The Epson Stylus Photo R200 is the entry level model in the Epson Stylus Photo Series of ink jet printers. (The Stylus Photo series of printers differ from the Stylus series, which all use the long lasting “Durabright” inks. Many reviewers have reported Durabright ink tends to plug ink jets if not used frequently.) The Stylus Photo R200 and R300, as well as the multifunction RX500 and RX600, all are ” 6 color” photo printers which use dye based inks, with each color in a separate cartridge. The R200 and R300, are fairly unique in that they will also print directly on printable CD’s and DVD’s. When my HP Deskjet 810 printer recently stopped printing correctly, I considered several inexpensive models to replace it, but the CD/DVD printing and affordable (~$99) price of this printer got my attention. My son has an RX500 multifunction printer, which uses the same cartridges, and we were pretty happy with that printer, which helped me finalize my decision.

I purchased the Epson R200 from Amazon from $99, list price, but at least taking advantage of their free shipping offer, and connected it to a Dell 4550 desktop PC running Windows XP. In the box was the printer itself, 6 full ink cartridges, a cd print tray, three 4” x 6” sheets of Epson Premium Glossy Photo paper, a cd with drivers and the cd printing software, an effective quickstart guide, and a nicely prepared 86 page manual with table of contents and index. Unfortunately, the manual is outdated in some areas, for example the description of the wide range of options offered by the printer driver does not match the current driver version. A USB cable, required to use this printer, was not included.


Installation and Setup

This printer is easy to setup, and the quick start guide walks you clearly through the process. The steps are 1) remove the packing tape, 2) power the printer on, 3) install the 6 ink cartridges, 4) connect the usb cable to your computer, 5) load paper, and 6) install the software. This printer is compatible with Win 98 or later and Mac OS 9.x or later.

In addition to the printer drivers, the optional software available to install includes

-Epson Print CD, needed to print on cd’s and dvd’s
-Epson Photo Center, to connect to and use Epson’s free photo sharing website
-Software Film Factory, a “Photo Management” application, vaguely similar to Adobe’s Photoshop Album or Kodak’s EasyShare software
-A P.I.M. II plug in for Adobe Photoshop to retain Print Image Matching quality when importing images from PIM enabled cameras.


Using the Epson R200

Printing on CD’s and DVD’s

Two features set this printer apart from similarly priced entry level photo printers. One is the six “individual” ink cartridge system that lets you replace each color as it runs out independently. More notable, and unique to the class of “under $100 printers”, is the ability to print on cd’s and dvd’s.

You will need printable disks, which you probably haven’t noticed in stores if you weren’t looking, but they are widely available. List price for printable cd’s isn’t much more than list price for plain cdr’s. However, unlike plain cdr’s, which are on sale every week at the large computer and electronics chain stores, I rarely see printable cd’s on sale. I bought my first package of 30 Memorex 48X cdr’s for $15 from Office Depot. Packs of 100 Taiyo Yuden printable cd’s run about $42 at www.meritline.com, a highly respect brand from one of the top online stores offering digital media and other supplies. As I write this, I see that 30 packs of printable cd’s are on sale for $11 at Best Buy, still more expensive than plain cdrs’ but reasonable.

I've not tried printable DVD's yet, though I see 100 packs of printable 4X plus R DVD's are available for $170, or about $1.70 each, at Compusa. Standard, non printable Memorex 4X plus R DVD's run about $1.25 each in similar sized packages.

Printing cd’s first involves laying out text and graphics using the Print CD software. Print CD offers a virtual cd to lay out your design on. Text can be added in any size, color, font, with shadow, or with a few other effects. The text can be horizontal or vertical on your cd, or arched to follow the curve of the cd. I had to read the instructions once to get a “feel” for manipulating arched text, but after that I found adding text around the edge of cd or around the middle circle or anywhere in between to be intuitive. Adding images to be printed on part of a cd is extremely easy. When you select a typically rectangular image to add to your cd, Print CD “lays” it on top of an image of a cd, and you can resize the image to best fit the cd. The cd image in the layout window clearly shows the printable area of the cd, and when you print out cd’s with images, this printer only prints on the printable area, and I’ve had no problems with any carry over to the edge of the cd or the small non printable area on the cd’s hub.

More useful is the option to use an image as the background graphic on a cd. With this option, a virtual donut shaped image representing the printable area on your cd is shown on top of the image you select as a background. You can move and resize the cd image over you background image to select which parts of your desired background image are printed on our cd. This feature is intuitive, and helps you create an amost professional looking background for your cd’s.

