Epson Stylus Photo 2200 Inkjet Printer

By William LaMartin, Editor, Tampa PC Users Group
lamartin@tampabay.rr.com

To have something to write about this month, I had to buy a new printer. Times are tough when you have to spend money to get a newsletter topic. I am sure that writers for more prestigious publications have such items showered upon them for reviews. As far as I can tell, that is not the case for the writers at the Bits of Blue. Perhaps that is the reason for our lack of writers.

Anyway, I had been eying this printer for some time. In house before buying the 2200, if I wanted something done in color I would have had to use my old Alps dye sublimation printer (bought 12/1998) or a slightly newer HP 832C (bought 12/1999). The Alps gives quite good results, but I am running out of the cartridges that make the color and of the paper--and there will be no more since this printer is no longer supported. The HP, being a fairly cheap printer, while fine for text, has never produced top quality photo images. And that is what I wanted the new printer for--photos.

For the past couple of years, when I wanted good quality prints, 4 x 6, 5 x 7 or 8 x 10, I would simply put the files on a CD and take it to the local drugstore’s one hour photo department. And for the most part the results have been quite good, better than I could have produced on the Alps, and certainly better than I could have produced on the old HP inkjet. Furthermore, the price just keeps getting better. The last 8 x 10s I had made were right at $3.50 each.

This new printer produces prints of comparable quality to the one hour photo places. Now I need to figure out if it does them for a comparable price. More about that later.

I purchased the printer here in Tampa from North Tampa Photography for $679, about $20 less than at the major stores selling computer equipment. I have purchased a fair amount of photography equipment from them--not for the lowest price, but for the very good advice available from their salesmen.

Along with the printer, I also purchased packages of 4 x 6, 8.5 x 11 and 11 x 17 paper at what appeared to me to be quite good prices compared to what I used to pay for the Alps paper. The 4 x 6 was $.25/sheet, the 8.5 x 11 was $.52/sheet and the 11 x 17 was $1.05/sheet. This paper was made by Ilford, a well known manufacturer of photographic paper--not by Epson.

What the final cost of a print will be is still to be determined since I have yet to know how much ink is needed to print the different sized photos. I note that at CompUSA, the ink cartridges cost $13 each. Since there are seven of them required, we are talking about $91 to replace all seven of them. I am trying to keep track of what I print to get a rough estimate of the ink required for photo printing.

Epson gives an estimate of 440 pages with 5% coverage per color. If this means what I think it does, then with seven colors, you have 35% coverage of 440 8.5 x 11 pages, or equivalently, 180 completely covered 8 x 10 images. At $91 per set of cartridges, this would yield a price per 8 x 10 of just over $.50. If that is true, then based on the paper cost above, I could print an 8 x 10 for just over one dollar--not counting tax and the cost of the printer. That is probably too good to be true. If you read the review to which there is a link later in this article, it appears that the reviewer printed the equivalent of about 62 8 x 10 photos before the first cartridge ran out of ink. So $91/62 equals about $1.50 should be the upper bound on ink cost. So we are looking at around $2.00 total cost for each 8 x 10. Of course, the Epson paper costs more than the Ilford and some Epson paper costs more than others.

Now to the printer. This is not a small printer. It is 25” wide, 13” deep and 8” high without any paper supports. With the paper supports extended, the depth and the height are increased by about a factor of two. It will handle paper up to 13” x 44” in either sheet or roll form. As said before, it has seven individually replaceable ink cartridges. Additionally it has two versions of black depending on whether you are printing on matte stock or not.

One important marketing feature is the durability of the prints produced when printed on the Epson paper. I am not sure of this for the Ilford paper, but I think it is the same since, I believe, the durability comes mainly from the inks. Depending on the paper used, Epson claims that color prints will last from 71 to 108 years and black and white will last from 95 to 140 years. That is far superior to standard inkjets.

Other specifications are:

The speed of printing is determined by the print quality selected and whether or not you wish to print borderless. I have not printed anything in less than Best quality, so I can’t speak to that. But for a 4 x 6 printed with borders it takes about 3 min, 45 sec. To print the same image borderless is right under seven minutes. The author of the review at one of the links below stated that he could tell very little difference between the best and other quality prints except a much longer print time.

All inkjets I have dealt with left a fairly wide non-printable margin on the trailing edge to leave the printer. This printer is no exception, leaving one of 14 mm. However, there is the option to Minimize Margins which will allow you to print within 3 mm of all sides. This slows the printing only slightly, adding about 15 seconds for a total of 4 minutes. Of course, printing borderless removes all four margins.

I highly recommend this printer.

For a very detailed review of this printer, go to http://www.steves-digicams.com/2002_reviews/epson_2200.html. Another review is at http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/printers/Epson2200.shtml. u