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One thing that hasn't changed is the expense incorporated with buying ink. Each of the six ink cartridges will set you back about $20. Since Epson doesn't list the volume of ink on the cartridges, or anywhere in the product literature, it's hard to generate a price per milliliter comparison with other printers. However, cartridges for the R2400, which uses Epson's fancier UltraChromeK3 ink set, cost about $5 less than those for the 1400, and the R2400 is considered somewhat costly to operate as it is. So, expect to lay out some cash if you print a lot. Of course, if you were looking for cheap prints, you'd just order your 4x6s from some online processor anyway.
Some Apple users may be disappointed to see that the 1400 doesn't include a FireWire connection. Of course, since it includes a high-speed USB 2.0 jack, there should be no real loss of speed as long as you have a compatible port on your computer.We were impressed with the prints we got from the Epson Stylus Photo 1400. Colors were generally accurate, and the printer did a fine job of preserving detail in both very bright and very dark areas of our images. Of course, the brightness of the whites and the depth of black will vary based on the paper you choose.
Epson seems to be paying quite a bit of attention lately to how it lays its ink down on paper. We recently saw evidence of this in the super smooth prints we got from the Stylus Pro 3800. The Stylus Photo 1400 can't quite keep up with its cousin, but it did yield impressively smooth transitions through all but the most difficult color transitions offered up by the out-of-focus areas of some of our test photos. Also, since these Claria inks don't offer the same level of metameric regularity as Epson's UltraChromeK3 inks, we weren't surprised to see a mild amount of color shift when viewing the photos under different light sources. However, the shifts were very minor, and if you plan to display your images in a space that's illuminated by a single light source, this shouldn't pose a problem.
Our biggest issue with the Stylus Photo 1400 its its black-and-white performance. Since it doesn't include the light-black and light-light-black cartridges that the R2400 and some other Epson printers do, the 1400 creates some shades of grey by creating composites of the five other colors. As a result, it can be difficult to achieve a true neutral black-and-white print. We typically saw a slight cyan cast when we printed black-and-white images we knew were neutral to begin with.
Since it's not meant to be an office printer, it should come as no surprise that it doesn't hold a candle to the print speeds you'd get from a laser printer and can't match the crispness of fonts that you'd get from such a document printer. In its photo-printing speed, it ranks squarely average. We were able to print a bordered 8x10 inch photo on letter-size (8.5x11) paper in about 1 minute, 55 seconds.As we've come to expect, Epson's service and support is top-notch. The Stylus Photo 1400 comes with the usual one-year warranty, and Epson supplies online access to drivers, FAQs, and documentation, as well as an interactive troubleshooter. The driver's help system is as useful as most help menus, meaning not very. But, the HTML manual does a great job of stepping you through anything you might want to do with the printer. Epson also offers telephone support through a toll-free number Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. through 6 p.m. PT.
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