Very nice inexpensive photo printer
Written: Jul 27 '02
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Pros: high resolution, Price, great quality, easy setup, borderless printing, quiet
Cons: slow, USB, no ethernet, Borderless printing not available in OSX, borderless on epson paper
The Bottom Line: Excellent quality photo printer for anyone printing photos up to 8x10. Plan on color adjustments for optimum quality. Works well on a Mac running OSX, but no borderless printing.
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| henryhbk's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 890 InkJet Printer |
This printer is Epson's narrow carriage version of the 1280. The printer is super easy to set up on a mac running OSX (take out of box, put cartridges in, plug in USB, print). Now getting optimum quality takes a little work, but if you seriously print photos, you already know this.
When tested from Apple's iPhoto, the printing is very nice but has a slight blue hue if unadjusted. Use of Colorsync profiles can solve much of this, and a quick trip to photoshop is often a key item for most digital photography. Regular 3.3 megapixel snapshots from my Nikon 995 look as good as a point-and-shoot 35mm camera on ASA 100 film on 4x6.
For an ultimate test I printed some of my dive photos, which have very wide color bandwidth and are quite vivid out at 8x10 at 2880dpi. The slides started at 4000dpi, so the source material was very nicely scanned. The prints took about 10 minutes each, and consumed ink like I was personally responsible for Epson's stock price. However the output on Epson Premium Glossy Photo paper was stunning. I compared them to photographic prints (both interneg and ilfachrome), and it was definitely superior to internegs and almost as good as a $50 ilfachrome print. The screening is very nice, and is only notable from a couple of inches away.
I tried the roll paper feature just on a lark, and it worked well, but I must admit not a huge advantage versus feeding in a stack of 4x6 sheets.
The printer is very quiet, although slightly louder than a C80 model.
I have 2 beefs about this printer:
The first is the lack of 100mb ethernet, as a 2880dpi bitmap at 8x10 is a HUGE file, and USB 1 is just not up to the task. You often see the printer pause waiting for data.
The second is that the borderless printing only works on Epson brand paper. I attempted to do 4x6 on HP paper, which was all my local Staples had in stock that day. It ended up spraying ink on my rollers, which stained several subsequent prints. When I asked an epson tech at Macworld Expo, he told me that it only worked on Epson paper, which I later confirmed in testing. It has to do with the offset.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 180
Operating System: Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
henryhbk
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Location: New York, BY
Reviews written: 1
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