You want this printer
Written: Aug 16 '01
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Pros: Great photo output, quiet, low cost ink.
Cons: not as fast as you may want, poor text print
The Bottom Line: Best bet for a Photo quality printer.
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| opie0626's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 870 InkJet Printer |
My HP Deskjet bit the dust a few months ago, so I had to do all printing on my Brother laser.
If I wanted color, out came the crayons.
High quality color printing had become a 'Must-Have' (moving up from a 'would be nice to have' ) option.
So the search begins.
First to Best-Buy to sample a few of their color inkjets. Having had a trouble free HP for a few years lead me toward the HP printers first. Pressing a few "press here for test page" buttons yielded some nice near photo quality prints. Nice, but no ouuuuh-wooow stuff.
Off to Lexmark. Again nice, maybe nicer than HP but not truly eye-popping.
Next in line came the Epson printer line. Press a button, wait 2 to 3 minutes and WOW .
I was sold on the Stylus 770.
Home I go, anticipating the purchase of a new printer, to find a friend had recently purchased the 770 and was showing off the quality of the end product.
On line I go to find my best price and find the stylus photo 870 for $119.00. (870 being higher than 770 must mean a better product. (I still don't know) but I order the 870.
About the printer
Setup is quick and painless.
With 1440x720 resolution you can expect and in fact do get high quality color prints of any photo. This is partly due to the Epson color cartridge having 6 nozzels rather than 4.
Text print is somewhat lacking so I wouldn't recommend this as your only multi-purpose printer.
Epson recommends you use their photo paper for best results and to achieve the no-fade claim they make. While this may be true, I printed a photo on generic photo quality paper and compared it to the same photo on Epson paper. The difference was negligible, though you'll have to wait almost ten years to find out if their no fade claim is accurate.
Print speed is fast for a photo quality printer, though it may be expensive. Epson estimates you'll use $.98 in color ink to print an 8.5x11 color photo. A cnet review I read recently confirms this.
The 870 comes with Adobe Photo Deluxe Home v 3.1, OK software for minor editing and Epson Software Film Factory, which I haven't played with enough to comment on.
All said, I'd recommend the 870 to anyone looking for a great photo quality printer.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 119.00
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
opie0626
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Location: central New Jersey
Reviews written: 26
Trusted by: 2 members
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