Epson Stylus Photo R300

...blind I’d never buy another Epson printer, after the last one lasted just past it’s warranty, and to be honest became a real pain in the lower regions long before that. Still, the temptation was too much, the price and features pulled me in once again to an Epson – the R300.

Unpacking
As with all new products these days, there seems to be a tendency to stuff the box full of all sorts of bits and pieces, so when you first take ...
...in. I’d like to see Epson include more sample paper types, a couple of A4 sheets would be nice. No USB cable is supplied.

Looks
The Epson R300 is a familiar silver and black design. The top right has a LCD display. Below this panel is a group of indicators and buttons. The front has a USB 1.1 port enabling you to directly connect for example your Digital camera, or perhaps an external disk drive. None of our cameras support ... more

I swore blind I’d never buy another Epson printer, after the last one lasted just past it’s warranty, and to be honest became a real pain in the lower regions long before that. Still, the temptation was too much, the price and features pulled me in once again to an Epson – the R300.

Unpacking
As with all new products these days, there seems to be a tendency to stuff the box full of all sorts of bits and pieces, so when you first take a look inside it can look a bit daunting. However, a lot is just un-needed extras adding to the mountain of computer junk ending up in the landfill. You get the printer of course, snugly packed in polystyrene. You get a CD-ROM containing Printer Drivers and other software, six cartridges each individually wrapped, a special piece of plastic for CD-printing, power cable, 3 pieces of photo glossy paper (10x15cm), a quick set-up guide and a warranty document. The printer itself needs bits of tape removing before you even attempt to plug it in. I’d like to see Epson include more sample paper types, a couple of A4 sheets would be nice. No USB cable is supplied.

Looks
The Epson R300 is a familiar silver and black design. The top right has a LCD display. Below this panel is a group of indicators and buttons. The front has a USB 1.1 port enabling you to directly connect for example your Digital camera, or perhaps an external disk drive. None of our cameras support direct printing, although I tried and the printer told me it wouldn’t work. I have found a use for this port though, it works perfectly well to charge my MP3 player when all my other slots are used on the PC – I can even print photos stored on it. Above this is a door which when opened reveals the slots for direct memory card printing. The other USB 2.0 port is located on the back,and is best used to connect to your computer – note theres no parallel port. There is another removable panel above the display, which I assume is for future expansion (an optional 2.5” colour display etc).

Dimensions
It’s quite a monster, well actually about the size of a small to medium sized dog, to be more precise : 49.8 cm x 26.4 cm x 21.8 cm, or in inches 18.7”W x 19.6”D x 11.4”H. It’s weight is 6.4kg (141b).

Installation
Thankfully printer manufacturers these days seem to have made installation the easiest thing in the world, it really is a doddle. Connect the power cord, turn on, select your language on the display panel. Install the ink cartridges (each one is colour coded), and press the Maintenance button. This part takes about 90 seconds, after which you press OK to complete set-up. The printer can now be used stand-alone (without a PC). To set-up for PC use, simply connect the USB cable, insert the CD-ROM and install the software. It is recommended to turn off any anti-virus programs whilst installing, so I’d also advise to dis-connect from the internet at this point, just in case. Once the software is loaded, you are now ready to print. The whole installation takes less than 15 minutes – in fact it took me longer to work out where to put my new “dog”.

Basic Specifications
• Print quality is as much as 5760 x 1440dpi. The printer uses a 6-colour ink system.

• Print speed - Black Text in Economy Mode: 15 pages per minute (ppm) Color Text in Economy Mode: 15 ppm. These speeds are comparable with the average home laser printer.

• Variable-sized Droplet Technology with Ultra Micro Dot™ for 3pl droplets – needless to say this helps to ensure you can’t “see the dots” on the printed page.

• Image Matching™ II support – to ensure accurate colour re-production from digital cameras supporting the same technology.

• Optional Bluetooth® connectivity, enabling the printer to talk to mobiles, cameras and so on which support the same technology.

• Borderless printing – no longer necessary to trim your photos.

• Paper Sizes Supported : A4, 9 x 13cm, 10 x 15cm, 13 x 18cm, 20 x 30cm, 3.5 x 5”, 4 x 6’’, 5 x 8’’, 8 x 10’’, A5, A6, B5, Legal, Executive, Letter, Half Letter. CD & DVD direct printing. I’m also intrigued to find that the printer supports 216 mm x 1117.6 mm, which is essentially a Panoramic A2 format.

Memory Card Readers
As mentioned above, the printer allows the use of digital camera memory cards, the types that can be used are : CompactFlash I & II, MMC, IBM Microdrive, xD-Picture Card, Memory Stick, Magic Gate Memory stick, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo, Smartmedia & SD Memory Card. If you use either Mini SD Card or RS-MMC you’ll need an adapter. Essentially the inclusion of these slots allows images to be printed (as well as cropped, re-sized etc) directly from the printer – it’s not even necessary to use (or even own) a PC anymore. I’ve used both CFII and Smartmedia cards from both our cameras, and not had a problem yet, although I generally probably won’t use the direct print feature too often.

