It contemporary design and wireless capability are strongly portrayed by Epson Stylus and they are ready to tackle fierce competition in all in one photo printer market, which is already been filled by Cannon and HP. This multi functional photo printer is made to cater the needs of all purpose photo print job in your home and also has a great look and comes with great promises. This PX710W All in One photo printer is specially designed for photo lovers who like to take high quality photo prints directly from digital camera, CD/DVD or memory cards.

Design:

This PX710W wireless photo printer can do scans, copies, faxes and photo prints. It has sleek body and fully finished with black chassis. Its compact size lets you to place it in a shelf comfortably if you are not opening the scanner lid too high. The scanner lies nicely on the top with easy to open lid, which is made with a matte finish and looks with a glossy exteriors. The dashboard has been designed nicely to accommodate collection of buttons, which are placed on the front end firmly on the upper side. All the operative and navigational buttons are built with equal space in between on a separate control panel.

The control panel can be positioned in seven different ways for perfect usability and it features a small LCD screen. On the extreme left of the control panel you can find buttons for power control and CD tray along with four way mode selection buttons. At the right side you can see large start button along with directional menu buttons. At the bottom of the dashboard is a two paper trays to be used with A4 size paper as well as photo sized paper simultaneously and you can switch between this paper using user interface on LCD screen. The paper tray has the capacity to hold 100 sheets.
It is hard to find any fault in built quality of this all in one photo printer, which not only impresses the users but the rivals too have a chance to take a note from Epson Stylus. The well built paper tray nicely slides into the body and looks like a laser printer style. The large LCD screen with user interface is one of the important selling points put forth by Epson Stylus. You cannot expect running cost to be low since this printer uses six cartridges and if you try other high yielding cartridges rather than Epson recommended cartridge set then you might expect some good print economy.

Features:

For convenience of sharing digital photos, this Epson Stylus PX710W all in one photo printer has twin memory card slot on right side of the paper tray along with USB socket. It gives option to use either compact flash card or PictBridge with dual function. The output tray is built with sliding method, which can be comfortably pulled out or put back into the bay if the printer is not in use. The connectivity portion is placed at back of the printer with the provision for Ethernet but it is wireless connection is what much sorted out by users. This multifunctional photo printer is equipped with six printer cartridges that can be stationed in dedicated holder at the corner. You can easily plug the cartridge in and the maintenance is easy. Setting up of wireless connection is simple using driver for Windows that is provided in the package.

Print Performance:

Without any doubt, the print quality of Epson Stylus PX710W Inkjet photo printer is impressive and the black prints along with skin tone are more realistic without any room for error. The printed high definition photo quality shows most of the details and has smooth transition from light colour print to dark print. You cannot find any dots when printed in Epson photo paper and the half tone colour looks fine. This PX710W photo printer takes nearly 2 min 14 sec for A4 prints and same results also achieved with business charts and graphs prints on plain office paper. The stated printing speed is considerably achieved with three modes of print setting such as text, photo and image. The draft section also played its part well.

Text Print Performance:

Black text and small prints are legible and clear on colour backgrounds and there is no problem of ink smudges. When you try the print in low grade office paper then you will find the difference of quality by a smeary state of black colour mixing with background colour. But you need not go for low grade office paper because you can get cost saving print in photocopy media itself, which encourages you to print business presentation, reports or handouts. So, you can readily leave our inkjet media print and comfortably go for photocopy media prints. Epson Stylus PX710W multifunctional photo printer performs well in text print when compared to previous version of its inkjet printers and the business letter formation delivered as expected. The text looks slightly grey rather then black.

Print speed of PX710W:

The text printing has two practical setting such as standard and draft mode and the print speed in both these setting delivers a fair performance. The print quality is impressive but the speed is not up to the mark when tried on photocopy paper. This photo printer has considerable colour print speed and it is suitable for photo enthusiast. The standard mode of text printing performs in a usual way but the draft mode can be reserved for quick proofing or personal use printing purpose.

Scanning:

This photo printer has easy to use scanning facility similar to the printing options. It comes with various options to perform scanning, which can be selected directly from the printer itself. The scanned documents can be stored easily into memory card or computer PC in PDF format. The quality of scan can be optimised using adjustments and the LCD small screen gives you a preview before scanning any document.

Wi fi system:

Wi Fi facility plays an important role in home printers especially with Epson Stylus PX710W Photo printer. With the help of this facility you can access your PC anywhere in your home within the reach and comfortably process the printing job. Making a Wi Fi connection with Epson Stylus PX710W is an easy job and it enables you to move around your printer in your home without using messy cables. This Wi Fi system involves routers, which has to be connected with the printer.

Warranty:

This photo printer carries limited one year warranty.

Verdict:

Epson Stylus Photo PX710W all in one Photo Printer performs as it promised and lives to the expectation. It not only looks good but also delivers high definition quality of photo print. If you like to take good looking high definition photo prints then this printer is your choice. It is not suitable for plain paper and draft mode printing but produces remarkable photo prints.

Check other All-in-One Printer Models and other Epson Photo Printer Reviews, Specs in this website.

Epson Stylus Photo PX710W - Technical Specification Table

Features:

Canon Selphy CP780 Digital photo printer comes in a compact and stylish design. It is small enough to carry with ease and is available in four colours namely blue, pink, white and silver. This printer comes with a 2.5 inch colour LCD display and oversize, with well labelled control buttons. It would be very easy to edit and add special effects to our printing with the help of these dedicated control buttons. No downloading is required as the pictures can be easily viewed, selected and edited. With the help of this 2.5″ TFT LCD screen it becomes easy to pick our picture and print. Photos can again be customised with the help of five colour options available to customize the photos namely, Black & White, Vivid, Sepia, Neutral and Positive Film. As any other photo printer of its category, it can also function with or without a PC.

The Selphy CP780 colour photo printer comes with some exclusive features which include three media slots for SD Card, Compact Flash, Multimedia Card, and Memory Stick. A PictBridge port is also present on the left side of the printer, which is a boon for PC free printing as it can also print photos directly from your compatible digital camera, DV camcorder or camera phone. In order to use xD-Picture Card and other formats, third party adapter is required. Up to 54 sheets of 4-by-8-inch photo paper could be hold by the front –loading paper cassette. Little confusing side would the cassette’s double-lid design. Both lids needs to be lifted to load paper but lifting one lid would be enough to insert the cassette into the printer. Bluetooth adapter, rechargeable battery pack and business car size cassette are optional.

