12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
Great Option for the Pro
Date of Review: Apr 18, 2008
The Bottom Line: This is a great all around printer with lots of features and abilities for the pro... not for the home.
The Epson Stylus Photo R800 printer is a great all-around for the imaging professional... a money-waster for casual at-home user.
The Epson is engineered for the professional or advanced user in every way. Just glancing through its specs will tell you that. It combines speed (something not usually seen in Epsons), flexibility in print media, photo-quality inks, and advanced configuration options that allow it to conform to many higher-end uses.
Features of the printer include (for the techies):
- Up to 5,760 x 1,440 optimized dpi resolution
- Up to 17 ppm black text (color prints in under a minute for a 4x6)
- Handles Letter, legal, A4, statement, executive, user definable (4" to 44" in length), 4" x 6", 4" roll, 5" x 7", 8" x 10", 8.3" roll, panoramic (8.3" x 23.4")
- USB 2.0 Hi-Speed and IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
- Prints directly onto inkjet-printable CDs and DVDs
- 8 color printing (red, blue, black, photo black, cyan, magenta, yellow, and a gloss optimizer)
Personally I find the 8 color printing to be a great benefit, providing a greater range of truer colors for graphic and photo printing. While the photo black and gloss are not used in standard printing mode, the automatically kick in for photo or high quality prints so there's no switching out of ink cartridges for better results. The two black cartridges optimize printing for gloss or matte papers, making glossy photos denser. Unlike many Epsons, I have experienced few problems with banding or roller marks on prints and with the ultra-fine drops this model creates, gradients appear dramatically smoother than older models. The downfall of having so many cartridges is that they drain very quickly, even in non-photo mode, and cost about $15 each to replace so replacing your whole bundle will set you back on a regular basis. This is by far the biggest reason that this printer should not be used for standard home printing as printing a simple text document is dramatically more costly.
Another favorite feature is the ability of this printer to easily shift between sheet feeding of various sizes, textures, and weights of paper, to roll feeding with its included roll attachment, to the printing of CDs with a special insert tray. The CD printer has come in most useful as it is something that most printers just cannot offer. The resulting CDs are time consuming as they print one-by-one, but look professional and are simple enough to load and use.
I have heard many-a-complaint regarding the bulkiness of the printer itself, but consider this no problems and hardly a trade-off for all the features you'll find in this model.
