each time. Very slick and nice looking, much easier to do and cheaper than standard CD labels. You do have to buy special printable CDs, it won't print on regular CDs. I purchased a 30 pack of memorex printable cds at best buy for $14.99. I usually buy a 50 pack of regular cds for around the same price, so they were a bit more expensive, but no need to buy labels, and no need to try to get that label stuck on the CD just right. The CDs look very nice and professional when printed on and seem to be quite colorfast, I let the first one I printed cure for awhile and then got it wet and wiped it off and it didn't smudge at all.
The printer hooks up USB and comes with 3 kinds of media slots and a usb connection into it for directly plugging in a zip drive or compatible camera, and will print directly from the usb connection or inserted media.
While it isn't noted in any of the documentation or listed as a feature on the box, I have found that this printer is network compatible. My operating system is Windows 2000 and I have shared the printer with another Win2k computer and an XP pro computer. On both computers I simply double clicked on the Epson printer share while browsing in my network places. It automatically installed the driver and has worked perfectly.
The one and only thing I am concerned about with this printer is the ink is rather expensive. It takes 6 cartridges, black, cyan, magenta, yellow, photo cyan and photo magenta. Each cartridge costs around 12.50, so that is 75.00 for a full load of ink. I really like that each color is a separate cartridge, and that it has online ink level gauges. I have been worried about ink consumption so I have been watching it close and have kept notes on everything I have printed.
I have so far printed on a combination of different photo paper sizes what amounts to apx 20 full sheets 8 1/2 X 11 of photos, a few cards, some general color printing and two CDs. The photo cyan and magenta cartridges are half gone yellow is 1/3 gone and the rest are 1/4 gone. Average consumption so far is about 1/3 or about $25.00 in ink. I think it would be pretty conservative to say that what I have printed other than pictures would equal something like 2 more full coverage sheets, would give me about 22 full pages or about $1.14 for a full sheet, (8X10) or about .28 for a 3x5 or about .33 for a 4x6 photo. Adding in the cost of the paper it makes it just a bit more expensive for 4x6 photos than having prints made but factoring in the convenience of printing at home I would say that isn't too bad, and the cheapest place I can find to have larger prints done it is .96 for a 5x7 and 2.86 for an 8x10 so that is about the same price for printing a 5x7 and over $1.50 cheaper for an 8x10.
I would imagine this printer isn't the cheapest on replacement ink, but I don't think for quality and features this printer can be beaten. If you are interested in quality, want to print photos, on CD/DVD's or HQ general color printing and you are willing to spend a bit more on ink I think you will be very happy with this printer, I would absolutely recommend it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 173.00
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
shay98
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Reviews written: 3
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