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Member since:11.12.2005
Reviews:41
Members who trust:46
The Epson Stylus Photo R2400, has changed the world of printing forever. This printer was built to replace the Stylus Photo 2200 and is an A3 sized printer. I firmly believe that this must be one of the best quality consumer inkjet printers that has ever been manufactured. It uses a new type of ink technology, called the Ultrachrome K3 system. The printer makes full use of three different colour levels of black ink and some superb driver facilities. All this enables the Stylus Photo R2400 to produce some super-professional quality prints, in both black-and-white and colour, and upon some highly impressive printing media. I think this printer would be extremely useful, particularly for photographers or those with a keen interest in printed graphics.
The Epson Stylus Photo R2400 uses 8 colour Ultrachrome K3 technology to produce some smashing results, in the short time that I have been using it, I have obtained amazing results from every print (on Epson papers). It is unusual to find such a high print quality from a desktop inkjet. The fantastic
thing about this printer is that it prints on paper right up to a whopping A3 size, it is capable of printing right up to the edge and also on some very thick papers and cards, up to 1.5mm thick! Printing resolution is up to 5760x1440dpi and uses a 3pl Ultra Micro Dot, which I truly believes makes the printer what it is.
The Stylus Photo R2400 has a very stylish silver-and-smoked black exterior, however, the one thing that I will say about it is that it has a very flimsy paper tray, and I think this rather detracts from the overall quality of the machine. Connectability-wise it comes complete with USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (FireWire) ports, but unfortunately for me, (I bought it without realising this) it does not have any memory card slots. Neither does the R2400 have a preview display, PictBridge compatibility or support wireless communications. However, I think that these functions were purposely missed off, as the printer is designed more for graphics professionals than your run of the mill person looking to print the occasional letter or invoice.
And now for more on the K3 ink technology. This is the latest in ink technology and involves using higher density pigments in the inks. This of course produces some dramatically improved prints in both black-and-white and colour. Of course, the printer contains the standard inks, magenta, cyan, yellow, light magenta and light cyan, but the Stylus R2400 also contains three levels of black ink that produce some remarkable results when printing greyscale images.
On top of that, Epson promise that the images printed will last to over 100 years in black and white without fading, and up to 75 years in colour without fading. I think that this would make it the best choice ever if you are looking for a printer that is suitable for prints that are going to be archived. I have also noticed that the prints that I get (particularly on photo paper) have a high gloss level and are very resistant to scratching.
The Epson Stylus Photo R2400 also has two different modes for printing with black ink. Matte Black, and Photo Black. This is the Ultrachrome K3 system kicking in! It optimises ink use for different types of media. To put this in perspective, Photo Black ink can be used for pretty much any purpose and on all different types of printing media. The Matte Black ink is optional, but produces some super results when you are printing on fine art and matte type papers. However, to make full use of the different ink cartridges you will have to manually keep swopping the ink cartridges over dependent on the material you are printing on.
I have found that the way the printer handles paper is very impressive. The paper feed options on offer are:
Automatic sheet feeder, Manual feed for rigid thick sheet media Roll paper path (rollers supplied).
Standard paper sizes supported include A3+, A3, A4, A5, A6, Letter, Legal, B5, and Postcard (100x148mm), in addition to a raft of special Epson media: Premium Glossy Photo Paper, Premium Semigloss Photo Paper, Archival Matte Paper, Matte Paper, Double Sided Matte Paper, Velvet Fine Art Paper, Ultra Smooth Fine Art Paper, Watercolor Paper Radiant White, and Proofing Paper Semimatte.
The R2400 handles a massive variety of different paper weights from 64 to 90gsm for plain paper and up to 255gsm for dedicated Epson photo paper.
My final point must be that if you want high quality prints, I recommend that you use Epson professional papers, this is how I achieved the best results (although this is expensive, as I said earlier, this printer is more designed for the professional photographer than the novice user!). If you use normal photocopier paper or other cheap papers that you can buy, I found that the results are actually quite shocking and can easily be improved using a printer of much lesser stature and price.
Don't ever try to use this printer for such things as printing letters, newsletters and emails as it really is not suitable for this type of printing, and certainly not suitable for heavy duty printing.
You might think that the print speed is slow (which is why I included the above paragraph about heavy duty printing), but I personally think it is very reasonable considering the high quality prints that you can obtain. On best print settings, I have found that it takes about 3 minutes to print an A4 page of full colour and around 7 minutes for an A3 page. Of course this printing time can be speeded up a lot by reducing the print quality, but as I said, the whole idea of this printer is that it produces quality results on the right media at the right settings.
£512.99 from Amazon.
Thanks for reading
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