Print Quality
Epson always amaze me with their truly outstanding printing capability. The R300 didn’t disappoint either. Without fuss, I selected one of my favourite mushroom photos, taken on a 3Mpl digital camera. There’s a huge amount of green moss in this photo, and the resulting A4 print was vivid, bright, sharp, and the colours true to the original. It did take around 3 minutes, but for a borderless A4 HQ print, I think that’s perfectly acceptable. I studied the print in fine detail, I really can’t see any imperfections, nor could I see any “Wheel marks”, something that previous Epsons had always suffered from. Immediately the wow factor hit me, and I was eager to print more and more. I used the sample 10x15 sheets which came with it and these printed effortlessly, taking perhaps 90 seconds or so to complete. I’ve printed contact sheets, which are also stunning, and easy and quick to produce with the PhotoQuicker software. Printing web pages onto standard copier paper, is fine too, quick and well re-produced. One note to mention, make sure you select the correct paper type when printing, otherwise you may experience odd printing. Also make sure you use the correct side – might sound obvious but even with all my years of experience, I managed to put a photo sheet in upside down – the resultant print was extremely strange, and the ink never dried – even a week later!! The prints come out smudge free, and are dry to the touch, perfect to go straight into a frame, album or wallet.

I’ve also been impressed so far with the fact that the printing hasn’t degraded, nor have the nozzles become clogged up. I’ve been keeping the printer turned off when not in use, so that on turn-on the printer performs a self clean – this seems to work well, and I’d suggest that you make this common practise too. Of course should you experience problems, the driver software allows you to clean the heads or re-align them.

Printer Settings
There really are rather a lot of setting available, both on the printer itself and within the printer driver software. Without going into detail about each one, it’s enough to say, Epson have provided just about every conceivable option you could possibly want to make your printing more pleasurable. It can also make things quite daunting – the learning curve is quite steep to really understand and fully utilise all the functions, however well worth the while to maximise it’s capability. Basic options include changing paper type, print quality, borderless, reduction/enlargement, fit to page, double sided, poster printing, reverse order, folded booklet, watermarking etc. More adventurous users may wish to play around with gamma correction, tone, sharpness and saturation etc.

Fine tuning quality settings are also available. Your settings can of course be saved for future use. The status monitor displays a graphical representation of each of the ink cartridges, with warnings when they are almost empty. This feature is also duplicated on the LCD monitor itself, for when you are using the printer in standalone mode, described below. These are just some of the settings available with the printer driver itself, however the additional software included allows even more control over your printing.

Standalone printing
Should for any reason you don’t have a PC, you can use the printer in Standalone mode. The LCD display comes in handy here, as does the memory card slots or the front USB socket. First insert a memory card, or connect a compatible device to the USB port. A green light will come on indicating the card can be read (if using the card slots). Press the OK button over the “Select photo” option, and you’ll be able to select an individual photo or photos from the card, a range, or an index print. A number is the only indication of an individual photo – No.1, No.2 etc..so you’ll need to know which photo is which. You can of course opt to have the software display the images on the computer when inserting the card – but this kind of defeats having a standalone function. The optional colour screen would help here, but I have no details of it at this time.

Anyway, next select the number of copies, the paper type, paper size and layout type. If this wasn’t enough the “More Options” menu contains options to apply effects to the chosen photo, or range of photos. Black & White or Sepia filters can be applied, you can select from a range of zoom options, photo enhancements, contrast, brightness, saturation and sharpness control. The dates can be imprinted, as well as the time and the camera settings such as exposure and aperture. Three quality settings can also be selected. After all that (although you don’t need to go into each option), you can select Print. The display will change to tell you it’s printing, and off it goes – simple as that – and no PC needed. I find this handy for doing quick contact sheets straight from the camera card, complete with date and time details. Frequently used settings can be saved to the printer and recalled easily using the control panel. If all this sounds to complex, a 114 page PDF document is supplied describing everything in minute detail, including a lengthy section on troubleshooting.

Included software
PhotoQuicker 3.5.
This is a reasonably comprehensive photo editing and printing package, which works well. Although I’d not recommend it as a serious photo editor (Photoshop is better for that), it does a good job of providing plenty of flexible ways of printing your images. It’s easy to use too, with not much to learn. It operates in “wizard style” so you can’t really get lost, and it’s just a few steps until you images are coming out of the printer. Images can be adjusted using brightness control, and red-eye reduction etc, as well as a range of pre-set image enhancements. It’s easy to select for instance 4 images per A4 page, or a 20 image contact sheet on a 10x15cm without having to fiddle about with anything. All in all, a useful inclusion.

