Adios 1 Hour Photo
Written: Aug 25 '02
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Pros: Good quality print jobs, inexpensive ink, multiple features.
Cons: Slooooooooow, HUGE, doesn't come w/required USB cable.
The Bottom Line: If you're looking for a PHOTO printer this is the one for you. If you're just looking for a basic text and image printing printer, take a cheaper route.
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| ebundren's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX Ink-jet Printer |
I sorted through all the photographs I've ever taken throughout my entire life the other day and found the whole experience to be rather amusing. I threw out about half of the pictures, most of them containing a dozen pictures of blurred faces, forefingers on the lens, feet, the sky and other images that no sober human could identify. Had digital cameras been invented 20 years ago, this project would not have been necessary. But I'm glad to say that I live in the 21st century now with a handy digital camera and the Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX InkJet Printer.
The last color printer I had was bought with my first computer back in 1995. It bailed on it's duties not longer after and I moved onto a used 1994 canon BJ that printed only black ink. It did me fine until it crapped out after a couple of years as well. Finally, wore out on trying to make room in my closet for broken electronic devices, and poor from having to spend all my money to go to Kinko's to get color copies, I decided to suck it up and buy a new printer.
After ALOT of research I decided on the Epson 785 EPX.
What Sold Me
All of the highly recommended color printers that I looked at seemed the same to me until I came upon this nifty printer with a Compact Flash reader. Knowing that my digital camera uses one I decided to check it out. Sure enough, it reads from your CF (or Smart Media, or Memory Stick) and will print your pictures without even having to turn on the computer. The card reader also shows up in your computer as a drive where you can access the card and take your pictures off your card just as if it were a floppy disk. I found this to be a major plus, seeing as I hadn't managed to invest in an individual card reader for my computer yet, PLUS it would save battery power from having to download it directly off the digital camera.
Pros
*I find the photo print quality in this baby to be rather good. Of course there are quite a few essentials that contribute. When you're taking a picture that you plan on printing as a photo on photo paper, you want to take it in the highest quality resolution that your camera allows. This will provide you with sharper, clearer pictures, and they will come out looking like you just picked them up at the photo shop. My camera doesn't have the highest possible settings, so my pictures still don't look as good as they could, but they are still clear and definite. You also want to use good photo paper. When I bought my first package of photo paper after using the free samples that came with the printer, I decided to save a little dough and buy the cheaper stuff. BIG mistake. The picture was so blurry and discolored. I waisted about three pieces of it before I could find the right setting in the print manager to come out with a decent photo, yet it still didn't look as good as it did on the Epson paper. And that is about all you need to come up with a nice, personally printed photo.
*Fold up output tray, saves space. :)
*Roll paper, I haven't used this feature yet, but I can imagine it will be very useful to be able to print bordless photos in several different sizes without having cut them out of letter sized photo paper or setting them to fit on the paper when printing, etc...Once again, just like having a photo developing shop right in your own home.
Cons
*The control panel on the printer is what I have the most trouble with. I haven't read up on it any yet because I find it much more convenient to just go into my computer picture reviewer and selecting the photos I want, editing and printing them. If the control panel can print multiple pictures on one page, brighten, sharpen and crop them, then it would be great, but I'm not sure that it can seeing as, after looking at the buttons and choices, I haven't seen anything that implies that it can do that. Therefore I find it useless to use for printing photos directly from removable media. The few pictures I printed from the print order on my CF came out blurry and discolored.
*The colored ink runs out FAST! Especially when printing photos. Luckily, a new colored ink cartridge is less than $20.
*I don't find the print quality of regular text and colored images to be as good as the print quality of photos. They're not blurry by any means, but they're not as sharp as they are on most regular high quality printers. If they're going to make a photo printer with such great photo printing quality how hard can it be to enhance it's text and image printing quality as well? *shrug*
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 130
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
ebundren
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Location: Hole in the Wall, LA
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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