Epson Photo 925 - Quick Review
David Chien
The Epson Photo 925 is the latest photo inkjet printer from Epson that
can be used not only as a printer attached to any PC, but also as a
stand-alone machine that can print directly from digital camera flash
cards without a PC. Supported flash cards include CompactFlash, SD,
MemoryStick and SmartMedia.
This printer replaces the prior no-PC-required printer from Epson, the
Epson 785epx.
The printer itself costs about ~$250 USD on the open market today. Use
www.shopper.com or any other lowest price search engine to find the best
price on this today.
The printer itself improves upon the prior generation in many ways.
1) Far quieter operation. While the 785epx created sounds that could
annoy anyone to death, the 925 significantly reduces the operation noise
to a reasonable level, similar to that experienced with the Epson Photo
870/890 series.
2) Improved borderless paper support, roll paper, LCD navigation panel,
resolution, built-in card formats supported, paper types supported, etc.
These are other factors which have been improved over the Epson
785epx. Refer to specifications on both machines.
3) Significantly improved PC-free print quality and color balance. This
factor alone is the most noticable improvement vs. the 785epx, and makes
this a very desirable printer. It can and will generate some of the
very best photos from your digital camera possible short of additional,
manual retouching and color correction in a photo editing program.
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The printer uses the same T027 color cartridge as the Epson Photo 820 in
case you are having a difficult time finding replacement cartridges.
Because the first/original cartridges are used to charge the nozzles
with ink, the cartridges will provide you with less than expected
yields, on the order of about 20 full letter sized photo prints.
Depending on coverage and print mode, you can expecta about 50 letter
sized photo prints for each color cartridge.
Black ink is used slower, so expect usage rates of 3 or 4 color
cartridges per 1 black cartridge.
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Out of the box, the Epson 925 is a quick to setup printer. Simply
remove the packaging tape, drop it next to your PC, and flip open the
quick install guide. Here, you only need to power up the printer,
install the two cartridges provided, and wait for it to initialize. On
the PC, you attach a USB cable after the printer is up and running, and
insert the CD-ROM to install the drivers when the printer has been
detected. Just like that, you're up and running in about 10 minutes flat.
Right away, you notice that the printer driver is standard Epson, so
prior users will be at home right away. The only small changes have
been to the menu items (more options, as usual), expanding upon paper
types and significantly print resolution selection. Here, Epson has
decided that beyond "Photo" quality and "Best Photo" quality, they'll
add a third choice "Photo RPM" as their very best 5280x720dpi resolution
choice. Why they didn't simply have "Standard, Better, Best" is beyond
my understanding and I'm certain many new users will be quite confused
given how poor written and sparce the online and printed manuals are.
In reality, Photo RPM appears to be more marketing hype than anything
else. Side-by-side comparisons of prints made in Photo RPM and Best
modes don't produce any noticable improvements in resolution (using the
standard PhotoDisc Test Target), shading, or smoothness even with close
examination.
Switching to unidirectional print mode does improve print quality in
both modes, so I would say that unless Epson moves to a smaller ink drop
such as that used in the Epson Japan PM-970C 1.8 picolitre, then they've
already reached the limits of their technology at this drop size.
In fact, comparing the prints to an older Epson 870 yields very little
improvement across the entire print, and only a few minor improvements
in dark and light area shading can be seen.
This is not to say that Epson printers do not produce stunning prints -
in fact, they have consistanly produced the world's best photo inkjet
prints for many years. Competitors are often trying to catch up, so for
example, even HP could not match Epson photo print qualities until this
year with their release of their 55xx/7xxx 6-color photo printers in
terms of absolute best photo print qualities.
Given how lacking the manuals are, I wouldn't be suprised if users
simply stayed with the default options and kept them that way. Many of
the items such as Gamma, Photo Quality, etc. are so briefly and
obscurely explained, even expert computer users will have trouble
figuring out exactly what they do.
When attached to the PC, the printer operates like any other Epson
printer, and printers appear without much fuss.
On the other hand, moving on to the juicy main feature - the stand-alone
print capability, the Epson 925 shines here for being able to produce
very high quality prints by itself.
You start off by inserting any compatible card into the front card slot.
The printer quickly finds all of the photos on the card in a few
seconds, and then let's you chose how to proceed. The printer defaults
to the settings required to print an index sheet of thumbnails of all of
your photos on the card, and unless you want to print all of the
pictures, you will do this next. (Unless you have the optional LCD
monitor and will be choosing photos based on what you see on the screen.)
