Epson Stylus Photo R1800 review

If there is one thing for which Epson printers should be known, it is their versatility.

The Stylus Photo 2100 wowed us with a massive range of compatible papers, a first-class ink system and easy-to-use banner printing, thanks to a series of different-sized paper rolls. Latterly, we have had the R800, which upped the number of inks in an A4 device and added a dedicated gloss optimiser. And now Epson has introduced the Stylus Photo R1800, which crosses the two, with output up to A3+, seven inks and a reappearance of that gloss tank.

It is a beast of a machine: wide, deep and fairly heavy, so we welcomed the nice touch of carrying handles in the plastic sheeting in which it is wrapped inside its box. Once on your desk, it grows some more, with a long paper tray to the front and a tall hopper to the back. This device certainly needs a lot of room, and, at 45 x 61 x 74cm, would benefit from being located on a dedicated desk, in which case an Ethernet connection would have been a welcome addition. As things stand, though, communications are handled by USB 2 or FireWire connections, which are both versatile and fast enough not to slow down the passage of data.

That said, this is not a printer you want to use if you are in a hurry. Epson claims a rather optimistic 66 seconds for a 10 x 8in print, but our tests were completed at a far more conservative pace. A full-bleed A4 photo on glossy photo paper at best quality was ready for hanging in three minutes 36 seconds (and we really do mean ready to hang: it was dry and free of any tackiness as soon as the job was done).

Colour photo quality was generally good, with well-rendered detail and clear distinction between areas of differing tone. Where shades faded from one into another, they were smooth and clean, and there was no evidence of undesirable stepping or banding, even though the driver warned us that by printing full bleed, we may notice quality takes a hit at the bottom of the page.

The R1800 ships with a range of colour profiles, including Epson Vivid and Adobe RGB. As the latter is included in many digital cameras, this offers Photoshop users a straight-through path for their data that should give them assurance their colours aren't being tweaked or re-coded along the way. Further, Epson claims a print life of 80 years when using its own UltraChrome Hi-Gloss inks and compatible paper products, which should be reassuring to anyone using this to make money from selling photos and prints.

We were a little less impressed by its mono printing performance. Although the R1800 includes two black wells - one matte and one photo - we found that when using photo paper some detail was lost in areas of intense shadow. In areas of more varied output, we found contrast control to be excellent, though, so this is by no means a reason to avoid the R1800.

That said, it may be worth holding off buying one until you have read the first reviews of Epson's new K3 ink system, which includes three black wells of varying strength and is targeted at professional photographers. We have so far seen some impressive sample prints, but as no review units are yet available for testing, we were unable to verify its performance in our Labs.

The R1800 is not cheap to run. Its seven colour cartridges, which include blue and red, are £11.90 a pop, while the gloss optimiser is £6.36, which tips the scales at a hefty £89.66 all in. Each should run dry after 440 pages at 5% coverage. While we are happy to use the 5% figure for the black wells when printing text (so just under 3p a page), this is a conservative estimate for ink use in the colour wells, which will be used mainly for printing photos that cover far more than 5% of an A4 page.