Epson PrintCD
As this printer has the ability to directly print onto CD’s (or DVD’s), it’s only natural for Epson to include some special software to accommodate this. You’ll of course need to purchase “Printable CDR’s”, don’t attempt to print onto normal CDR’s. Loading the program displays a window containing a representation of a blank printable CD. It’s your job to create an attractive design which will fit snugly onto it. Using a combination of photos, graphics and text, together with various effects. Settings can be adjusted should you need to fine-tune anything. Not a huge amount to say about this, other than it does exactly what it needs to do.

Printing CD’s itself is easy too. First flip up the printer cover, flip down another bit, insert the CD on the supplied plastic adapter. The printer automatically switches to CD printing mode. Using the PrintCD program, create or load your CD design, press print – and that’s about it. It’s worth noting that the printer needs a bit more space behind than the average printer, this is because the CD tray actually comes out of the back a few inches while printing. The quality is – well you’d not know it’s been done on a home printer, put it that way. The ink stays fast, although I’d not recommend cleaning it to hard or letting it get wet. All in all this is a great feature for a printer of this price, and saves the hassle of using seperate CD-labels. It should be mentioned too that the printer is capable of printing onto CD’s in standalone mode too!

Epson PhotoStarter
This program sits on the icon bar and automatically launches PhotoQuicker and loads photo data when a memory card is inserted into one of the card slots. The application will also launch PhotoQuicker if you connect your camera or insert a memory card into another card reader connected to your PC.

Epson ScanToWeb
Unfortunately I’ve been unable to get this to work so far. What it should do is allow you to upload your photos to the internet for all to display. I’m not too concerned with this, and it’s not really anything to do with the printer.

Epson also provide a couple of other specialist / utility pieces of software, but it’s not necessary to describe these here.

Consumables
As mentioned earlier, this is a 6 cartridge printer, requiring 1 each of black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, & Light Magenta. The printer comes ready to go with a complete set, but once these run out, you’ll need to find a good reliable and cost effective source. Genuine Epson replacements are available for around £12 each, but you could also use Compatible cartridges which can be bought widely across the net. I always recommend www.choicestationery.com, who are currently offering a complete set of six for less than £30, or £5.95 per cartridge (regardless of colour). Another great priced company are www.inkandstuff.co.uk although I cannot comment on quality or service from them (they are UK only). It should be noted that using compatible cartridges will invalidate your warranty. The cartridges are the same for the R200, RX500 & RX600. For reference, the part numbers are as follows : T0481 (Black), T0482 (Cyan), T0483 (Magenta), T0484 (Yellow), T0485 (Light Cyan), T0486 (Light Magenta). How long each cartridge lasts really depends on usage, Epson quote around 430 A4 pages per colour but this is at 360dpi and a 5% coverage – totally irrelevant for photo printing. It should be noted that if any of the cartridges becomes empty, you will not be able to print, so it’s advisable to keep a stock of spares.

With regards to paper, you can use a huge range of different products (although Epson obviously recommend using the Epson range).

Choose from different types of;
• Plain paper (64 to 90gr/m2, and up to about 125 sheets at a time),
• Envelopes (up to 15 at a time, 45 to 75gr/m2 in weight eg, C6, No 10, DL),
• Greeting cards,
• Transparencies (for OHP, 1 at a time),
• Photo paper (up to 100),
• Matte paper & heavy weight matte paper,
• Glossy or semi-glossy photo paper (up to 20 sheets of 255gr/m2),
• Stickers,
• T-Shirt transfers etc

As mentioned before you can also print directly onto suitable printable CD or DVD’s, both 8cm and 12cm sizes.

I’ve used Konica and Kodak paper in addition to Epson products, and not noticed any significant problems or quality issues so far.

Compatibility
The printer will function on a PC running Microsoft Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000 or XP. Specifications of a PC should be a Pentium 500MHz or higher with at least 128MB RAM and 150MB or more free Hard Disk Space.

On a Mac you’ll need Apple MacOS 8.6 – 9.2, OS X 10.1+ and 300Mb Hard Disk space.

USB 1.1 or 2.0 are both supported, although if you don’t currently own a USB cable, you’ll have to purchase one separately (price from about £5).

Price, Availability & Alternatives
The R300 was released at the latter part of last year (2003), and seems to be hugely popular – judging from the number of retailers with out of stock notices. It’s price is a staggeringly reasonable “around £100”, complete with 1 year warranty. Currently the cheapest on-line stores are Pixmania and MicroWarehouse. You should also be able to get your hands on this at any good high street computer store. An optional extension to a 3 year warranty is often available. I purchased mine on-line through Pixmania, and delivery was 4 days, coming from France. The only problem I had was that the user guide was in French, but English versions are available to download anyway.

For a little less, you could opt for the R200, which is the same but does not have the direct memory card printing feature or blue-tooth compatibility. For considerably more (£220+), the impressive R800 offers 8 colour printing, 1.5pl droplet size, creating prints which really do rival those of the professional labs.

For more information including full product specifications and brochures about Epson products, go to www.epson.com or www.epson.co.uk

Summing up, I’d not hesitate on recommending this printer wholeheartedly. 

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