STYLUS PHOTO R340 6COL INKJETPR

Pros: print quality, CD labeling, Direct USB

Cons: Ink costs, no USB cable

Summary: EPSON Stylus Photo R340:

If you are trigger happy with your digital camera like I am, you end up with thousands of pictures from every occasion, outing and vacation. The Canon S80 < http://www.epinions.com/content_232843480708 ) is a great camera, with its 8 MP rating you get some great pictures with amazing detail. The 8.5 x 11 prints are just as amazing as the smaller ones. I used the Dell 942 AIO printer (http://www.epinions.com/content_223336238724 ) for the prints. Since the print quality has deteriorated over the 2 years that I have been using it, it was time to get a new photo printer to print great pictures. Another factor for getting an EPSON printer was the cost of dell ink cartridges was very high. Here is the review on Epson Stylus R340….

Package Contents:

Inspite of being only a printer (not a multi-function) the Epson Stylus R340 box is pretty heavy. I comes with loads of stuff and a lot of ink cartridges…

1. Epson Stylus Photo R340 printer
2. 1 x Cyan Ink cartridge (T048220)
3. 1 x Light Cyan Ink cartridge (T048520)
4. 1 x Magenta Ink cartridge (T048320)
5. 1 x Light Magenta Ink cartridge (T048620)
6. 1 x Yellow Ink cartridge (T048420)
7. 1 x Black Ink cartridge (T048120)
8. CD Print tray and Software
9. Printer Documentation – User manual & quick start guide
10. Driver & Software CD ( Mac & Windows)

With all these components included no doubt it is heavy. The User manual is extremely comprehensive with 80 pages (all English) and covers all aspects of the printer in detail. The included quick start guide explains the connections and ink cartridge install in a very simplified and diagrammatic manner. Strangely, the USB cable is not included in the package.

Physical Attributes:

The Printer looks great with its 2 tone black and silver finish. The LCD is placed in the middle of the front panel and is fixed, offering no options of changing the angle of the LCD panel. But the placement of the LCD at a 30 degree angle is perfect and visible from most viewing angles. Though the LCD screen is small at 2.4 inches, it is massive good, offering crystal clear image display and is great for printing from PictBridge enabled cameras and the direct USB printing feature without the computer. Inspite of being a non Multi-function printer, there are a lot of buttons on the front fascia. The buttons are very useful to edit the images from the printer without the PC. This is really a semi-professional printer offering loads of features like image cropping, zooming, selecting print area, contrast and gamma correction etc. The paper tray is definitely small with a capacity of only 120 pages. It would be nice to have 2 trays, one each for photo paper and plain paper. With only one available tray every time you print you need to make sure you have the right paper in the tray – photo paper or the plain paper.

The right end corner of the printer is the memory card reader covered with a black door. The door gives the printer a streamlined and clean finish. The supported cards are – CF, Microdrive, Memory Stick, SD, MMC, Smart Media and xD. It supports all the major types of cards available in the market. There is also a small LED to show the status of the card read/write. Below the card reader there is a USB port. This USB port serves 2 purposes – PictBridge and Direct USB printing. A pictBridge camera can be connected to the port and the pictures on the camera can be viewed and printed without a computer. The other purpose is the Direct USB printing, it’s a cool feature, allows connecting a USB storage device (ext. HDD, USB flash/thumb drive, Zip drives and CDROM drives) and print directly from it. Once the USB storage device is connected, it automatically searches for image files and also gives the option of browsing the folders through the LCD display.

At the front-bottom is the tray to hold printed paper. There is also a neat contraption to hold a small tray to load CD/DVD media for printing labels. While the CD/DVD label printing is a bit touchy at times it still produces excellent printing on the media. On the rear of the printer there are 2 ports, power and USB. The USB port, for connecting the printer to the computer. The power converter adapter (AC to DC converter) is external and have been better to have it built into the printer, considering the printer is quite big and could accommodate it.

Setup and Connections:

Setup is very simple and straightforward. Installing the Ink Cartridges and connecting the power cable and the USB cable on the rear constitutes setting up the printer. The software and driver install is simple but takes a fairly long time to install all the components. The install requires a reboot. Once installed it is recommended to align the print head, but when the printer software is opened for the first time it does not prompt to align them, instead you need to go through the printer’s menu to do it. Though its no biggie but my older Dell 942 AIO software prompted me to align them every time I installed a new cartridge. With ink costs being on the expensive side it is a good idea to align them before starting the prints to avoid surprises. The included software monitors the ink levels in all the cartridges. The included CD printing software leaves a lot to be desired. Compared to the Light scribe software it seems very poorly designed and offers very few options and flexibility. The printer takes 40 seconds to power up, that’s a long time, considering the Dell 942 booted up in under 8 seconds.