To print cd’s, you need to first open door on the front of the printer that provides access the slot for cd printing. You insert the cd print tray in this slot, with the printable cd in the print tray. Pressing the print button in the Print CD software, causes the printer to pull the print tray into the printing area, after which printing starts. Printing a cd with a full color image takes about 3 minutes, less if only a small image or no image used. After printing on the cd, the printer feeds out the cd print tray, with the newly printed cd ready to use or store. Print quality is very good, equivalent to printouts on standard inkjet paper. If you select "photo" mode when printing, and use high quality images, you cd's graphics will approach the quality of commercial disks. I’ve had no problems with misaligned prints on cd’s.

A few other printing programs support direct cd/dvd printing with this printer, notably Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7, among others. EMC7 is more powerful than the cd printing software that comes with this printer, but its also a bit more complicated to use. To use EMC7 to print on cd/dvd's follow the following steps (taken from Roxio's support site, with my corrections):

1) Launch Label Creator
2) Go to File \ Printer Adjustments
3) Select the R200 printer (you may also need to make adjustments to line up printing on your disks)
4)In the Printer Properties make sure you set source to manual, paper type to cd/dvd and paper size to A4

Other software programs that support this printer are shown at the bottom of this page:
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/CDLanding.jsp



Printing Text

The R200 has 5 print modes, draft, text, text plus image, photo, and best photo. In draft mode, this printer is fast, printing out a full page of black text in under 5 seconds, though there is about a 10 second delay from the time you push the print button till printing starts. Even in draft mode text is sharp and easy to read, though it is light, actually appears dark grey in color rather than black. In text and the “text plus image” mode, a page of single spaced text takes 25-30 seconds to print, again with a 10 second delay before printing starts. In both text and "text plus image" mode the text is black, with sharp, cleanly defined letters which are easy to read.

Printing Graphics

The R200 prints graphics fairly quickly. In “text plus image” mode, a 5 X 7 image takes about 20 seconds to print on normal paper, after the standard 10 second delay to start printing the first page. In “best photo” mode on plain paper, about 70 seconds are required to print a 5X7 image. In the faster text plus image mode, the printed image looks very good, and I detect no banding. In best photo mode, the colors seem slightly brighter, and all details are very slightly “sharper”.

Photo Printing

Some of the advertising on the R200 box claim 4X6 photo’s can be printed in 37 seconds. I’ve not been able to duplicate that speed, and find that 4X6 photo’s printed on glossy paper in photo mode take about 1 minute to print. Full page photo’s take about 2 minutes to print, still reasonably fast. I’ve tried printing on 3 types of glossy photo paper. Epson’s premium glossy photo paper and Canon’s glossy photo paper both provide terrific photos with very bright colors. Georgia Pacific Image Plus photo paper (purchased at Sam’s Club at ~$9 per 100 sheets) worked pretty well, but the colors are not as bright, with images that almost appear to be slightly faded. The brand of photo paper does appear to make a big difference with this printer.

Cost of Ownership

Like the RX500 I’ve reviewed previously here, the R200 uses 6 ink cartridges (both printers use the same cartridges). Replacement black cartridges cost about $17, with each color cartridge costing $12. Epson rates the black cartridge for 450 pages at 5% coverage (which means about 4 cents per page for text printing), and the color cartridges at 430 pages with 5% coverage. Based on our experience with both printers, I feel the Epson estimates are reasonable. Our experience indicates that if you only printed photo’s with this printer ( or the RX500), you would get about 200 prints per set of cartridges for a cost of about $0.35 per photo printed. Full page photo prints will require about $1 worth of ink.

Refilling cartridges is not really an option with this printer. Epson does "not" state that your warranty will be voided if you try to refill a cartridge, but they do state EPSON does not recommend refilling or using third party ink cartridges. Using these products will not void the product's original warranty; however, if these third party products cause a failure, the repair of that failure will not be covered under warranty. . I’ve not tried refilling Epson cartridges, but these cartridges appear to be “chipped”, and I I doubt the printer would recognize refills as full cartridges unless you used a chip resetter. Other users have reported that refilled cartridges can be used, but the printer gives you a warning each time you print.

This is my second Epson printer, both using dye based inks. Though we use the printers sporadically, sometimes going a week or more without printing, I haven't seen any evidence of problems with the inkjets plugging, a problem reported by many owners of Epson printers that use their Durabright inks

Support
The Epson website offers a good set of FAQ’s (enough to be helpful when writing this review), pdf versions of all the documentation, driver downloads, online registration, and phone technical support (toll call) from Mon.- Fri. 6AM-6PM (PT). All kinds of Epson printer supplies are available online. The R200 comes with a 1 year warranty. In the event of problems the warranty states Epson will replace or repair the printer at their choice. If they choose to replace it, a cross ship option is available..


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 99
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh