The good, the slow and the ugly - all in one
Written: Feb 02 '02
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Pros: Amazing printing quality for such a cheap printer
Cons: Slow and hungry, no USB cable included
The Bottom Line: Cheap solution for medium quality color prints.
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| elomage's Full Review: Epson Stylus Color 480SXU InkJet Printer |
The Epson’s 480SXU found me during Thanksgiving shopping craze at Staples. My first impression was: what an ugly printer with its block-ish round-ish shape. However, my other printer’s color ink cartridge was dry, and I was in need to print some photos. I remembered my friend once saying that sometimes it is cheaper to buy a new printer than an ink cartridge. So I checked the price and found out about the deal of $40 off $50, which effects to $10. The printer did not seem that ugly to me any more...
In the box: not enough!
The printer comes with itself, the manuals and a CD with printer USB drivers and printing software in the box.
Notice: no USB cable included. But you need one if you intend to use this printer. Curiously, at Staples the cable would be more expensive than the printer, but one can find a cheap cable for about $6 at other stores. No need to go for expensive USB 2.0 cables in this case.
The printer performance: slow but determined
Actually, the printer can print quite fast, for lower quality results. But if you set it at slow (photo) printing speed and max resolution of 720 DPI, you can go and have a sandwich, or maybe two. However, if you are patient enough, you might be pleased with the results.
The first tests used plain paper. Text printing speed was quite satisfactory at about 2-3 pages per minute. However the color images were horrible, the colors seemed false and blurry. Which is not surprising, since for photos one should use a proper photo-printing paper. Such paper is available from numerous companies, such as Kodak, Epson, 3M.
A printing device can be only as good as what you ask it to print. In my case those were photos taken with a 1-megapixel digital camera, about four 4x6 or smaller images on a letter-sized paper.
I used Kodak semi-gloss ink-jet photo paper. The photos came out quite nice and sharp enough for the given resolution. The only problem was that some pictures seemed somewhat gray-ish, as if slightly underexposed by the camera. They were processed on a computer before printing, and looked much better on the screen. The outdoors pictures seemed fine, only the indoor ones had the mentioned deficiency. My guess is that some ink color combinations created this effect.
After printing about 15 pages of color-intensive photos, the ink cartridges indicated to be half-empty. I expect that for text-only printing the ink usage would not be that dramatic.
Once, printing a large image on an ink-jet paper for transferring it later to a t-shirt, the printer stopped at the middle of the page. The message said: “Communication problem.” There was nothing else running on the computer; therefore I presumed that it was the cable problem or some glitch in the printer. I adjusted the cable, but the printing job was canceled and I lost the sheet of the special paper, thus another dollar added to the costs of printing.
Another note, the printer is quite loud, sometimes even when not printing. Whenever I turned my computer on or off, the printer would make prolonged noises, probably checking whether the ink cartridges are still there and perhaps, cleaning the printing nozzles. There is no power button; therefore I ended up unplugging the printer after use, since it is not being used too often.
Actually, you should use your inkjet printer once in a while rather than trying to save on ink. What usually happens is that the ink dries and clogs the printing nozzles, if the printer is unused for a considerable amount of time (say, a month or two). This goes for most inkjet printers.
The software: mixed feelings
The printer comes with the necessary driver programs. It also includes the printer-monitoring program, which assists in the setup and maintenance of the printer, as well as tells the current ink levels and printing progress. It is nice to have it, however there is one after-effect: the program leaves itself in the MS Windows 98 “Sys-tray”, the bottom right area on the screen, even when the printer is not working or attached.
I am very particular about how things are organized on my computer. After installing the printer software I noticed two new folders created by Epson at the root of the C drive. This is not where the driver files should be located. This and also some problems trying to use alternative Canon printer while Epson drivers were running seem to suggest somewhat sloppy software development.
The printer driver has a special mode for digital photo printing. Epson does not go into details of what exactly is being done to the picture, however you can turn on preset modifications such as tone, sharpness, soft focus, canvas and parchment which will be applied to pictures while printing. However, I prefer to use other software to tune and preview the digital images before printing.
On the bright side, the package includes ArcSoft’s nice little photo printing program. The program has many templates of fitting several photo images of different sizes on a paper. This might come in handy if you want to print many smaller pictures and save the photo paper. Notice however, there is no graphical enhancement provided, only zooming and stretching of the pictures. Very simple, and easy to use.
Conclusion: Let the ink run out, and then I’ll see
In the end I was mostly satisfied with the results of the printing, and had to accept the little particularities. What do you expect for $10, anyways. But my mother-in-law adored the t-shirt with her grandson’s big smile on it!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 11
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
elomage
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Member: Leo Selavo
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
Education and experience: graduate degree in computer science. Interests: computers, electronics, photography.
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