Epson Stylus Photo R285 review

Gallery

Verdict:

Photos look a lot better than the printer. High-quality photos, but otherwise unremarkable.

Review Date: 14 Dec 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Kat Orphanides

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The Stylus Photo R285 is a no-frills device that uses Epson's six-cartridge Claria photographic ink system.

It comes with a CD printing tray, but lacks a screen or any direct printing features such as memory card slots or PictBridge. Nonetheless, this plain-looking printer is easy to use and we found it produced great-looking photos.

In our photo printing test, it printed beautifully sharp, detailed pictures with delicate shading. Its default colour balancing wasn't as accurate as that of the more expensive R360, but the difference was only noticeable in a side-by-side comparison. More conspicuous was the R285's tendency to over-lighten dark images. While this can be an advantage if you happen to be printing murky, low-contrast photos, it left some of our shots looking a shade too bright. This effect didn't occur on more vividly coloured prints, however, and the general quality of our pictures was excellent. It took us just under ten minutes to print six 6x4in photos, which isn't too bad.

Normal document quality lettering was solidly printed, but the edges of characters looked a little fuzzy. Images in our mixed colour business documents were largely accurately reproduced, although areas of solid black looked rather grey and displayed a slight speckling effect. Draft text was readable, despite somewhat broken-up, rust-coloured lettering. The R285's print speeds were unremarkable, and costs look high at 8p per page of mixed colour printing.

Although it's not the best in this group overall, the R286 is an excellent photo printer. It's let down by its normal document prints, which are quite usable but mediocre, and the lack of any direct printing facility is a disappointing limitation if you don't always want to print from your PC.

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