| Manufacturer: Epson |
| Suggested Retail Price: $99 |
System Requirements:
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Specifications:
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The Epson R200 photo printer is for the casual digital photographer who wants excellent prints of family, friends, and scenery. This printer features has many great features to go along with the superb print quality and low price tag.NOTE: Shortly before this review came out, Epson introduced the Photo R220. Looking at the specs for both printers, the ONLY advantage to the R220 is that is can print to 8 cm CDs as well as the 12 cm CDs (the normal size). Thus, this review is just as good for the R220 as it is for the R200.
Set up:
Set up is simple, at least with OS X. Printer drivers were pre-installed, but they are also included on the disc or on the web site if you need them. Connecting the printer via a USB port and adding it to Print Setup is all it takes to get the printer started.
Usage:
The most important thing when purchasing a photo printer is the print quality, so it makes sense to start with that. After printing dozens of 4x6 photos, some 5x7s, a couple 8x10s, and some iron on shirt transfers, I can vouch that the printouts from this printer are wonderful. Comparing the photos printed from this printer to those printed from a commercial outlet, I am hard pressed to notice any difference.
After the print quality, the feature set of a particular printer is what sets it out from the pack. This printer has a nice array of features for a sub $100 printer. The best one being borderless prints. If you buy the right paper, you can print out 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10 photos, as well as letter sized and panoramic pictures, all the way to the very edge of the paper. This might not seem like much, but every printer I owned before this required me to cut the borders off if I wanted a professional looking print. Unfortunately, I rarely cut the edges straight, and the photos ended up looking like hack jobs. The one issue I had with the borderless option was getting it to work. Eventually, I found out that I needed to add a new printer (using Printer Setup Utility) that uses Sheet Feeder - Borderless as the page setup. More detailed instructions at the end of the review.
Another important feature (to me at least), is having a quiet printer. The three Epson printers I have owned in the past were all so loud, I would often leave the room while they were printing. Luckily, the Epson engineers finally fixed this problem. The R200 is extremely quiet. It's so quiet, that I sometimes don't know when the photo is done printing, unless I look at the printer.
Maybe I just like weird stuff, but something else that carries a lot of weight when comparing photo printers is the ink quality. By ink quality, I mean the following three aspects: ink cartridge life, drying time, and printout life. In my tests, this printer can handle about 75 high quality 4x6 photos before the ink starts to run out. This seems a little low to me, as I would expect that number to be around 100-125. Also, the drying time is a little longer than expected. If you don't allow the photos to dry at least 12 hours (sometimes up to 24, depending on humidity levels), you may end up with permanent finger print spots caused by the oils in your hand reacting with the ink. Furthermore, ink that hasn't finished drying can actually be scratched off the paper, completely ruining the print. The ink needs to adequately dry before handling to prevent these mishaps. However, the printout life of photos from this printer seem to be pretty good. I have yet to see any fading in photos that are more than a year old (from a different family member's R200). While I can't comment on what they will look like five years from now, the Dye based inks used in the R200 should resist fading fairly well.
One specification some people seem to require before making a printer purchase is print speed. While I agree this is important with laser printers, it's much less of an issue with photo printers. The photos have to dry for many hours anyhow, what's the difference if it takes 10 seconds longer to print them? Nevertheless, I timed how long it took to print a 4x6 borderless photo, at the highest quality settings. My stopwatch told me this took about 2.5 minutes from when the photo paper entered the printing mechanism, to when it was done. This is much slower than the 37 seconds Epson claims, but you can never really rely on the manufacturer's claims.
One feature that many photo printers are sporting these days are built in media slots so you can print your photos without the aide of a computer. Some even have little LCD screens so you can preview your prints. However, I think that whole idea is almost completely useless. When I go to print a photo, I want to make sure it's perfect. Being able to see it and edit it on the computer is much more important to me than direct media printing. That said, this printer does have a USB port on the front (as well as the one on the back), so you can easily hook up your laptop without having to reach around the printer. Whoever came up with that idea was a genius! I keep the printer hooked up to the G5 at all times, but sometimes need to print from my iBook. As long as I have a separate USB cable lying around, hooking up the laptop is a breeze. Other printer manufacturers should take Epson's lead on this, and integrate front USB ports on all of their printers.
Another feature which Epson seems to be leading the pack on is CD/DVD printing. Using an included adapter, you can print straight to special CDs and DVDs. No more using a messy labeling system that often produces unbalanced discs. I have not tried this feature yet, but Epson does include software for creating the prints. Surprisingly, this software is OS X compatible, so theoretically, it should be fairly easy to make professional looking CDs and DVDs.
Problems:
The one major problem I ran into was a conflict with a HP LaserJet 1012. If the HP printer's driver was activated in System Preferences, and I tried to print a borderless 4x6 image in iPhoto, iPhoto would promptly freeze. Thus, to print borderless pictures with the Epson R200 in iPhoto, I must first go into System Preferences:Print and Fax, and un-check the box next to the LaserJet (This is the Mac OS X 10.4 method to disable the printer).
Conclusion:
For only about $100, this is a wonderful photo printer. It doesn't have as many features as its bigger brothers, but many users can get by without them. The most important thing is the print quality, which this printer surely is not lacking in. I certainly this recommended printer.
Getting borderless prints in OS X:
- Make sure the driver is installed.
- Open up Printer Setup Utility (In the /Applications/Utilities folder).
- Click the Add button, and select the R200 in the list of printers.
- Click the More Printers button.
- Click on the R200 again.
- Change the Page Setup method to Sheet Feeder - Borderless.
- Click Add.
- Click Add again.
- Whenever you go to print borderless prints, you will have to make sure to select this version of the printer from the Page Setup window, as well as your paper size.
| Pros | Cons |
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9/10 stars |
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