This article was published in PC Plus issue 155 (Sep 99), and is reproduced here for information purposes only. This is the original copy which was sent to the magazine, not the subbed version which appeared on the page. |
Epson 750 printer - 1 page reviewGeneral hardware reviews aren't a speciality of mine, but I can do them nevertheless. Here's a one-pager on Epson's Stylus Photo 750, from mid-99.
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[BEGINS]
Epson Stylus Photo 750 inkjet printer. <body - 776 words> It says a lot for the way printer prices have fallen that, at £273 (around £40 less on the street), the Photo 750 is the second most expensive in Epson's Stylus range of inkjets. Aimed at the home and small business markets, it's a versatile device, offering high quality text and genuine photo quality images in resolutions of up to 1440 X 720 dpi - enough to satisfy the needs of business report-writers as well as digital photographers. The Photo 750 is compact and fairly space-efficient, with a 100 sheet rear-mounted paper hopper (unfortunately without a separate envelope feeder) feeding through to a front-mounted output tray. The latter folds neatly away when not in use, giving a depth of 38cm (15) inches, or 54cm (21 inches) when fully extended. However there's no failsafe device to prevent you from printing with the tray closed, which results in nasty paper jams if you forget to open it. The front panel has three buttons, for power, paper eject and cartridge self-clean, plus three warning lights, for paper out plus empty black and colour ink cartridges. The hinged lid provides easy access to the cartridges themselves, and has instructions for changing them printed inside, a nice quality touch. Connection is via parallel or USB socket, plus RS423 serial for the Mac (there's no Ethernet option). Drivers are provided for Win 95, 98 and NT 4.0, plus Mac System 7 and iMac. Epson's Stylus range use 'MicroPiezo' technology, which pumps ink by mechanical force instead of heat, a system which the company claims gives better control over dot shape and positioning, and allows it to use brighter ink. The Stylus 750's print head can also vary the size of the dots, down to a minimum diameter of 45 microns for extra-fine detail. The colour cartridge, meanwhile, has five colours instead of the more usual three, with the extra two (Light Cyan and Light Magenta) used to print light shades without decreasing dot density, thus reducing graininess. Even the driver software gets in on the quality-enhancement act, using 'Acuphoto Halftoning' to generate more realistic colours. That's a lot of theory, and in practice it produces some excellent results, albeit at the expense of performance in the higher resolutions. Basic 360 dpi text output is legible though prone to banding errors, but does print fairly quickly (see benchmarks). Switch to 720 dpi, however, and the results are outstanding, with crisp, solid, jet-black characters the equal of any office laser's - the only drawback being that they take nearly three times as long to appear. 720 dpi colour images also arrive at a leisurely pace, but the wait is - sometimes - worth it. On standard copier paper, the results are mixed. Our CorelDRAW vector-graphics benchmark printout was excellent, with superb detail and perfectly-rendered colours. The PowerPoint presentation slide had similarly impressive resolution, but its stronger colours (and thus heavier inking) caused the paper to wrinkle, an effect which also occurred with some photographs, even on Epson's photo-quality matt paper. On glossy paper the Stylus 750's 1440 dpi results are simply astonishing, with accurate colours and pin-sharp detail that make them genuinely hard to tell from traditional photographic prints. However print times are fairly astonishing too; our benchmark A4 photo took no less than 22 minutes to compete. Results on non-glossy paper are also extremely good, although you do need to use Epson's special-purpose stock if you want top-quality results; ordinary copier paper won't do. Epson's driver software is excellent, with a pop-up window containing a progress meter, plus pause and restart-from-beginning buttons, and an 'abandon job' option that actually works. Diagnostic and head-cleaning utilities are accessed via the printer's Properties dialog, and combine with a printed manual and Online (CD-ROM) Guide to make it genuinely easy to use and manage. The Stylus 750 isn't particularly quiet though, with an almost matrix-like whine during printing and yet more whirring and whining at the end of each job. The unit comes with no less than five CD-ROMs. As well as the driver and Guide discs, you get Epson's sticker-printing application, and Adobe PhotoDeluxe 3.0 Home Edition, a powerful and basically friendly image editor/processor marred by awkward resizing controls that make it hard to fit high-resolution images on the page. Completing the bundle is PictureWorks' Spin Panorama image stitcher, which has a better interface than market leader PhotoVista, but isn't quite as good at the actual stitching. The Stylus Photo 750 doesn't have the robust feel of a genuine office printer, but it does have the print quality, which is what counts when other people are viewing your printouts. At this price it's a real bargain.
specifications: Benchmark
results
AWARD - VALUE AND/OR QUALITY. Cartridge
prices:
Page costs
Costs exclude paper. Three
printout samples supplied with review. [ENDS] (C) Paul Stephens 1999. All rights reserved.
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