Fantastic print quality. Faster than my older 1200.

Uses gallons of ink per print!

This printer is better in every way than the great-at-the-time Epson 1200 I had before this. Printing is much faster, the image is even better. The heavyweight matte prints it produces actually look better than the custom matte stuff I used to have printed at a photo lab. I have not tried glossy.

The printer does best with the recommended input image of 300dpi. Using 240dpi for the image produces a good print in most cases but definitely and obviously not as good as the 300dpi.

I personally can't see any difference between the 1440 and 2880 printer settings. This may be important on glossy paper but on matte they look the same.to me. Lower settings are yield obviously poorer results for photos. I do use 720 for letters, memos, etc. which works well.

The noise is less than my 1200. Whether it's luck or not I don't know, but the ICC profile Epson provides actually works. I don't need to get a custom one created as I did with the 1200. It is annoying that ICM has to be set in the "advanced" panel rather than being the default.

This printer eats color ink at a phenomenal rate. I am lucky if I get 20 photos from a cartridge.

All in all, an excellent printer at a remarkable price.

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Epson 1200

inexpensive, good quality

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Best Buy is clearancing this printer at $99.50, presumably to make way for the next generation. I bought Epson because of the good reviews both from this site and from people at work. This is my first venture into digital photography with an Olympus C-3000 3.3 Mpixel.

I just have to say that I am totally amazed that I can get this kind of print quality at home for only $99. Is it as good as a good lab? NO. I've taken a lot of macro photographs with fine detail of insects and flowers etc., and the detail isn't nearly as good as enlargements with Kodak professional paper. On the other hand, I would have never expected a printer to do that. The advantage with these printers is the ability to modify and print your own photos which will look terrific hanging on your wall.

I found the Epson line-up to be a little baffling: the print-heads and resolution are all the same. If you do not intend to print anything larger than 8.5x11" there is no need to spend $100's more on one of the other Epson printers.

The last printer I owned was a dot-matrix attached to a Macintosh 512. For those who complain about the noise of the 780, I just have to scratch my head. I was bracing for much worse.

The "pizza cutter" marks are there, but it took me a while to find them. You would never notice them under glass. I noticed the artifacts of the printing process and jpeg compression before I noticed these marks. They're more of a string of tiny dots than lines.

I had no problems installing the printer driver. It is fairly widely known that windows 95 cannot handle USB devices consistently. Epson is hardly to blame for this. You should "upgrade" to 98 if you are having a problem witht he USB port. I thought both the Epson and Arcsoft software were pretty cheezy so I'm sticking with photoshop.

I found that 720 dpi was a significant improvement over 320 dpi (using epson photo paper), but haven't printed at a higher resolution. My digital test photos are jpegs which are going to always have compression artifacts, particularly in uniform backgrounds, so higher resolution hasn't been justified. Also, if you intend to put the photo behind glass and on your wall, higher print resolution that 720 dpi is probably just a waste of ink. 4x6's with 720 dpi look like they came from an average photo lab, but much better colors than the cheep paper used at the 1-hour labs. Although, not having calibrated my screen or printer, I'd say there's a little too much magenta in the prints. Can't really tell the difference in quality beetween the high print speed option and "normal." Sometimes I wonder if companies add features to software just to get you to waste ink paper. etc. while fooling around.

As far as cost of ink and paper goes, compare the $17 ink cartridge and the 20-30 8X10's you'll get out of it to what it would cost at a lab. Then consider that you have total control over color, density, and cropping. I've read a few complaints about print speed. If you prefer, drive down to the lab, waite 1-3 days, then drive back and pick up your prints. Maybe they'll look okay the first time. Now, how about waiting 5 minutes for that print while you do something else around the house?

I've been having a harder and harder time finding a consistently good photo lab. It seems the industry is trying to compete with digital rather than offer a good niche alternative. With companies like Epson around, I think they're destined to lose the battle.

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amazing photo quality
many options to use
photo driver has enough options to do without a sophisticated editor

have to be somewhat computer literate

Inkjets are have arrived at photo quality. When you can print your own enlargements, you start to think like pros do- using better techniques and better equipment to get the maximum image quality onto storage. And like regular wet chemistry photo printing, inkjet photo printing requires clean images and some manipulation for optimum results. The printer driver is very good. The sharpening and photoenhancing features are so good that it produces better results than me fidgeting with the sharpening controls in Photoshop 6. The manipulations are smoother and sharper without the overall grainy look. A 50 pack of matte paper is only $10 and when mounted in a frame, the colour prints look very nice. I also do my own wet chemistry black and white. When I compared a same traditional black and white 8x10 and an Epson colour 8x10, I see a surprisingly similar amount of detail, but the Epson has the edge because some photos look better with color. A few prints with premium glossy look so close to traditional prints that I have no problems with doing my own 8x10 enlargements. When the prices come down on the larger Epson printers and with lower prices on film scanners (for higher density scanning), I will be making my own 11x14! I was skeptical about inkjets, but they have come a LONG way from the original messy and leaky outputs. Paper and ink has been optimized for both longevity and color accuracy. Also, the price of the printers have been plummetting. Any amateur/serious photographer should give these printers a try because you will be as surprised as I was. What better way to display your work or to share with others your creativity.

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Low cost.
Excellent print quality.
Edge-to-Edge printing!!!!
6 color ink.
No banding No visible dots.
Premium glossy photo paper very nice!!

Small ink cartriges, keep lots of spares.
Print head clogs frequently, very anoying.
Color match from screen to paper not very good.
Sloooooooow.

I bought this printer because I wanted to make my own prints and control the process myself, photolabs make color adjustments sometimes crop the edges off your shot, and many times the prints just don't look very sharp.
I choose this Epson because of the 2880 dpi, 6 color ink, 25 year life expectance and the wonderful edge-to-edge printing.
I am happy to say that I am now able to make prints at home that are suppieror to the ones I'd been getting at photolabs, and now I'm in control of cropping, color correction, red eye, and multiple prints of my choice. Most people I show my prints to can't believe they came from a inkjet printer.
This is not to say I haven't had many challenges with this printer, it has taken a lot of experimention to get the prints to look good. I have found the ICM setting to be about the most accurate, still if a hold up a print to the screen there are some differences in colors. Also I've had a lot of problems with the print head clogging, this started in the first week of ownership, this requires many, many cleaning before it will print right again.
I conclusion I am able to make some very nice prints that are truely photo quality, but I'm glad it only costed $150 so I can upgrade when something better comes out.

Customer Service

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