The small thumbnails are small enough to be covered by a thumb, but
serve the purpose of letting you choose which pictures you'd like printed.
The menu system appears, at first glance, to be easy enough to use
without refering to the manual. But when you try to select photos to
print, you discover that you must go back and forth in the selection
menu and selected photos list to add each photo. While it would have
been preferable the have both on-screen at the same time to save time
and button presses, it's not so awkward that you can't get anything
done. Hopefully, Epson will correct this in a future version.
Paper size, layout, etc. are all easily selected from the rest of the
menus and thankfully, it's a simple task of then pressing the large ,
green print button to start the print process.
If you've loaded some sheets of photo paper and have picked the highest
quality print modes, you can then walk away and do something else for
the dozens of minutes it'll take to print them all.
On a letter sized page of 9 photos on the Premium Glossy Photo Paper
with 4MP images at the highest quality settings, you can expect at least
a ten minute wait for each page. Naturally, the printer defaults to a
high quailty setting that is faster, and you'll be able to produce
prints faster than this. The quality on Photo Paper with the High
quality (not Highest quality) setting is good enough for most users and
is a step above what the 785epx produced at it's highest stand-alone
print quality settings. Still, the best prints are obtained by using
the Best print mode, and that means letter prints will take over ten
minutes per page.
When the prints appear, you will notice that they are suprisingly
'accurate' yet saturated and colorful despite the condition of the
original images. Even with my Fujifilm 40i, which usually produces
images that aren't as well exposed as with other, newer digital cameras,
prints come out looking as good as one would expect from any good photo
processor, although not yet at the quality of a carefully retouched and
color corrected image produced by a skilled operator with a photo editor
program.
Accurate colors is probably the most suprising thing about this printer.
While many of the older photo printers have trouble producing colors
that look 'natural' and 'real', this printer has no trouble at all.
Even with images taken under indoor lighting come out looking
'realistic', with a hue appropriate to the conditions. Apparently,
Epson has put some serious thought into the color processor inside the
Epson Photo 925 and has made some serious improvements to it. Tied
together with the excellent exposure systems in most modern digital
cameras, and you can really say that you've brought the entire 1 hour
print shop into your home with this Epson.
Natuarally, any automatic printer can only produce prints as good as the
orignial image, so images with very poor exposure and color will simply
print as they are. And with any picture, any color cast from the
lighting will remain as well - but in a good sense. eg. if you're
taking a picture with the warm setting sun, you'll get a warm sunny
sunset photo printed - the printer will not have done something aweful
to it like many older printers in their attempt to 'neutralize' the
color cast.
But suprisingly, some shots that appear out of range (slightly
overexposed or underexposed) are happily optimized and print with very
good quality. As an example a dark, muddy background and slightly
overexposed people from the flash indoors at night comes out with the
background turned a nice rich black, and the people sparkling as if they
came out of a super exposure correcting washing machine.
With regular images, the full gamut of the color range is utilized.
Unlike other printers that simply print anything but pure black (RGB
0,0,0) as a mixture of colors to produce a muddy gray, the Epson 925
intelligently analyzes the photos and makes what a person would say
should be 'black' appear as a true 'black' on prints. Other
optimizations pull and push the entire photo to utilize the entire gamut
of the inks, and you'll have no trouble at all with a contrasty scene
printing out looking great. You can easily adjust the type of photo
enhancement applied (eg. PIM, Photoenhance - people, scene, etc.), the
contrast and brightness of a picture, and cropping. See www.epson.com
for the downloadable manuals for this printer if you want to read about
all of the features included.
Quite nicely, the printer will also maintain the original subtleties of
a soft/pastel/dreamy image. A perfect example is what it can do with
one of my favorite images, a setting sunset with dreamy orange to dark
sky, a touch of mist to make the scene surreal - a pastel, soft image.
I would have expected the printer to encounter some trouble printing
this picture out, but in fact, the Epson Photo 925 did a superb job at
this, and far faster than I would have with a photo editor on my PC.
If you use the roll paper, there are many notches in the back of the
printer for the removable roll holders to fit into so you can use papers
of different widths.
