Epson Stylus Photo 830

Epson's Stylus Photo 830's is an attractively priced inkjet printer that delivers great quality photo prints without breaking the bank. The S$249 Photo Stylus 830 churns these images and sharp texts consistently, especially when used with high-quality paper but its middling print speeds will suit leisure home owners more than demanding office users. At this price, the extras are also limited and the 830 lacks features like integrated card readers and automatic paper cutters found on newer printers.

No Bells And Whistles
Sporting a tough plastic housing with a transparent cover, the Stylus Photo 830 tips the scales at 3kg and comes with both parallel and USB 2.0 for direct connection to a computer. Three LED indicators are located on the front chassis: The in-/ circuit breaker, a maintenance/error message button and an indicator requesting for cartridge exchange. These LED will light at various intervals to inform users of the printer's status. For example, the cartridge request indicator blinks in the event of low ink supply, prompting users for a cartridge switch or refill.

The unit comes with documented user manual that also includes a simple quick-start user guide that provides step-by-step instructions for new users to get their printer up-and-running within minutes. Other necessities include a power chord, and parallel and USB cables.

A bundled software package comes in a single CD-ROM that also includes drivers and Epson's Photo Quicker 3.2, an unsophisticated digital imaging software that allows users to edit and alter images easily. In addition, the application even allows you to select printing in various sizes like, A4 or A5, or in different layouts like landscape or portrait.

In order to obtain good picture quality during printing, Epson has resorted to using six color inks results with the 830. The printer runs on two separate cartridges: The T027 color cartridge contains five colors (cyan, bright cyan, Magenta, bright Magenta, Yellow) while the separate T026 monochrome cartridge the black ink. According to Epson, the 830's large 5760dpi resolution support combined with the six ink colors and a high quality photo paper delivers photo-realistic images comparable to some of its more expensive siblings.

Great Quality, Slow Print Speeds
The photo quality is particularly convincing especially when printed on the appropriate photo paper, but even on standard paper the quality was considerably good. Text and font print-outs were equally good but upon closer inspection, betrayed a hint of degradation when printed on low quality paper. However, the print quality improved when we switched to photo quality paper.

The Stylus Photo 830 prints up to 14 sides for black-and-white documents, but the times depend strongly on the application used. With standard text, the 830 took 37 seconds to complete a full page print. Our Photoshop test took about 4 minutes and 14 seconds to print a full page of color on the 830 and the printer clocked around eight minutes to complete a rimless A4-Seite print-out at top quality. Based on these scores, we concluded the 830's printing speed to be fast for monochrome text but slower than competing brands in the color print department.

Gripes? While not the slowest inkjet on the market, the Epson 830 is also not one of the fastest, with its middling color print speeds so don't expect blazing performance when printing large volumes or high resolution images. In addition, the cost for consumables like ink cartridges is also high for this particular model and without an automatic paper recognition function (like those used in HP models), users will need to manually specify the paper size each time they print.

For users who frequently print photos and require fast print speeds, a higher performance printer like the Stylus Photo 895 would be more suited to handle these demanding tasks. But if all you need is an affordable printing solution that doesn't sacrifice on image quality, the Epson Stylus Photo 830 is worthy candidate.

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