Respectable Photo Printing at a Budget-Friendly cost.

We purchased this printer at the recommendation of a co-worker at a time that we needed to upgrade. I was not seeking photo-printing when we began, but it paid off well in our first month of use.

Shortly after we brought the printer home, my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary came up. Everyone in the family came out with photos dating as far back as the 1930's wanting to use them for decorations.

As the resident PhotoShop guru, the photo restoration fell to me. When I finished retouching the first photo, a color portrait from the 1950's, I decided to put the new printer through the paces.

I put a sheet of the sample photo paper into the printer and chose the correct paper from the print dialog. As the printed portion began to appear in the output area, we were astonished. The photo I was printing looked brighter, glossier, and clearer than the original. I explained that the result was partially due to the retouching, but the results were indisputable, and everyone who saw the print wanted a copy.

The Epson Stylus Photo R200 is a good entry-level photo-capable printer. Make no mistake, a professional photo finisher can produce better prints, but not at a better price.

Features

The R200 features a host of features commonly found in more expensive printers:

- Separate 6-color ink cartridges (Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, Yellow and Black) that prevent the need to replace entire color sets due to low ink on one particular color.
- CD/DVD print tray that allows direct-to-disc printing on specially designed printable CD/DVD discs
- BorderFree (TM) printing that allows photos to be printed edge-to-edge, thus allowing larger actual images on the paper.

Other features include:

- 5760 x 1440 optimized dpi maximum resolution
- 15 ppm maximum B&W/Color print speed (slower for higher resolution printing)
- USB 1.1 (Type B) interfaces on rear and front of the printer

Specifications
This is a 6 color (CcMmKY) inkjet printer, each color having 90 nozzles allowing a minimum ink droplet size of 3 picoliters. The Printer software monitors the amount of ink remaining and notifies the user when a cartridge has less than 10% capacity remaining.

The widest printable paper size is 8-1/2", with a maximum printable width of 8-1/3". Borderless printing is allowed on 8" papers or narrower.

The printer has configuration settings to allow the user to select the type of paper being used (including regular printer/copy paper, several varieties of photo finishes, iron-on transfers, stickers, labels and envelopes).

Physical Attributes

This is not a subcompact printer, but it fits easily on a 12" wide shelf with only the output tray sticking out past the edge.

Actual in-use dimensions are 18-1/2" long x 19" wide x 11-9/10" high.

Unlike several of Epson's major competitors, this printer is sleek in appearance and attractive in color. The Silver and charcoal gray shell blends in nicely with our office decor. The shiny darker color does tend to show fingerprints, so if you are conscious of such things, you'll want to keep a dustcloth handy to buff it off.

Hardware/OS Compatibility

The printer works with both Mac and Windows systems. Mac users need to be running version 8.6 - 9.2 or OS X 10-1-10.2. Windows support is present for Windows 98SE, Me, 2000, and XP.

Consumables
Like all inkjet printers, the true cost of use lies with the ink itself. Epson quotes a 630 page yield for black text, 450 pages for black graphics and 430 pages for color (graphics at 5% coverage per sheet).

As of this writing, Epson branded inks sell in the $15-17 range for black and the $11-13 range for individual colors.

You may choose to use 3rd party ink cartridges available readily over the Internet at less than $30 per set.

I highly recommend purchasing your first set of replacement inks when you start using the printer. This printer will not print when any single color cartridge is empty, even if you are only printing black text, so wise users will keep a spare of each color on hand.

Our personal experience has been that we run out of the light cyan and light magenta colors faster than the other colors.

Black, of course, is the most quickly used, and many 3rd party sellers are selling sets with all five colors plus 2 black cartridges in recognition of that fact.

The Final Word

This is a fine little printer. It's great for the way we use it, but don't rely on this or any other inkjet printer to produce heirloom photographs. Studies have indicated that inkjet photos on photo-quality papers can theoretically last for 99 years. The reality is that the elements are more harsh on these prints than on pro-prints.

I recommend saving your photos on CD for reprinting later, and if you have a photo you really cherish, take it to a professional photo-finisher for a real print.

For all your other printing needs, however, the Epson R200 is a capable printer that won't empty your wallet.