Canon Selphy CP780 has auto red eye correction facility which easily removes the red eye effect caused due to the flash photography. This photo printer has another interesting portrait image optimize feature. With this feature it can detect the faces of people within the image and adjustments are made so that the brightness and contrast of the faces are optimized. It can print the photos is various attractive sizes including the postcard size, credit card size, standard and wide stickers. With the help of optional Bluetooth adaptor, wireless printing is possible which is again perfect for spontaneous snapshots caught in our mobile phone. This printer is supplied with a step by step audio guidance on how to print images targeting the new users and children. Along with this it also comes with easy-to-use SELPHY Photo Print Software.

It is guaranteed that the beautiful borderless photos printed with the help of Canon Selphy CP780 are water resistant and can stay up to 100 years. As this photo printer is energy star qualified, this helps people to save money and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by meeting the energy efficiency guidelines. The box includes a SELPHY CP780 Compact Photo Printer, Compact Power Adapter, A/C Cable, CP Printer Solution Disk, Paper Cassette (Postcard Size), Trial Ink Cassette (Postcard Size), Trial Standard Paper Pack (Postcard Size) and document kit consisting of Support Center List, User Registration Information, Setup Software and User’s Guide CD-ROM and User Guide.

Performance:

Apart from being a photo printer of cheap cost, Canon Selphy CP780photo printer has minimal benefit. This photo printer is little slow and it costs more per print piece when compared with its competitors. To finish a 4-by-6-inch snapshot, Selphy CP780 takes around 75 seconds on average (0.8 pages per minute) as a single photo requires four passes. But, it can print postcard size image of lab quality in just 47 seconds. Wastage of dye is more in this printer as once a photo is printed, that section of film could not be reused regardless of how much dye is left behind.

Warranty:

Canon Selphy CP780 is available with 1-year limited warranty and toll –free technical phone support.

Verdict:

Canon Selphy CP780 photo printer is an inexpensive printer suitable for home use. It has its own problems like slowness and wastefulness of consumables. This photo printer would have been the top pick of users if it were faster and cheaper per print. This printer has been produced as a result of priced competition, the HP Photo smart A536, is even slower, and its photos are around the same per print cost, where as Epson Picture Mate Dash is more expensive but is nearly twice fast and has considerably lower per print cost.

Check 2010 Latest Photo Printers, other Canon Photo Printer Reviews, Models in this website.

Canon SELPHY CP780 Photo Printer - Technical Specification Table

Compromising Design:

Design wise, this HP OfficeJet 6000 photo printer (CB051A) has nice finished edges and pleasant curves with black and white colour combination. The top cover has matte finish without any snazzy design and well matches you office environment. This OfficeJet 6000 colour photo printer has a considerably normal dimension with smaller foothold and conforms that the printer would fit your office desk without covering extra space. But the output tray has to be drawn out from the bottom of the printer in order to begin the printing process. This would double the space and increases the length of the printer, which would cover more area on your desk making it as a space consuming unit. This output tray is attached to the lid of the above paper tray found near the front face at the bottom of the printer.
The manufacturer should have come out with different solution to minimise the length to avoid the demand for extra space on the desk. There is a removable output tray found just above the fixed paper tray and it has the option to extend the length. All the control buttons are presented above the tray on the front face of the printer for easy access. The series of buttons along with four LED ink level indicators controls all the functions of the printer. This includes important operative buttons such as paper feed button, power button, network set up key and cancel button. The four LEDs indicates you the ink level of four individual ink tanks by blinking the light. The most annoying thing is this colour inkjet printer does not come with USB cord and you have to buy it separately.

Simple Installation:

HP provides step by step instruction on how to install this printer and more over being a single function printer you would not find any difficulty during installation when compared to high end ‘all in one’ colour photo printers. Once everything is set up the printer would take nearly 10 minutes to recharge and start the printing process.

High Yielding Ink Cartridges:

With the compact dimension and small foothold, this Hewlett Packard Officejet 6000 printer looks like a box until the output tray is pulled out of the printer. The setup design comes very handy and does not demand any complex parts handling as in the case of ink cartridges. The four ink cartridges are well housed inside the box shaped printer and it can be revealed when you pop open the top cover with a latch on the end. The ink cartridges are well rowed on the carrier inside the bay, which offers enough space for cartridge to handle efficient colour distribution job. Apart from standard ink cartridges, HP also provides high yielding cartridges for cost effective printing solution on the long run. This would definitely offer you a better platform for both colour and text document printing with less cost per page. When approximately calculated, the cost per page is surprisingly lower than the average cost found on many today’s standard printers.

Competitive Print Speed in Officejet 6000:

When compared with its close competitor brands, this HP photo printer performs well in both colour and text prints. HP has quoted that this printer has the capacity to churn out 7 ppm print speed for both colour and text print. Comparatively, this inkjet printer shows much quicker performance on long printing modes. For full colour graphic documents, it does not take too much time to produce excellent printing performance but it shows little lower text print speed when compared to Lexmark Z2420 that produces 11 ppm for text print.

Surprising Print Performance:

HP has quoted that OfficeJet 6000 has the capacity to produced equal print text quality when compared with laser printer. It has been proved by seeing visually appealing text documents and image printing and it has been precisely printed out without any jagged edges. The print quality of this OfficeJet 6000 photo printer is even better than other multifunction inkjet printers, which cost you extra money by adding additional features. This printer is mainly used for office purpose only and better suites for consistent text prints and occasionally colour prints. It cannot be compared with print quality of other higher end printers but at this price range this inkjet printer has better performance. Colour print is also equally good when produced on the premium glossy paper. This printer produces clear and bright prints with exceptional print quality without any doubt. It well supports the full colour graphic documents but you cannot use them consistently, since some of the colours would be washed away when frequently used. Moreover the colour gradations and facial colour are well produced with extreme clarity without a black spot .

Safe Packaging:

HP OfficeJet 6000 Inkjet Photo Printer comes well packed and inside the box you can find four ink tanks, one black and other three are colours. HP has well handled the packaging of this photo printer and by looking at the quality of packaging method you can be rest assured that your printer will arrive safely without any damage. Each of four individual ink cartridges are well sealed and wrapped inside the cardboard box while print head clip specially put in separate plastic box.

Warranty:

This HP Officejet 6000 carries one year limited hardware warranty and includes all possible support features from HP.

Verdict:

HP OfficeJet 6000 is honestly targeted for office usage without any gimmicks. You would not get any additional features except colour printing with expected quality and speed. If you want to try printer with some more office functionalities then spend extra £25 and get Canon Pixma MX330 that comes with copier, colour LCD, built in fax machine and an auto-document  feeder, all this are considered to be necessary office multi-functionalities, which are used frequently.

