Epson Stylus C63

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The Stylus C63 is Epson's entry-level model for its range of new DURABrite solutions. After a short hiatus--since the CX5100 last year--the company has reiterated its endorsement of pigmented inks for the desktop space, and made it more affordable with new INKdividual cartridges. The INKdividual system is Epson's implementation of an individual cartridge for each color of ink. With a sticker price of just S$128 (US$75), the C63 looks like an affordable way for users to achieve long-lasting prints.

Same Old Look
If there's one thing to nitpick about Epson, it has to be the fact that the manufacturer still designs most of its printers with the same styling of models as far back as early 2002. The Stylus C63 is no different and fits into the same curvy cutting complete with the grey-and-black ensemble.

Targeted squarely at the home, the printer measures a compact 450 x 243 x 192mm when packed, making this Stylus fairly easy to hide or tuck away. When in use, the output and input trays extend 18 and 15cm in depth and height--still relatively small. In addition, moving this inkjet around should pose no problem with its 3.9kg frame.

Plugging It In
Like most consumer-oriented inkjets, setting up the C63 is straightforward. Simply connect the printer to the PC--through either a USB or parallel cable--, install the drivers and you're good to go. Our pet peeve on the exclusion of a USB cable resurfaces. However, the ability to set up the unit as a normal parallel printer alleviates this annoyance somewhat.

To aid new users, there's a handy quickstart guide which provides clear setup and usage instructions. This Stylus supports Windows 95 and up and Macintosh OS 8.6 or later. The CD also comes with a detailed HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) user guide--so there's a need to have a browser installed to read it.

Lifting the translucent plastic panel reveals a rather spacious interior. Inside you'll find ample room for replacing or installing the cartridges. As the Japanese manufacturer has targeted the new DURABrite inks and media toward more value, it makes sense by complementing this with such a system. In general, having separate cartridges allow you to reach better savings as you'll only have to replace cartridges that are empty.

The Benchmarks
The C63 produced respectable scores in our speed tests when run in draft mode. Switching the print quality up a notch to "normal" setting and you'll find the printer borders between slow and average. That said, this Stylus finished our 10-page test in 79 seconds or approximately 7.6 pages per minute. This puts the unit ahead of mid-range dedicated photo printers such as Canon's i470D and i475D. The C63 produces "borderless" or "border-free" photos of 4R size only. Even so, its A4-size image output benches trail the Canon units (which print borderless A4 pictures), clocking in at 12 minutes for best-quality mode and 5.5 minutes in the photo-quality setting.

With regard to quality, the results were reasonably good. Although the text at 2pt font size came out a little blotchy, it was still legible. For photos, outputs turned out great with little dithering and no banding visible when set to the best-quality mode. However, the photo-quality setting produced photos with visible banding and a lack of detail. If we were to hazard a guess on the reasons, it appears the photo-quality setting makes half as many passes when compared to the best-quality mode, resulting in significant speed improvements--at the obvious expense of quality.

It's All In The Inks And Papers
The consumables for this Stylus work out rather affordably, especially considering Epson's claim of fade resistance up to 80 years. The black ink cartridge costs S$23.50 (US$13.80) with a manufacturer-claimed yield of 540 pages, while each of the color cartridges costs S$13.90 (US$8.20) and is rated for 250 pages. This works out to 4 cents per monochrome and 5.5 cents per color output. This makes color prints even cheaper than Canon's two-cartridge system found on its array of mid-range photo printers including the decent performing i475D.

Adding further value is the cost of the new DURABrite media. 4R sheets are sold in packs of 30 for S$7.90 (US$4.65), while A4 media costs S$18.70 (US$11) for 20 sheets. The only downside to these affordable photo papers is that they aren't very glossy.

Verdict
In all, we were pleased with the C63's reasonable print quality and strong value ratings. If not for its lackluster speeds, the Stylus C63 would have obtained our Editors' Choice award. Still, if you don't mind waiting a little for gorgeous photo outputs that last, this affordable Stylus should rank high on your list of considerations.