Ink Cartridges:

The printer comes with 6 cartridges – Black, cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta and yellow. Each cartridge is thin yet big and hold quite a good quantity of ink. Technically, More the Merrier, so with the included 6 different cartridges it better do a good job. My older Dell 942 had just 2 cartridges and did a great job printing color photos. With 6 cartridges the Epson does even better than the dell. The pictures are more life-like and the colors are more vivid. I was pretty impressed with the quality of the prints and comparing the Epson prints with the Dell prints shows a lot of difference in quality and number of colors. The ink is rated to last for 200 years, meaning it will not fade or disintegrate for 200 years. The Ink is on the expensive side, priced at $17 for black and $13 each for color cartridges. But on the upside there are a lot of companies offering these Ink cartridges at ridiculous prices, though they are non-epson they too do a great job. I found a set of 48 cartridges (8 of each) made by Ritech for just $39 on Abcink.com. That’s a great price considering the original Epson cartridges would cost $656. There is no doubt that the prints were not as rich with non-epson cartridges, but the savings is pretty substantial. I use the non-epson ink cartridges to print CD labels on Inkjet printable CD media & plain paper documents and replace them with original cartridges to print photos. Works out pretty inexpensive when printing non-photo stuff. The printer is not an ink sipper either, it does consumes substantial amount of ink while printing. But being a 6 cartridge system, you can replace specifically the ink cartridge that is empty… better than having to replace the complete photo cartridge just because one of the colored ink in the photo cartridge is depleted like in the Dell.

Photo Paper:

Epson recommends Epson photo paper but it does a great job on any reputable brand paper. Can be used with Photo paper, Premium Photo paper and Ultra-Premium photo paper in both Gloss and matte finish. The Matte finish gives the picture a more non-shiny look clear at all angles while the glossy finish gives the picture a more shiny and vivid color look. While the Matte finish resists finger prints and is generally more forgiving of scratches, the photo lacks the bright and vivid look, while the glossy finish tends to catch finger prints and shows scratches very easily it produces the most vivid and bright pictures. Depending on these factors the choice of photo paper can be made.

Quality of prints:

The most important aspect of the printer. The R340 uses 6 ink cartridges to print a photo and some might argue 6 cartridges is an over kill, but wait till you see Epson’s new line of printers labeled High Definition Photo printers, they have 8 cartridges, including the 6 from the R340 plus 2 more one with the Hi-def ink and the other is an layer to enhance the color and to make the prints last longer. But for now, the 6 cartridges are adequate and compared to the my older Dell’s 2 cartridge system it seems plenty. As for the prints the quality is outstanding. The colors are more vivid and the bright. The reproduction of the colors is very accurate. The transformation from one color to another is very sharp and distinct – there is no bleeding of color. All those 6 cartridges do a good a good job after all. The photo quality is outstanding for a semi-professional printer. Compared to the HP 8250 the prints are slower but definitely seemed better. There is a big difference in the speed of printing between the HP & the Epson – For a 8.5x11 inch prints the HP takes 36 seconds while the Epson takes 45 seconds. But the picture quality of the Epson is better. The Epson makes up the slower printing time by producing very good photo prints. While the photo prints are outstanding the black & white document prints are not so spectacular, actually they are below average. Under very close inspection (magnifying glass) the text did not seem as crisp. There was slight bleeding at the borders of the text. Having said that, this is not visible to the naked eye, but this bleeding effect translates into a softer text effect to the naked eye. The text is not crisp but instead seems a bit softer at the edges of the text. This is printer does a great job as a photo printer and a better than poor job with text. But then, this is a Photo Printer and it is supposed to print great photos and hence does its job better than others… have to commend that.

Some points to consider:

1. CD Label printing is a bit tricky but only the first time. After that every other print in the same batch seems perfect without any issues. The issue being, the printer is not able to align the tray very well to print on the CD. This does not mess up the CD label, instead you are prompted to reinsert the tray. If the first time does not align the tray, the second time always works, never had to try it more than twice.
2. This is not the best printer for printing text. If you need to print text you are better off getting another inexpensive printer to do the job. Also the cost of ink is so high, does not make sense using the R380 ink for printing test documents
3. Printer Ink cartridges are expensive an might make sense to use non-epson ink for printing less important photos, labels and documents and the original Epson ink for the best quality photo prints.
4. USB cable is not included, so make sure to buy a USB cable along with the printer. Epson sells them for $32… save your money, even local stores sell them cheaper than that.
5. Before getting this printer, look for the newer replacement model called the Epson Stylus Photo R380, though substantially higher priced, it offers the 8-cartridge ink system with H-Def ink.

Pros:
1. Prints outstanding Photo prints
2. Cost of the printer is not very expensive
3. 6 cartridge ink system means you replace the exact color that is depleted.
4. Card reader is very useful
5. USB direct printing is perfect for quick prints without the PC
6. LCD though small it is brilliant – contrast ratio is very good
7. Modern looking two-tone finish.
8. CD Label printing is a cool feature to have.

Cons:
1. Replacement Ink cartridges are expensive
2. No high capacity ink cartridge option, only standard capacity
3. CD label printing is a wee bit tricky.
4. Boot up time is pretty slow.
5. Newer model Epson Stylus Photo R380 is already out but at a substantially higher price
6. Single paper tray

Recommended:
Yes