HP OfficeJet 6000 Colour Printer - Technical Specification Table

Testing all in one devices is a very long and repetitious procedure, so that enjoying doing it occurs very rarely. But Epson Stylus PX800FW printer is not one of your average all in one printers. And it can also be undoubtedly said that Epson is a user friendly printer and you will enjoy using it.

Design

Long and Wide Touch Panel:
Epson stylus photo PX800FW is an all in one device with a posture from its low visibility, and a black external part for its long, broad touch panel, which has a flexible joint outside for control. The soft inclination of the outer black cover in plastic ascents and descents as you may open the ADF in a nifty and in a slender streaky manner.

Physical Buttons Admits Fattest Fingers:
Epson Stylus PX800FW Wireless Printer has an intelligent control panel. The buttons rendered to the right and left of the device are big enough to admit the fattiest fingers and retains the virtually common controls like yes, no, left, right, select, cancel, off the main screen region and allows the screen area to hold less often used keys.

Capable of Loading 30 sheets of 64 gm:
Once you open it you will be capable of loading documents of approximately 30 sheets for scanning. Epson estimates the weight of the paper to be 64 gm, which is very thinner than the usual papers used in offices of UK. The lid of the flatbed is smartly dented into the device’s upper surface to cut down its total height, and also makes it very easy to reach it.

89mm LCD Display in the Centre of the Device:
To exhibit at a diversity of angles the broad and long control panel ratchets up and down. At the centre of the device, a 89mm LCD display is sited and it is circled by the pre-specified touch button and are lighted in orange colour as needed. The two, power and the CD tray, are the only physical buttons available on the device. The Epson Stylus Photo PX800FW inkjet printer holds a thin grey tray that slithers out when the CD tray button is pressed, instead of bearing a separate holder for CDs which is positioned and slides in the front part of the printer.

Memory Card Reader and PictBridge Socket:
Unusually for Epson Photo printer, the paper tray slithers outside from the fore-part is located beneath the control panel, and intakes approximately 120 sheets of extremely thin paper and also roughly 20 sheets of glistening photo paper in a different tray which is structured on the top. A two slotted memory card reader and a PictBridge socket are placed on the right side of the paper tray.

USB and Ethernet Connections:
On the rear of the device the sockets for USB connection and Ethernet connection are provided, along with connections for phone line and handset. The functionality of fax is in built as a standard connection.

Features:

Backup of the Contents of Memory Card:
Epson Stylus comprises of almost all types of surplus features, beside the common set up options, you are also provided with the capability to backup the subjects of the memory card inserted such as SD, MS, CF and xD picture formats, right away onto an external media storage slotted into the USB socket on the front. Quick buttons are also provided for printing grid patterns and lined onto a plain paper for specialised use. And this sounds more fun as it is providing an option to change any scanned image into an introductory sketch colouring book style image and makes it ready to scrabble by kids.

Perplexed Wired Connection:
Even though Wi-Fi connection is supplied, the routine for set up, which comprises of a wired connection to the router, is more perplexed than it ought to be. There is no answer for the question why a wireless is modified as all in one, with an excellent control panel, which ought to be capable of discovering wireless networks and even log on its own to whatever you choose. The printers from other manufacturers too can perform this.

Direct CD/DVD Printing:
The standard parcel of Epson software also admits utilities for CD/DVD printing and also printing from the web. A copy of Abbyy Finereader Sprint for OCR is also included along with it.

Marvellously Versatile Machine:
The All in One Device is marvellously versatile and with its connections provided like Wi-Fi, Ethernet, fax and ADF, it almost checks all the feature boxes available.

Performance:

Printing Speed Measured With Processing Time:
In the specification sheet of Epson it was adverted that its printing speeds are measured in draft mode and also without bringing into count the processing time. But some other tests performed on the device by experts are done in normal mode and are done by counting the processing time also as you should know them when you print. The expert tests prove that the device has a maximum black text print speed of 7.74 ppm when it prints a 20 page document, which is al-right but is not surpassing. It also holds a colour print speed of nearly 6.12 ppm, which is very quick and fairly impressive speed for the device.

Impressive Photo Developing Speed:
Nevertheless the most occupying functioning of all is the speed at which the device can develop a 15 x 10 cm photo print. It produces an exceedingly satisfactory photo in 21 seconds, just by punching in SD card in the front of the device. Out and away this is the quickest photo printer that we have seen from an all in one device this year.

High Levels of details Instead of Rubbish Print:
You will be astonished with the contrast produced of high levels of details, firm and also natural colours and you cannot notice any blemishes, instead of trash print. Though the standard photos produces from the PC contains fairly dark shadows, the some other photos in the tests are likewise very excellent.

Colours on the Plain Paper Are Effective:
Although Epson had never lived to be a monarch of the smooth and jet black text page, the print on plain paper is average. You will notice little unevenness in the characters and the text looks dark grey instead of ink jet black, which may be because of the utilisation of dye based black ink as a component of the Claria set. Even though you may detect muddy bands in the regions of solid colours grounded on yellow, mostly the colours on plain paper are effective. The issue of cartridges in place for the printer, may have stimulated some little black on yellow taint.

Epson Printer Comprises of Six Ink Colours:
Light Cyan, light magenta appended to the pattern of CMYK four comprises the total six colour inks in the device. Even though the machine is capable of running high capability T0791-6 set which is also more inexpensive, for some rationality, Epson commends a lower capability set of six inks, T0801-6 type. These are inks used to estimate the running prices.

Cost Per Print:
An ISO black page may cost you around 2.5p, which can be said as an excellent middle range cost for an inkjet. But an ISO colour page works out at around 10.2 p, which is said as rather a chip higher than from that of normal four coloured inkjets. It is averaged out at 7.5p, with entire costs also admitting the paper cost of 0.7p.

Excellent Results in the Tests:
On the top, the good about the printer is that it produces all excellent results in the tests conducted over it, which made it really occupying. In the speed tests carried over it, it was like a flyer, rolling out the mono document at 9ppm of normal quality and a colour document in 8ppm with a shade under it.

Snappy Photos Printed By the Machine:
Copies taken by the printer are very snappy and take just 45 seconds to produce five mono copies and 55 seconds for colour copies. It is even admirable by proving to be best over Canon Pixma MP630 in the photo tests, producing a 6 x 4 inch print in just 72 seconds, and A4 collage in just around two minutes.

Warranty:

The Epson Stylus PX800FW is provided with one year manufacturer’s warranty.

