A near home-run, but not quite...
Written: Sep 01 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Paper Handling: |
|
|
|
Pros: Low price, great output quality on coated paper, USB connectivity.
Cons: So-so plain paper text, ink tanks run out somewhat fast, clogged nozzles.
The Bottom Line: This printer has great output on coated paper and is easy to use, but the small ink tanks, average plain paper output, and questionable reliability are hard to overcome problems.
|
|
|
| zegers330's Full Review: Epson Stylus® Color 740 InkJet Printer |
I needed to replace my old Lexmark ink jet in a hurry for a school project. The Stylus 740 supposedly had great photo quality on coated paper for a good price. If I had time I would've waited a few weeks for the Stylus 777, but the 740 was it at the time. I considered a couple of HP models in the same price range, but have heard that they don't do photos well.
SETUP: The 740 supports both parallel and USB connections. For some reason, the parallel ports did not work with my computer, so I'm using the USB instead. There is a quick reference guide under the printer cover for changing the ink tanks, which pretty straightforward. Using the USB ports required me to take some addition steps in setting up the drivers on my computer, but the printer includes a step-by-step guide which also made it easy. Overall this is a relatively easy printer to set up.
CONTROLS: There are three buttons on the printer: power, paper feed, and ink service. Normally you'll only use the power button; the ink service button is there for cleaning the print heads or changing the ink tanks when they are low. Also on the printer are four lights for power, low color ink, low black ink, and paper out. Again, the power indicator is all you'll need to look for normally. There are also software controls that let you change the ink tanks and check the ink levels (see software below).
PRINT QUALITY: On plain paper, the text is a little fuzzy in all of the preset resolution settings. You can select 1440dpi printing on plain paper, but the manual won't tell you how to. With 1440dpi, the text is a bit sharper. Photos on plain paper are not bad...good enough for small pictures in a report. So for plain paper output, it is average for an ink jet printer in this price range. One interesting thing is that my 4 year old Lexmark had significantly better text on plain paper.
On coated paper (I use Epson's Photo Quality Ink Jet Paper and Photo Paper), the text and picture quality is great...best in its class for sure (probably except the new 777 which should have better output quality). For a catalog assignment I created with lots of photos and text, people actually thought that I took it from the store! The quality is just amazing. Of course, the quality will depend somewhat on the quality of the pictures you are using...jagged edges will show clearly in the output. Text is also excellent...on par with most all laser printers.
PRINT SPEED:On plain paper, the 740 has average speed, maybe leaning on the slow side depending on what you're printing. On coated paper, you might as well take go have a snack...a full-page photo will be about 10 minutes for a page. You'll great great quality, but you'll have to wait for it.
SOFTWARE: Epson's printer utilities let you change the ink tanks, check remaining ink levels, check and clean the ink nozzles, align the print heads, set page options, add watermarks, adjust print quality, and even mess with the color balance. For color adjustment, you can select form automatic, PhotoEnhance3, ICM, or sRGB. Print resolution range from 360dpi draft quality to 1440dpi photo quality. When printing, the status monitor will appear, letting you check ink levels, and pause, stop or repeat the print job.
Bonus software include Polaroid PhotoMAX Pro, ArcSoft PhotoPrinter, ArcSoft PhotoBase, and DogByte Greeting Card Store. I find them all to be useful, especially PhotoMAX Pro; however they are not always the easiest to use. Overall a nice bundle of bonus software.
PROBLEMS: I've only have one paper jam in the hundreds of pages I've printed, so I guess it's unlikely this printer will jam. However, I've experience times when the black ink tank/printheads misbehave. All of the 12 or so little light green rollers have traces of black ink being sprayed on them...I'm guessing that some of the nozzles of the black printhead clogged partially, making the black ink spray off in the wrong direction. Problem is that this never happens when I print my draft copies, but a lot of the time it doesn on my final copies, making me waste ink and paper. Cleaning the printheads seldom solves the problem, but currently the problem seems to have disappeared. Note that I use Epson's ink, not the generic ones.
INK CAPACITY: The ink capacities are on the small side...printing a couple of pages a week of black text will run out the black ink tank in about 2 months. Epson says that the ink should be used up in six months...maybe that's why the tanks are kinda small. Cost for new ink is average for an ink jet up here in Canada. My old Lexmark cost me an arm and a leg for new ink.
VALUE: I think the Stylus 740 is a pretty good value: great print quality on coated paper is rare in this price range. The software bundle is good, and mine came with a sample package of two kinds of coated paper. I can't say that it's a great value given the reliability of the black printhead...let's hope it isn't common for this model.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
zegers330
|
|
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.