Epson Stylus Photo 875DC review

To store images, most digital cameras use some kind of solid-state memory, be it Compact Flash or SmartMedia.

The problem is, it's a bit of a pain transferring photos from any of these types of memory to your PC. There no simple slot or socket for you to stick them in, and it can feel like your pictures are being held captive. Fret not, though: Epson reckons its new photo printer has the answer.

The Stylus Photo 875DC is equipped with a PCMCIA card reader. You simply stick your camera memory in the supplied adapter, slot that in the reader, and print! As standard, the Epson arrives with an adapter for Compact Flash memory. If your new camera - like our Top 50 digital camera, the Toshiba PDR-M5 (or, indeed, half the cameras in our latest group test) - uses SmartMedia, you'll need a SmartMedia-to-PCMCIA adapter, for an extra £42.

A printer that aims to do justice to the luscious output from the latest digital cameras has got to be a bit special. And, indeed, the Epson tries to be better than the rest. It uses six colours of ink, and has a paper roll holder that accepts both A4 and 100mm photo paper rolls.

If you're using 100mm photo paper, the printer can produce edge-to-edge prints, much the same as you'd get from a high street processing lab. Using the roll paper, you can effectively produce standard 6x4in prints.

Print quality is superb, making full use of all six inks. This exemplary quality can be attributed to Epson's 4-picolitre variable droplet size technology. I placed a snap taken with a Nikon Coolpix 800 and printed on the Epson, beside a picture taken with my trusty film camera, and developed by Boots. At a normal viewing distance it was impossible to see any difference in quality. You'd need a magnifying glass to tell for sure which picture was printed at home.

The Epson took 25mins to produce twelve 1024x768 printouts on the 100mm paper. This might sound slow, but compare this with the effort involved in taking a film to a developers.

So how about ease of use? This is where the software and driver installation come into play. Epson provides an instruction sheet that lays out a precise path to success - ignore it at your peril. Effectively, all the drivers must be installed before you switch the printer on, at which point, Windows detects the various bits and does the necessary to allow the USB-only connection to work. It's simple, but also easy to get wrong.

That said, once the supplied software - PhotoQuicker and ancilliary utilities - is installed, the modus operandi is really rather simple. As you insert the memory card from your camera into the slot, PhotoQuicker opens up, reads the images from the card, and allows you to do what you will with them.

You can, for instance, elect to produce an index print of every image - not a bad idea - or select all or some of the images for printing. Specify which paper size you're going to use, hit 'quick print' and watch as the 875DC spits out a string of images.

This printer would be a great asset for a keen digital photographer. It's a smart alternative to the chore of connecting slow serial digital cameras to your PC. And its image quality is hard to fault. But let's not get too carried away. Firstly, downloading pictures to your PC for printing has been made one hundred per cent easier by the advent of USB cameras. Also, if you're using a SmartMedia-based digital camera you'll have to shell out another £42 on an adapter. Add this to the asking price of £217, and you're looking at a great deal of money.