Verdict:

Epson Stylus Photo Printer has had a first class piece of design work by the manufacturer, producing a voguish and efficacious all in one photo printer, with the surplus deftness like dual paper feed, CD/DVD printing and for providing control a comfortable touch panel. Even though there are one or more hang ups like high noise the device makes, nothing can drag it far from reaching the “Recommended” statement by us. Even though the print quality is not excellent, for the features it is providing and the print speed and print costs it is rendering, and the price at which it is available made it the most appealing device.

Check other Epson Photo Printer Reviews in our website.

Epson Stylus Photo PX800FW - Technical Specification Table

Design:

The HP Photosmart A826 Inkjet photo printer comes with a smooth plastic body with rounded edges. It has a wide base of 264mm with narrower stop, 274mm tall and 244mm deep. It weighs around 2.6kg. The highlight of this printer is that it has a 178mm touch-screen and a totally enclosed paper. This photo printer holds a dedicated button which offers captions, frames, simple albums and a drawing function. Using the stylus, we can doodle over the photo and captions can be added by tapping an onscreen keyboard. We can customize the captions by selecting desired fonts and colours. It is also possible to re-size and move the caption on-screen. Four memory card slots, a PictBridge USB port and a plastic stylus in its own holder would be present when we flip down the front cover/paper output tray. A single print cartridge is hidden by a small panel on the printer’s front.

Paper Inputs in A826:

We can protect the paper from dust as we have an option to load around 100 sheets of 152 by 102mm or 178 by 127mm paper and close the lid which is hardly possible in other printers. The paper can be loaded by flipping the top panel of the printer.

Features of HP Photosmart A826:

The Photosmart A826 being a standalone photo printer is a boon, which can be used PC-free and thus most of its features are incorporated in touch screen. It is nowhere less than other photo printers as we can set this printer to print from PC. The four memory card slots and PictBridge port makes it possible and easy to print from a memory card or PictBridge devices like a camera or camera phone as well. An optional USB Bluetooth adapter has been offered by HP for wireless printing.

A single touch could control most of the actions like viewing the image, editing and cropping. It has an option to view the images through slide shows and customizing the same. Editing the image is possible as there is an edit option when we look at a particular picture. Adjusting the brightness, reducing the red eye and cropping is possible with the edit option. Zooming in, zooming out and rotating the cropped area between portrait and landscape modes is very simple with crop feature.

One of the wealthy options of Photosmart A826 is the Get Creative option which enables users to add captions, frames, drawing on images, adding clip art, designing album pages and also imparting colour effects. Stylus can be used to edit the captions by changing the fonts, resizing or rotating the image.

In practical, Album option is not up to the mark as it has very limited options which really frustrate users. It allows us to change the album theme, layout and select the photos to be produced. In addition to the quality photo prints, if we have the proper paper, HP Photosmart A826 Colour Photo Printer can be used for panoramic prints, passport photos, photo stickers and CD/DVD tattoos.

Printing Speed:

HP Photosmart A826 has the capability to print 2.37 pages per minute for 152 by 102mm prints. This is a fabulous score when compared to other printers like Epson Stylus R380, Epson PictureMate Snap, and HP Photosmart D7360. The photos offered by Photosmart A826 are really good with lively colours and sharp details.

Performance:

The performance of Photosmart A826 is outstanding when compared to non-snapshot printers. The quality of the photos printed is awesome. Photosmart A826 proves its effectiveness by printing 2.37 pages per minute for 152 by 102mm prints. It has the ability to handle 180x 130mm prints as well as 152 x 102mm prints.

A826 Warranty Information:

Standard one-year limited hardware warranty. Warranty and support options vary by product, country and local legal requirements.

Verdict:

Hewlett Packard Photosmart A826 Compact photo printer is a standalone little printer with a wide dedicated touch screen and build-in paper tray which provides quality photos. This printer would be apt for people who are in need of a standalone printer in their room. Though Photosmart A826 is bit expensive, it is worth for the value.


HP Photosmart A826 - Technical Specifications, Features

Size And Setup:

Canon MX860 Photo Printer is identical in shape to the model Pixma MX330, with dimensions measuring 18.1 inches wide, 16.2 inches deep, 7.8 inches height with grooved grips under the device that makes easy to relocate it. The setup is standard for a Canon printer, remove the packing materials, snap in the printer head and ink cartridges, load the paper into trays, connect the cables and run the initial installation routine.

Design:

Because of the curved edges and incorporated control panel it apparently makes the printer look very sleek, captivating appeal makes it suitable to office as well as home usage. Inside the orderly organised control panel the large 2.5 inches LCD screen is fixed. The left part puts up the power button along with short cuts for copy, fax and scanning and the right part bears the normal make out of menu, settings, navigation buttons and numerical keys. Canon Pixma MX860 Wireless Photo Printer also developed few extra buttons to make it modernised by including consecrated Memory card button for copying and printing images directly from the reader at the bottom and some small keys which automatically dial your preset fax numbers.

Paper Inputs:

Canon provides three different choices for paper input. The simplest method is through the 150-sheets tray that pull from the bottom of the folding output bay. You can load another 150 sheets into another rear-loading cassette, and both trays have small plastic guides to fit an assortment of sizes from 4 inch X 6 inch al the way up to legal-sized media and envelopes of size No. 10. The versatility  of the dual paper feeds gives the user ample choice to store small photo paper in the rear tray and 8 inch X 10 inch sheets in the front tray. The driver also does an excellent job by selecting right tray and paper for any specific job. The auto-document feeder holds only 35 sheets of plain paper to copy or scan which sits on the top of the device is the third and last paper input tray. Similar to the other trays that extend out, the ADF nicely sits back into the body of the printer.

Ink Cartridges:

The scanner bay is hidden in the middle of the printer which can also be propped open to reveal the Canon MX860’s five-ink cartridge bay that consists of four dye-based ink cartridges( yellow, cyan, magenta and black) and one pigment based ink cartridge for black text. We are often of great interest to have separate ink cartridge bays as it saves money, MX860 also has the same system.

About The Card Reader:

It is a matter to be very happy as MX860 colour inkjet photo printer included a committed, covered media card reader, specially since we battered the MX330 for its deletion. The card reader is located at the bottom of the unit to the right of the paper output tray and has slots for MS Duo, SD/MS and compact flash cards. Using MX860, when you plug in a card there are two ways to print out the contents; you can either pick many pictures to create a batch print using the navigation pad, or you can view,edit and print individual pictures directly on the LCD. Red-eye reduction, colour effects like sepia and black-and-white, noise reduction, image optimiser, and so on can be done in manual edits. A compatible digital camera can be directly connected to the printer using PictBridge USB port.

