Horribly busy but will catch up on my review reading - promise!
Horribly busy but will catch up on my review reading - promise!
Member since:22.10.2006
Reviews:90
Members who trust:18
The first thing you notice about the Epson Stylus Photo R265 is that it's pretty large. You'd almost think it was a multifunction device, especially given it's height. As such you'll need a fair chunk of desk space to take it. That said, it's attractive enough if a little utilitarian.
As you can see, apart from the CD/DVD feature, it's a pretty vanilla device. No LCD screen and no slots for media cards so you can't do much without having your PC connected.My first impressions when printing were good. I printed photos on A4 as single images and 4 to a page and found them bright, punchy and well balanced. The shadow detail seemed fine and skin tones looked good. However, on printing a few more, it became clear the colours were slightly oversaturated. This may be the driver, it may be the printer. Either way, you may have some fiddling and tweaking to do if you are fussy about final output. For your average Joe printing out his family snapshots it produces good enough results to please.
A bonus is the use of Claria long life inks. Photos printed using inkjets tend to fade alarmingly quickly, especially in bright light and the various manufacturers all have different tricks to reduce this. Epson's Claria system claims some 200 years I am told but that would be under ideal conditions i.e. use the ink and paper they specify and keep them in the dark. However, you'll still see good fade resistance under more normal conditions, just don't expect a hundred years.
Also worth noting is the use of six separate ink cartridges. This means that if one colour runs out, you can change just that colour and not have to throw out an entire multicolour cartridge. This should reduce running costs markedly, especially if you tend to print things like PowerPoint presentations whicih tend to use up one colour far faster than other depending on your preferred backgrounds. I've not checked for 3rd party inks but if available, that will reduce costs even more. I've tended to avoid them in the past having killed 3 Epson's with 3rd party inks but in the last year or two I've started to find some that seem to work well with my other printer.
In day to day use I found text printing was only average. It's quick enough but the characters weren't always that well formed compared to some printers in this price bracket.
The R265 can also print to CDs and DVDs which is great if you want nice looking ones you burn at home but make sure you get the printable sort - not any old CDs or DVDs. Get it wrong and you'll have smeary CDs that refuse to dry.
Overall this is a good printer. Set up was straight forward and it comes with a fair bundle of utilties. If you want bright looking photos and decent looking charts and presenations, it's a winner. However, text is less impressive but then this is touted as a 'photo' printer so that's not entirely unexpected of unusual.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: High quality, fast printing. Print to CD. 6 colour. Pictbridge from Digital camera Disadvantages: A little noisy initially when taking in the next sheet
Dec 8th, 2006
(Mar 21st, 2007)
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