Thankfully, unlike older models, this printer does come with a nice,
built-in paper cutter that will automatically seperate each print as
they're made. Simply sit back and watch print after print appear from
this printer.
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Now, keep in mind that while 90% of the users will find that 90% of
their photos print very nicely with this Epson 925, it can't do it all,
and thankfully, you can hook it up to your PC for prints from a
carefully edited photo. However, as most of you know, it's often a
major pain to get the printer and PC color calibrated and managed
correctly so that what you see is what you get on the printer. Printing
directly from the flash cards in the printer gets you accurate, neutral
prints almost immediately, and I would say better than what most people
would obtain on their own when the printer is used with a PC and even
most cheap photo processing places.
When used as a photo printer with the PC, you can expect it to perform
as any other printer, albeit not one of the fastest available, inkjet or
laser. A few pages of text per minute is all it'll give you, and that's
simply a tradeoff given that it wasn't designed for high-volume office work.
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In the end, I'd highly recommend this printer to anyone owning a digital
camera looking to upgrade or to buy as a first-time purchase. This
printer doesn't leave anything out if you use it as a regular photo
printer vs. other models. And, it adds the stand-alone print capability
which is very useful and produces very high quality prints, quickly and
easily. It is a very fun printer to use, and you can take it to parties
and get-togethers and make fabulous (or incriminating) prints on the spot!
Those looking for archival inks, individual ink cartridges, a widebody
or faster photo printer should look elsewhere.
If you already have a good 6-color photo printer, you certainly won't
get 'better' photo quality vs. what you have now, so the decision to buy
the Epson 925 will hinge upon it's stand-alone print capability.
Use www.shopper.com and www.fatwallet.com/forums/ -> Hot Deals to find
the lowest online prices available on this printer when you're ready to buy.
David Chien
Portrait mode, 3 columns wide, 5 rows deep, Best Photo mode,
bidirectional, takes about 6.2 minutes per page printing from a PC onto
Epson Glossy Photo Paper from Epson Film Factory in index print mode.
If you print 4x6" borderless prints at the highest quality settings on
the Premium Glossy photo paper, expect at least 5-7 minutes per print.
Or about 10 per hour max. Definitely not a 1 hour photo printer when
using the highest quality settings.
Naturally, far faster if you use the second best Best Photo/High quality
setting on this printer. In this case, expect the times above to be
halved, or about 20 or so prints per hour.
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Strangely, while the Epson Film Factory does have some nice layouts,
there's no way to maximize the use of the paper itself (eg. minimize the
white space around pictures and to print photos starting from the edge
of the paper) or to create a custom layout. So, nice for casual users,
terrible choice for those wanting to squeeze as many photos onto a page
as possible.
Sticker printing is equally lame. While you can choose to have just one
picture printed on a page of sticker sheet, you can't chose to have
different pictures printed, all on the same sheet, one per sticker.
Otherwise, the basic program does work in getting you prints w/o much
trouble. Useful if you just want to select a bunch of images to be
printed, but there are many other programs with more features that can
do the same today, better.
About 43 4x6" Premium Glossy Photo Paper borderless prints at the
highest print quality mode (Photo RPM/Super High) consumes 3/4 of a new
color cartridge. Thus, about 57 4x6" prints or about 1376 sq. inches of
coverage per color cartridge. Calculating backwards, about 14.7 8.5x11"
photo prints in the highest quality mode.
Keep in mind that this mode uses more ink than the next step down
(Best/High) and if you use that setting all of the time, you can expect
to see more prints per color cartridge.
Also, keep in mind that if you're not doing full page, borderless
prints, a significant portion of the page will not require ink, and this
will increase the number of pages you can print.
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1/3rd of a black cartridge at about $23 + 1 color cartridge @ $17 + 57
4x6" Premium Glossy Photo pages ($9.81 per 50 pack * 57 = $11.18) =
$35.85 for 57 4x6" prints -> $0.63 cents per 4x6" borderless, premium
glossy photo paper print at the highest possible quality settings.
(current online prices of consumables from www.buy.com; local retail
store pricing are often much higher, estimate about $0.80+ cents per
page if you buy cartridges locally from stores such as Staples)
Assume that using a lower quality setting such as Best/High instead of
PhotoRPM/Super High will also lower your ink consumption and cost per
page printed.
Oscar
825 and would like to use fine quality, non-Epson paper. What products are there
on the market that will work with these printers.
TIA, Oscar