Features of Canon MX860:

Different Connections Available:
Canon MX860 by default prints, scans and copies over a USB 2.0 connection, but you can also connect it to the wired network through the Ethernet port which is present on the back or to a wireless network using Wi-Fi. To create an ad-hoc connection over a router, first the software needs to establish a USB connection. The set up assistant on the driver allows us to print wirelessly in less than 5 minutes, and we were able to connect using both Mac and PC.

Photo Editing In The Printer:
A driver installation CD comes with a robust software suite which comes along with the printer will definitely appeal to users creative side. The MX860’s settings lets you cycle between usually used quality templates like standard, business, paper-saving  and photo-printing which automatically adjusts paper size and orientation, paper and output quality. The driver permits to go deeper into photo editing with many choices for bright photos, border less, monochrome effects, and even manual colour adjustments, while pop-up status monitor gives you a heads up view of the job status, document name, printer status and a rough idea of the ink levels. We mostly prefer the status monitor on the driver which comes along with MX860 which is an disadvantage in the case of MX330 that do not show printer progress.

Use Of Canon’s Easy Photo Print EX Software:

The Canon MX860 driver automatically installs Canon’s Easy Photo Print EX software onto the PC which flashes all the creative features of the MX330. This software allows you to print simple snapshot photos on the fly, create whole albums with art work and print calendars with custom pictures and custom stickers using Canon’s proprietary sticker paper. The explorer window on the main page works similar to the Windows Explorer pane, except that we mostly prefer HP’s Solution center layout that automatically scans and detects printable pictures on your hard drive. The Canon’s creative suite is unbelievably easy to use which also allows you to make simple photo edits like red-eye correction, face sharpening and blemish removal which is great for yours who do not want other people editing the photos using software like Adobe Photoshop.

Copy Functions:

For a multifunction device the copy functions on MX330 are relatively standard, some of them are you can make 99 copies at a time and can easily adjust the contrast and the magnification of a document from 25 to 400 percent, all are done directly through the settings on the LCD menus. Using the automatic document feeder the scanner gives you two options to scan either single photos and document or a stack of documents. MX860 provides many choices in terms of where you want to send a scanned document, such as to PC as JPEG, TIFF, BMP or to a PDF file or you can attach to an email with an option to convert and scan to text using optical character recognition. All the scanned copies are saved in your custom ‘My Box’ directory in which you can also find all imported and scanned as well as recently saved images on to the hard drive for future projects.

Printing Speed of MX860:

Canon multi functioning printers are never titled for high speed printing and MX860 also continues in the same trend. It takes 12.2 seconds to print the first page of mono draft documents and 15.8 for colour documents. Mono draft documents printed at an average speed of 10.6 pages per minute, where as it is 7.9 ppm for a normal quality document. The colour print takes more time.

Performance:

Canon Pixma MX860 all-in-one printer has the whip hand on the competition when it comes to the print speeds, setting the race in the colour graphics speed, single-photo speed, grayscale scan, and black test copy speed tests. The new model stands ahead of MX330 except in text, where it printed only 4.47 pages per minute compared to MX330’s 5.54ppm, knotting the first place to HP OfficeJet J6480. The text copy rate is 3.48ppm, Grayscale scan is 4.1 ppm, Photo speed is1.28 sheets, colour graphic speed is 2.29ppm.

Warranty Information:

Canon MX860 comes with a one year warranty for parts and labor under Canon’s Instant Exchange Services. If Canon cannot fix the problem by phone for printer under warranty, it will ship you a replacement along with a prepaid return shipping label. Canon picks up the cost of shipping in both the directions.

Verdict:

When compared to the two other printers which bracket Canon in the price, you will find balance in the features of Canon MX860 like particularly in the output print quality(better than the Epson Workforce 310), in price(lower than HP Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-one), prints, scans and faxes over network and even offers a wide array of functions, but its small paper tray and the printing speed makes it relatively slow for business purposes. A shopper who is looking for a printer to use in home or small business with a varied range of features at an affordable price and not bothered about the print speed doubtlessly Canon MC860 is an extremely best buy compared with the similarly priced competitors.

Check 2009 model latest photo printers, Canon Photo Printer Reviews in this website.



Canon MX860 Multifunction Printer - Technical Specifications, Features

HP has come up with a series of printers that are designed especially for small office business users who are looking for a versatile and affordable A3+ printer that is capable of producing a wide range of office materials like letters, photos, flyers and other marketing materials. Here we review a printer in that series, the HP Officejet K7100.

Simple design:

The Officejet K7100 inkjet printer has got a very modest design. It looks professional in its matte black finish with white linings. The center part alone of the printer has a glossy finish, quite attractive though. You will not find many controls in the facia of the printer. It just has three buttons for power, page resume and cancel options. It does not have a very large foot print either, it is moderate with its dimensions being just (w x d x h) 574.5 x 409.5 x 186.3 mm and weighing just 10.2 kg.

Installation of K7100:
The process of installation of K7100 Colour Inkjet Printer is quite simple and straight forward. But make sure you do not connect the printer to a Windows server system as the printer does not support it. And if you do indent to do so, load the printer’s drivers on to the server initially. Once the installation starts, the routine loads in the software bundle that includes HP’s web printing tools and its PhotoSmart Essential for manipulating photographs.

The extra tool box that is offered provides you with utilities that does a wide range of handy tasks like estimating the remaining ink levels and launching pop-up warnings if errors are detected. Once the print mileage feature is enabled, it allows you to track the general usage, and this sends the printing information to HP’s website for you to view.

Features:

With HP Officejet K7100 A3+ inkjet photo printer you will be able to produce very attractive materials up to A3+ with four inks or an optional six ink colour. There are options to print with or without borders in standard and custom sizes. This model uses the latest HP Vivera office ink which produces office quality photos. The speciality of this ink is that, it dries off real quickly and you can enjoy the best results when the printing is done on HP Everyday Paper that features colour lock technology. Using the standard four ink colour you can create high impact materials else you can also choose to have professional photo quality with the optional six ink colour. With the help of the poster printing option, the documents can be enlarged to up to 25 times their original size.

A slow coach:

Coming to the print speeds, though it is stated in the specifications that the K7100 Border less photo printer has the ability to achieve the top A4 speeds of about 25 ppm for mono and 20 ppm for colour, this rate can possibly be achieved only in draft mode. When put into testing, even with the settings set to the fast draft mode, the printer was able to achieve the print speed of only 17ppm. And as the quality of the prints is increased in the settings, the print speed reduces drastically. With the print quality set to average, the printer prints at only 8.5ppm and when you are aiming at the best quality, it gives you just 1.2ppm. K7100 makes the task of printing quite boring. For those who plan to do any colour printing, bring your iPod with you as the print speed is an awful 3ppm in normal mode.

