jeavinl's Full Review: Epson Stylus® R200 InkJet Photo Printer
When my husband and I bought our Fuji FinePix E510 digital camera (http://www.epinions.com/content_175954890372), we decided we needed a new printer. I mean, what's the point of owning a digital camera when you can't print your own photos from home? Our old HP Deskjet 710C had served its purpose printing out college papers, travel directions, recipes, and other text-based documents. But we needed something that would print out high-quality photos.
The Best Buy employee who helped us pick out our camera pointed us in the direction of the Epson Stylus Photo R200 inkjet printer. He assured us that it was fast and efficient, and would print out beautiful photographs (even large 8x10s) with precision and high quality. He also told us that the 6 individual ink cartridges would make the overall usage of this printer cheaper than the equivalent Canon model. All that and it was on sale that week. We were sold.
Setup was painless. There's a USB port in the front and back of this printer so if you choose to, you can see what you're doing when you plug the wire in. We use the back port, but the front one would be good if you move your printer around a lot. The cartridges click into place under the head cover. The tray clicks into place in back. An additional mini tray (used for CD/DVD printing) can be attached as well.
The Epson Web site states that it takes 2 minutes and 8 seconds to print out an 8 x 10 picture in photo mode. Black-and-white documents print out at a speed of 15 ppm, and even in the text mode, I can notice a difference in the crispness of the quality over my old printer. The Epson R200 has a resolution of up to 5760 x 1440 optimized dpi and its ink droplet size of 3-picoliters makes photos look clear and crisp and virtually indistinguishable from professionally developed ones. We've printed out 8 x 10s to hang on our walls and our friends are sure that we purchased them.
The maximum printable area is 8.3" by 44" and the R200 prints border-free photos in commonly used sizes (4x6, 5x7, 8x10, and letter). We mostly print 3x5s (4 fit on a standard sheet) or wallet size (9 fit on a page). We’ve only used Epson glossy photo paper and Epson ink when printing and the photos come out dry as soon as they print. Paper is widely available, but the inks can be a little tricky to find. On a couple of occasions my local Best Buy ran out of a few ink colors. So I’ve been purchasing inks and paper online at Epson.com. Their prices are slightly lower than Best Buy and they occasionally e-mail a free shipping offer to me. I’m sure I could find knock-off versions of the ink and paper for cheaper, but I’ve heard that those may cause running and smudging in the photos.
There are several printing modes: Draft, Text, Text & Image, Photo, and Best Photo. There is also a PhotoEnhance option for low-resolution images. For photos I intend to hang on the wall I use Best Photo. For all other photos, I use the Photo mode, which is slightly less crisp but certainly good enough for wallet-size and album-size prints. For directions, recipes, and such, I try to remember to use Draft mode so I can conserve some ink. On all other documents (even those with images), I generally use Text and then go into Advanced options and select print in black and white only. The images in those printings come out clear.
The R200 like some of Epson’s other printers uses 6 individual ink cartridges. Although this could save you money if you plan to print in black-and-white mostly (the black ink cartridges run about $18 and last pretty long), it gets to be a bit expensive and quite a bit of a nuisance when you print photos on a regular basis. I’d say I print out a batch of 1-3 sheets of photos once every month or so and I’m on my third set of inks in about a year. Other than printing about 10 pages of text per month for work, we don’t print that many other documents. Each of the 6 cartridges (except for the black one) runs about $15. I’m starting to think that going to Wal-Mart to print out my digital photos would be a cheaper option. Although using the R200 is certainly cheaper than going to a professional studio to have portraits done, I’m not sure how the dollars and cents measure up to other printers.
One of the neat features of this printer is that it allows you to print directly onto CDs and DVDs. Apparently it’s one of those perks you usually only find in much more expensive models. I have not used this feature yet.
The software that comes with the Epson R200 is easy to use but very basic. Film Factory allows you to print index pages, duplicate copies, combination pages (different size photos), album pages, greeting cards, calendars, and sticker prints. There is a cropping feature and there are several retouching options. Unfortunately, none of them is worth diddly squat. The red eye reduction is lousy. I’ve downloaded free programs that are much more accurate at removing red eye and touching up photos. You can’t even lighten/darken an exposure. You'll definitely need to download/purchase some photo enhancing software elsewhere.
The R200 supports PRINT Image Matching (P.I.M.) and Exif Print technology.
The Epson Stylus Photo R200 is not as advanced as some photo printers. It doesn't have a preview monitor and it's only intended for home use for family photos and everyday printing. But it also doesn't have the professional photographer price tag. At around $99 (it goes on sale every once in a while and there’s a $20 mail-in rebate available now on Epson’s store page), it's certainly a good contender for an all-around everyday photo printer.
I'm torn between giving this a 3 or 4-star rating. The photos the R200 prints are beautiful and I'm pleased with the fact that it hasn't ever jammed on me. But depending on your use of it, it can get to be pricey and a bit of a nuisance to purchase inks and photo-enhancing software.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 89 Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
5,760 x 1,440 dpi maximum resolution, 3-picoliter drop size Up to 15 ppm color, 15 ppm black Economical printing with 6 individual ink cartridges Comp...More at Amazon Marketplace
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