Review of EPSON Stylus Photo R1900 Printer
Saturday, July 5, 2008 @ 12:12
The R1900 is a photo printer more geared to the serious professional photographer. It features eight, not the normal four, ink tanks, to create an infinite variety of color combinations. Because of this, Epson can offer significant enhancements in color reproduction, especially for natural skin tones.
When you first unpack this unit, you can readily see that the quality of its manufacture is a marked improvement over past models. Those appeared to be of flimsy construction, while this unit looks good and sturdy, and has the look and feel of a professional quality printer that will be able to withstand more consistent, and heavy use.
When you first buy the unit, Epson kindly includes nine ink cartridges, including 2 "gloss optimizer" inks. Unfortunately, though, these included ink cartridges are rather small, and will not last very long before they will need to be replaced. For the price of this unit, I can't help but wonder why Epson wouldn't have included an initial set of ink cartridges in full-size containers, but that is probably a question that I will never get answered.
Set-up of the unit is not very difficult at all. The ink cartridges get loaded into the printer before the drivers are installed. Then the printer is connected to a power outlet. Don't forget to shake out the ink cartridges before installing them or you may clog the nozzles in the print heads.
Software doesn't take long to install, and it is very intuitive. The entire process took less than 8 minutes using the "easy install" option (allowing the software to determine the folders for install files).
Prints were vivid and didn't take an inordinate amount of time. As noted previously, this is a serious printer for the serious photographer and as such it will be priced a bit higher than the more simple models. It will also be more expensive to maintain since it uses more ink cartridges than standard models. However, for that extra outlay in cash (both for the unit itself and for a continuing supply of ink), you will get far more vivid prints since you will have an infinite array of color combinations to work with.
Prices on this unit vary depending upon retailer, but Amazon would probably be the place to go in order to get the best price.