Colour photographs take quite a long time too. An A4 sized colour photograph takes about four minutes, at the maximum setting. The photos come out in a resolution of 4,800 x 1,200dpi. If this is the case for A4 prints, then you will certainly need some patience for printing A3 photos. The print speed is about 1.4ppm in its normal mode and hence, if you are printing a full sized photo book at the highest quality as you would wish, the entire process takes about ten minutes.

Excellent print quality:

So far, the print speeds might have been disappointing news for you, but once you look at the output, you will get the feeling that it is worth the wait. The colour prints are of very good quality. Text looks great at the highest quality setting, but with anything less than that you will find some smudging. The colour balance in the photographs are quite good, they are sharp and the details are fine too. Banding, which is one of the major issues with most of the printers is invisible in the charts, photos and graphs printed using Hewlett Packard Officejet K7100 A3+ printer. This printer is very professional and it manages to pick even the minute details in the darker areas which the other printers of the same category fail to capture.

Cost effectiveness:

The only major issue with the A3 colour printers is that, they are quite expensive when compared with the A4 printers and this extra cost might be a bit of a burden for the small business investors. But this model, the Officejet K7100 seems to be just the perfect solution for this problem as it costs a mere £160.

Coming to the cost effectiveness of the printer, it works out that monochrome printing comes to around 2.7 pence per page and for colour printing it comes around 7.9 pence per page. Hence, monochrome printing is quite costly and colour printing is reasonable.

Warranty:

HP offers one year limited warranty for its Officejet K7100 A3+ colour inkjet printer.

Verdict:

The HP Officejet K7100 does a great job when the “Quality” factor is concerned. But its very low speed and high running costs, makes it an unlikely choice for printing jobs in small office and homes. Hence, if you are looking at quality large format colour prints, irrespective of the printing speed, K7100 is a good choice. This inkjet printer delivers excellent output considering its price tag.

Check 2009 Best selling Photo Printers, Reviews of Hewlett Packard Photo Printers in this website.

HP Officejet K7100 Colour Printer - Technical Specification Table

Features:
Hewlett Packard DeskJet 6940 Printer comes with an effective control panel which includes a power button, a print-cancel button, a print-resume button and a printer-report button. The network connections and the decrease in the level of ink are depicted with the help of graphical LEDs. These printers are available in silver and black Colours.

Certain features of this network-enabled printers are remarkably good when compared to its previous versions. These include the standard Ethernet connector, USB connector which helps in printing photos from cameras or mobile phones. Two ink cartridges are available to account for the document printing and photo printing. The inks can be easily swapped.

Speed and Quality:

The HP DeskJet 6940 Printer has a very decent quality of printing as it can print black text at a rate of 6.97 pages per minute (ppm) and a 215×280mm (8.5×11-inch) photo at a rate of 0.6ppm. More waiting is not required here and which results in greater productivity. This printer is ideal for high volume of jobs as its high-capacity ink cartridges could save ink and money. The print quality is good enough to satisfy the students and home-office workers.

Warranty:

HP offers one-year limited hardware warranty backed by HP Customer Care, service and support; one-year technical phone support.

Pros:
Following are some of the merits of HP DeskJet 6940 Colour Inkjet Printer,

• Network enabled
• PC-free photo printing via PictBridge port
• Ethernet connector
• Compatible with both Windows and Mac PCs
• Decent print quality
• Affordable price
• Compactness and Robustness

Cons:
Following are some of the de-merits of HP DeskJet 6940 Colour Inkjet Printer,

• Switching of inks is required for swapping document and photo printing, which will consume time.
• Auto duplexer and large input tray might cost more.
• HP ink might also cost more.
• There is a possibility of graininess during photo print.

Verdict:

To summarise, HP DeskJet 6940 Colour Inkjet Printer is a robust and compact inkjet printer for document and photo printing. It is a good choice for home users and students as it comes with network capability, good print quality and genuine price.

HP DeskJet 6940 Printer - Technical Specifications, Features

Pros:

• Stylish sleek design
• Compatible with all media
• Wireless printing features
• Print speed
• High quality of the prints
• Ease of use

Cons:

• The glossy plastic finish that attracts dust
• Flimsy output tray
• Average scan quality

Stylus Photo PX700W Complete review:

The freedom to print photos that look better and long lasting than the ones that you get from a high street photo lab would prove to be the ideal partner to your ultra small digital camera. When the ability to print, scan and copy are added, along with some other handy features, it allows you to edit and customise the images and documents, it not only becomes a great winning combination, it becomes a very desirable one too. With that note, Epson have added yet another shining star to their high definition range of photo printers called  Epson Stylus Photo PX700W.

Printer with a very stylish and futuristic look:

The Epson Stylus Photo PX700W All-in-one Printer has got a very stylish and futuristic look, that Epson had adopted for its new range of printers. But it has got a finish that does no good, when it comes to maintenance. The overall design is a combo of Canon’s Pixma range and HP’s Photosmarts. The PX700W has been trimmed with a glossy plastic that attracts ridiculous amount of dust, whereas the scanner lid and the bottom half of the printer are of the usual mottled patterns of Epson. PX700W weighs 9.3Kgs and hence is very heavy, lighter than Epson RX865 though. Having its dimensions to be 519×214x496mm (H X W X D), the PX700W has got a small footprint and hence can be fitted comfortably in the corner space of your work table. The small footprint is made possible because of the of the smaller front loading paper tray. But the output trays are too bendy, in a quite undesirable manner. The flip down doors to cover the trays when they are not in use is a good design touch.

The control panel:

You might think that the Stylus Photo PX700W looks like a simple box, before you turn it around to see its control panel in its facia. These buttons largely take care of all the stand alone functions of scanning and copying. The top left corner of the printer has a large rubbery power button followed by a tray activation button below it. To the right of it, there is a large square pad which has been labeled as Home on top of it. As you must be aware, the home button takes to the first screen of the menu system where you can choose to copy, print, scan and even set up the require options, navigating by pressing the relevant corner of the square. One button that multitasks cannot prove to be good unless it is designed with utmost care. And Epson failed to do so, as it exhibited few misconceptions while accessing it.

Display and ports:

The printer has a 2.5″ LCD display having two buttons flanking in its left side and these buttons are used for changing the view or cropping the images for viewing the image in PhotoEnhance. The printer has an unlock button on its top, which can be articulated by 90 degrees and avoids stooping if the printer is placed on a low table. In the lower bottom corner, lies the memory card slots for all types of the current memory card format and a PictBridge connection is available that sits just right, further expanding the printing options of the printer.

