Epson Stylus Photo R220 Inkjet Printer
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"Good printer for the price." on by htdmail
Pros: Easy set up, great photo prints, inexpensive.
Cons: Bare bones printer. No cable included.
Summary: I set it up in about ten minutes (very intuitive set up). Printed a 4x6 photo to test its quality and I was very impressed with the results. Six ink cartridges means better colors and economical replacement of empty cartridges. Highly recommend for occasional home use. Paid $79 at Target on sale.
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"Faulty prints, expensive to operate..." on by abarabas
Pros: Cheap price, prints on CDs
Cons: Low build quality, software is archaic, color accuracy is unacceptable
Summary: I bought this printer for the sole purpose of printing on CDs -- works great for that, but smudges very easily and has fairly grainy results when printed on a Memorex or Fuji printable CD. The software it came with to print CDs looks like it was designed for Windows 95 -- and has the user-friendliness of a DOS or unix terminal interface.
If you're into photos, this printer will print them, but I calculated the cost per page in the 40-50-cents range for a 4x6 -- one of the highest... this was with constant printing -- much more if you don't print everything all at once, because of the excessive waste of ink that takes place in these old piezo-electric printheads w/ individual cartridges. It took me a while to figure out how to make them borderless, and after about 10-15 prints, a couple of them started coming out skewed (I think it was because the paper was slightly bent).
Color accuracy is horrible -- if you're blind you might think the pictures come out nice because they are extra bright. When compared to an image on a color-balanced LCD and other 6-ink photo printers, they are extremely washed out and pale (using Epson paper on best quality). Detail is lost in skin tones and subtle pinks/skin-peach/brown colors are very off. Blues/greens seem to be much more accurate.
If you desperately need an individual ink system on an inexpensive printer for cd printing, this is the one for you -- but keep in mind that after you factor ink waste, it will not be cheaper to operate than the tricolor cartridge printers.
Compared to the R340, this is a much better value -- it's the exact same printer minus the screen and buttons for $80 less. However, I'm quite disappointed that Epson uses a very inefficient, old system of printing. If you're looking for inexpensive superior quality photo prints, look into the canons and HPs in this price range... Epson might have been king a few years ago, but the others have caught up and surpassed on quality, longevity of the prints, reliability, and cost of printing. -
"Good printer, great customer support" on by ktny111
Pros: Price, customer support, ease of use
Cons: Isn't meant for mass printing on CDs
Summary: Called tech support, expected the worst, but wasn't on hold for more than 1 minute, and the very friendly rep answered my 2 questions quickly and helpfully. Truly a breath of fresh air in today's market of awful customer service.
This printer does print on printable CDs, which is great, but it's best just for doing this ocassionally. Once you start to do more than say, 10 in a day, you get problems like ink dripping, etc. So, watch out! -
"Very good photo printer" on by HBHolmes4
Pros: Inexpensive, easy to use, good results
Cons: No cons yet, I guess it all depends on what you want a printer to do.
Summary: This printer works great for printing out good quality photos. I use it in conjunction with MS Office Picture Manager and Word to crop, size and print exactly want out of each frame. The pakage lets me adjust brightness, contrast, color and density if I need it, but for the most part the auto photo enhancement works just fine. I'm not into printing directly from the camera or putting images on CD's so I really don't know or care about, or use, those features.
Overall, this is a fun machine to play with and the prints are better than what you get from Wal-Mart simply because you can make frame by frame needed adustments. I've found that Epson papers work well with this Epson machine; other brands don't -
"Good Price good quality" on by investtor
Pros: the price of the printer
Cons: seem to go through ink fast
Summary: The good
i got it at best buy for $99.99 with $50.00 mail-in rebate. the prints look very good. and its fash enought. got rebate fast within 1 month. did it online with best buy. it dose the CD/DVD's too but i dont use that much its dose the CD "ok" it can be some work though.
the bad
have had it one month and need to buy ink. am out of black and the others 5 are very low. i have printed about 60 to 70 4x8 and some essay for school thats its.
6 cartridges X $12.99 a piece = a lot of money.
over all its the best photo printer i got for $49.99
