Epson Stylus Photo 895 review

Gallery

Verdict:

Review Date: 29 May 2002

Price when reviewed: (£172)

Reviewed By: Benny Har-Even

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The Epson has two unusual features.

The first is a slot for digital camera memory cards, so you can print photos directly from them. The second is something called 'Print Imaging Technology' (PIM), which produces more faithful photo prints - provided you use the Epson with a PIM-compatible camera.

Design

The Epson is a bulky printer, and as the input tray tilts backwards, paper left there for a while will eventually curl. The memory card slot is PC Card format, but an adapter for CompactFlash cards is included. You'll have to buy a separate one for SmartMedia, Memory Stick or MMC/SD.

During printing the driver displays a progress bar, ink levels and even printing tips. A translucent plastic panel blocks your view of what's printing. Sadly, it doesn't do the same for the noise, which is considerable.

Print Quality

The output of the 895 clearly shows the advantages of a six-colour printer - our test photo was flawless, with natural colours and fine detail, easily a match for high-street developers. Ironically, on standard paper the results were just the opposite - the Epson was overly heavy on the ink, causing bleeding and making it one of the least convincing here. It was also poor at text.

Speed

They say the best things come to those who wait, and the Epson took a snooze-inducing 23 minutes to print our photo at the maximum 2,880x720 resolution. At 1,440x720 it took 'only' eight-and-a-half minutes, without any discernable loss of quality. It was also slow in the other tests, taking the longest time to print our five-page text file.

Overall

If you're after high-resolution digital photos on specialist paper and don't care how long it takes, this is the ultimate printer. For anything else, look elsewhere.

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