Easy installation:

The entire process of installing the PX700W Colour Inkjet Printer takes a maximum of 15 minutes. Just install the inks and run the provided driver CD. And all that you need to do is, click over the next button and the installation gets done automatically in around ten minutes, including the registration of the product. And then, just after two minutes, the computer recognises the printer that is attached to it. The whole process of installation comprises of seven steps that are extremely easy. All the steps are straight forward and are explained in detail in the users manual provided and hence there is no way that you could muddle up.

Once the driver and the supporting applications have been installed, a wizard allows you to choose from USB hi-speed, wired and wireless network installation. The wireless settings can be configured automatically by connecting the printer to your PC with the USB lead that is provided. It can also be done manually using the built-in display. Once the connection is established, the first step is to have a print head alignment, that can be found in the maintenance tab of the printer’s properties window.

The menu:

The print menu screen has been revised in all the latest models of Epson printers and so, the three pages before the gritty stuff have been eliminated. The very first page itself allows you to make adjustments in colour management, profile and rendering intent. The various print set up pages have been moulded into one where as the page set-up menus remains to be separate. The bottom right of the window has got a small pane that comprises of a brief explanation on what each of the parts do. This pane is extremely helpful for the novice users.

Printing mechanism in Stylus Photo PX700W:

The Epson Stylus Photo PX700W Printer/Scanner/Copier makes use of Claria inks which has been described by Epson as, “high quality at low cost” and they include extra two colours, which are, light magenta and a light cyan. These colours are included in the kit as they improve gradation such as skin tone and areas of high detail. The ink size that gets sprayed out of the Micro Piezo heads is 1.5 picoliter. The Micro Piezo system is very precise as it fires the electrical charges via the Piezo elements causing physical distortions which in turn aids in firing the ink. Yet another version of firing the ink is the bubble system that bursts the bubbles and uses the pressure that causes to fire the droplets of ink onto the paper. As the system had got variable micro piezo heads, it allows the droplet sizes to be increased or decreased depending on the area of the photograph. When large blocks of colour has to be fired, the head opens fully and when smaller droplets are required for finer details, the colour head closes to a smaller size. Hence, this system increases the speed of printing in an economic fashion.

PhotoEnhance feature:

PhotoEnhance is a feature that is found in the print options menu that appears when the pictures are loaded through the printer. But in Epson Stylus Photo PX700W, the PhotoEnhance option is built-in and in addition to it, it has got a predetermined auto adjustment settings over which the user does not have any control. This feature manipulates the basic settings like brightness, sharpness, saturation and contrast. This feature also comprises of a red eye removal option that can be applied to any selected picture or applied on all the images that are being viewed.

WiFi technology:

WiFi technology, is spreading rapidly and is available to almost all the home computers. This boom is because the technology is readily accessible and does not break the bank either. With this technology, you will be able to access internet from anywhere within its range without any need for a cable. Since PX700W too has got the wireless capability, photos can be printed without having to be connected to it. The connection can be established in just a few clicks and once that is done, you will be ready to move around and print from anywhere. In fact, all that you need to enjoy this facility is some patience to link your computer and the printer to a router.

Compatibility and tray capacity:

The media types and sizes supported includes A4, Letter, Legal, 20×25 cm, 13×18 cm, 10×15 cm, 9×13 cm, 13×20 cm, A5, B5, A6 and Envelopes: No.10, DL, C6, User Defined. The two-in-one front-loading paper tray can also take 6×4in, 7×5in or wide-format photo paper, so you do not have to empty out all your A4 paper to print a photo.

The printer’s paper capacity is 120 A4 size sheets.

Print speed:

This six-ink Multi Functional Printer follows in the footsteps of the RX685 and shares its awesome photo quality. The print speed of Epson Stylus Photo PX700W is acceptable. In order to print a quality photo of A4 size, at the highest possible quality without any photo enhancing feature takes around two minutes. When you do not start from the cold, Epson’s Micro Piezo print head technology produces the photos in just 17 seconds. Photo printing was reasonably quick. Six 6×4in photos emerged in eight minutes and 15 seconds, and two 10×8in pictures on A4 took just over four minutes. A colour print speed of 6.1ppm was impressive.

Print quality:

The print quality is quite good as the colours showed up bright and the mono tones look very balanced. The quality of the lettering wasn’t as sharp as we’d have liked, but it was dark and easy to read. Mixed-colour document prints were similarly well defined, although there was a lack of intensity in dark colours. Most of the fonts are readable, the difficulty occurs only when they are set to the smallest size. Colours from Epson’s Claria inks are strong, natural and rated fade-free for 200 years in a photo album.

Scanning:

Once the installation of the bundled CD is over, the import options will be available automatically in the editing suite which includes the newer versions of the CS4. Scanning using the printer is extremely easy and as in the case of printing, all the selections can be done directly from the printer itself. And as you scan, you can choose to save the scanned document either to memory card or PC and can be saved even in PDF format. Epson’s excellent scanner driver makes it easy to optimise scan quality by adjusting the scan’s colour or enabling software dust-removal. It automatically selected the scan area from the preview with great precision. Banding which was a great problem in the previous all-in-one models of Epson have been addressed. Overall, the quality of the prints and scanned documents are impressive.

Economy:

Photo-printing costs work out at 20p for a 6×4in print, which is a reasonable price for home printing.

Warranty:

Epson offers Epson Stylus Photo PX700W all in one photo printer one year limited warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

Epson Stylus Photo PX700W Wireless photo printer is one of the best looking models that Epson has ever released. The menu system is also great and glows on the highlighted items. The only blot with the design is the amount of dust the shiny plastic attracts, which could make the printer look old very quickly and there are high chances that it might get into the ink area. The wireless printing feature of the printer might take the process of printing into a whole new era. If you are looking for an all in one printer that has great looks and acceptable print speed and quality, Epson Stylus Photo PX700W is a good choice in deed.

Check other All-in-One Photo Printer models in this website.

Epson Stylus Photo PX700W Multi Functional Printer - Technical Specifications

Inherited the predecessor looks:

The Epson Stylus Photo R2880 A3 inkjet Photo Printer has a very familiar look. No wonder! Because it looks much like the Epson R1900 or the Epson Pro 3800. Epson has followed the sleek and stylish looks of its new range of printers. It has got great looks but the construction can be said as a little clumsy. When all of its trays are folded up, it occupies very little space and much more compact when compared with its competitor HP B9 180. The parts feel solid. A CD/DVD printing option has been included, which is the most welcome part and a roll media holder had also been included which we felt as incomplete without a cutter.

Paper trays:

The straight front paper path is quite misleading. This path is specially for the broad media and is about 1.3mm thick. When it is activated, the print head moves to a higher position to allow for the extra thickness. If you use normal Photo media then the nozzles will be in the wrong position thereby producing slightly blurry looking prints. For printing in fine art or any other special media, the single sheet manual rear holder has to be used. To do this, you have to feed the media in until it meets resistance, and then apply a small amount of downward pressure for about 3 seconds until the printer pulls the media in, which seems to be not the most intuitive method of loading media. The CD/DVD input tray is located behind the front panel.

Ports:

The Stylus Photo R2880 has two USB ports in the rear, with the help of which you will be able to connect two computers to the printer. It would have been a better option for Epson to have included an Ethernet port. This would have made the printer small office friendly. A PictBridge has been included in this A3 printer for the risk loving people, who would like to print directly form their cameras without any small editing.

Compatibility:

The Epson Stylus Photo R2880 Inkjet Photo Printer is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and for Mac users, Power PC or Intel based Mac running OS-X 10.3.9 or later.

Easy installation:

The installation of Epson Stylus Photo R2880 is quite simple. Since the printer does not have any bulky in-line transformers, all that you will have to do is, simply plug in the two pin plug to the mains and turn on the printer. To insert the eight inks, just open the top cover. Remember to shake each cartridge well before you use it which is done just to get the pigment ink into circulation which otherwise tends to sit in the bottom of the cartridge. Once the installation of the inks are over, the drivers and the other software has to be installed. As in the case of most of the installation processes, the installation is automated by wizards. All that you will be having to do is, plug in the USB (2.0 or 1.1), when you are prompted to. The whole process of installation might take a maximum of ten minutes.

The eight-ink colour cartridge:

You will be finding nine inks in the UltraChrome K3 ink set ( Light Light Black, Vivid Light Magenta, Light Cyan, Light Black, Matte Black, Photo Black, Cyan, Vivid Magenta and Yellow), out of which only eight, excluding any one of the two black inks should be loaded. You can use the photo black for printing in glossy media or use the matte black for the matte media. Each time you swap the cartridges, the printer purges the inks from the print head. In order to clean the heads in an effective manner, the inks have to be sucked through the nozzles. Since this process of cleaning is very wasteful, it is not ideal to keep swapping your inks. This can be said as one of the major drawbacks with this printer. Another notable drawback with the inks is that, the cartridges are of lower capacity. Each one contains 11ml of ink, which is fine for an A4 printer but not for Stylus Photo R2880 which is an A3 unit.

You will be shocked to see how fast the ink levels fall, but you must remember that a substantial quantity of ink from the first set will be used to prime the system. However, the subsequent cartridges should be able to produce a higher print yield.

New interface:

Epson has managed to bring in a new interface, giving a brand new look. One of the most interesting facts is that, it works seamlessly with photoshop. For instance, if you make the selection “photoshop manages colour“, the properties of printer automatically switches off the colour management off. This is a very handy feature as it will save many users from accidentally double profiling their prints. The interface is very user friendly and looks much better than the previous one. If you love making lot of tweaks in the colours before printing, you will love this new interface.

Loaded with new set of features:

Some of the latest set of features that are included in R2880 include UltraChrome K3 ink set with Vivid Magenta, Epson new LUT technology for ultra smooth gradations Roll and Fine Art media support, Front feed for specialist rigid media which is up to 1.3mm thick, CD/DVD printing using inkjet printable discs, Dual USB 2.0 ports connect 2 computer to the printer and a Front PictBridge port for direct printing from a digital camera or photo viewer.

Colour prints quality:

Epson has added a new colour to the UltraChrome K3 set, called as vivid magenta which claims to expand the colour gamut, especially the blues and magenta. The prints have vibrant and stunning colours. The images are almost accurate, additionally, the dark colours are electric. As far as the colours are concerned, we are fully impressed. They are slightly darker than that of the original print, which is mainly due to the over saturation of the colours. The prints are nothing less than excellent.

LUT technology:

Epson has included a new technology known as Look Up Table that automatically generates a LUT for a specific ink technology in use. This technology converts the RGB signal into correct values for each ink thereby optimising the gradation, grains, colour gamut and colour inconsistency.

Black and White prints:

When the UltraChrome K3 were introduced by Epson a couple of years back, it revolutionised the way black and white prints were produced. Totally neutral black and white prints could be produced. Epson also offers traditional fiber based media that feels like traditional photographic paper. One problem which Epson has not dealt with, is the swapping of Photo and Matte Black inks. When you change media types the residual black ink has to be sucked out of the print head which the printer does and in this process the colour ink is also wasted. The black and white prints are also excellent, there is not a slightest hint of colour cast. Another way to print out the black and white prints is via the advanced BW printing mode. This will allow you to add a colour tone or even make some adjustments with brightness, contrast etc.

CD/DVD printing:

Epson had first introduced the CD printing option in SP2100 in the year 2002. This feature is now available in the Epson Stylus Photo R2880. The Easy Print CD software, an application that is used for the printing of CDs has not got the changes that it had expected to have got. Yet, it is an useful application that does the job for you. Just pull the CD/DVD tray down and the print head is raised to the upper level and then place your CD/DVD tray in the slots, then just align the arrows and activate the print button in the software. A disc takes about one and half minutes to complete. The quality of CD prints are professional looking.

One thing that you will have to make sure is that, you use professional looking CDs. Though the UltraChrome ink does not penetrate through the media, printing over a non-coated media will not work and the ink would refuse to dry. In Easy Print CD there are a number of options to add fancy text, a few items of clip art and a selection of royalty free background images. You can of course use your own images, just browse to your images folder and make your selection.

Print Speed:

An A3 print takes around six and a half minutes to get printed and A4 prints take around two and a half minutes. It is certainly not the fastest printer, but the quality is an important factor consider too.

The software bundle:

The software bundled with the printer includes Epson Creativity Suite incl. Epson Easy Photo Print, Web to Page, Epson File Manager, Camera RAW Plug-in for Epson Creativity Suite, Epson Print CD User guide in HTML format and Adobe® Photoshop Elements 5 (PC) / 4. This package of software is standard for most of the Epson printers and most of the applications seem to be fine. Epson Photoshop Plug in, a new verion is available as a free download and will support a limited number of previous Epson printers.

As the photoshop elements have been included in the bundle, overall, it is an excellent application that would suite a beginner.

Verdict:

If you are a semi or a pro and advanced amateur and if you do not require high volume output printer, but still looking forward for using a wide range of media types and also good quality black and white prints, Epson Stylus Photo R2880 A3 inkjet photo printer is the one for you.

Technical  Specification Details