Start a photo album with your digital images using the Epson Stylus Photo 875DC ink-jet printer. Its PCMCIA card slot, built-in PCMCIA digital film reader, and included image-editing software allow you to print your favorite digital photos with ease.
Printing at up to 1,440 x 720 dpi, the Stylus Photo 875DC uses Epson's six-color drop-on-demand ink-jet technology and prints on a wide variety of media including transparencies, banners, labels, and photo paper. It can produce 4-by-6-inch edge-to-edge prints in less than 1 minute and 8-by-10-inch prints in less than 2 minutes. The input tray has a capacity of 100 sheets or 10 envelopes.
With its USB interface, the Stylus Photo 875DC is compatible with both Windows and Macintosh systems. It comes with a PCMCIA CompactFlash adapter, color and black ink cartridges, and Image Expert and Adobe Photo Deluxe software. --Emily Bakko
From Winmag®
If you're a digital camera user, there's nothing more important than high-quality output from a printer that does justice to your images. Epson's Stylus Photo 875DC does just that, and features a built-in digital film card reader to simplify transferring images from your camera. At $299, it's a steal.
The Stylus Photo 875DC works with a variety of media, from glossy photo paper to heavyweight matte paper. It even has a paper holder for feeding in roll stock for printing a continuous stream of 4 by 6 inches snapshots – with coverage right to the edge of the paper.
The unit's digital film card reader is a PC Card slot that is recognized as a drive by Windows. There’s a PC Card in the box that supports Compact Flash-compatible memory cards. If you have Smart Media or Sony Memory Stick storage, you may need to purchase an adapter. There's no LCD display window to lead you through menus that allow you to print thumbnails or individual images from the files on your memory device.
The printer offers five print modes. For everyday printing you'd choose economy mode to print at 180 x 180 dpi (for business documents). The remaining modes make use of Epson's Variable Sized Droplet Technology, putting down large droplets in dark areas and smaller droplets (down to 4 picoliters) in light, complex areas. Smaller drops means gradients appear smoother and skin tones look more natural.
Normal mode (360 x 360 dpi) and fine mode (360 x 720 dpi) are the "low-end" choices for photos. The Stylus Photo 875DC's strength is how it handles photos, however. Photo Mode (at 720 x 720 dpi) is best for detailed photographic images. It's a balance between speed and quality. A second Photo Mode prints at 1440 x 720 dpi. It's the top-of-the-line setting when only the highest quality output will do.
The printer uses two quick-drying ink cartridges -- a black cartridge for true black and a five-color cartridge (cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan, and light magenta). You can view ink levels at any time by clicking on a tab on the printer's Properties screen. Both print heads have 48 nozzles per color.
The 875DC's forte is its photo quality output, so we didn't expect much in the way of speed for our standard text-based tests. For our 20-page monochrome text-only document, the “Speed” setting (which doesn't resemble the washed out "draft" modes of some competitors) and "Black print" setting resulted in 1.8 pages per minute output. The 3-page text-and-graphics test document, using "Speed" and "Color print" settings, emerged into the printer's 30-page output tray at 2.1 ppm. Switching from Speed to Quality setting didn't result in noticeably faster output.
There's no question about the quality. Even small text (4- and 5-point fonts) was readable. Another plus: the printer is whisper quiet – the best Epson I've ever tested in that regard.
Then I started working with Epson's Premium Glossy Photo Paper, and…Wow! There's plenty of speed; a 5 by 7 inches image took 31 seconds to print on plain paper, and just 2:22 to print on the photo paper. Results were excellent. A picture of fruit showed grapes and apples with the right sheen. Images of a young model showed true, properly saturated colors and excellent detail (hair strands and facial shadows, for example), even tricky flesh tones were no trouble for the 875DC. I ran a whole gamut of images through the printer, from on-the-fly digital camera shots to professionally produced graphics files; for my money, the output quality can’t be beat.
The input tray can handle 100 pages or 10 envelopes, from 3.5 by 3.5 inches media to banner-sized 8.5 x 44" paper (either pre-cut or on a roll).
The driver incorporates an option to automatically adjust optimizing digital camera images. Called PhotoEnhance 4, it automatically corrects exposure and contrast.
Epson includes Sierra Imaging's Image Expert for managing your photos. The program starts automatically when it senses media in the card slot. If you need to touch up your photos, you'll find Adobe Photo Deluxe 3.1 in the box as well.
The driver lets you reduce your output (from legal to letter, for example, or to a user-selected percentage), print 2- and 4-pages to a single sheet (you can even specify how those pages are arranged), and you can print a 4-, 9-, or 16-sheet poster. There's support for watermarks, too, but, as you’d expect in printer optimized for photos, none for duplex printing.
With paper supports fully extended, the printer measures 11.5 x 17.5 x 24.5 inches (HWD); it weighs 14 pounds. Epson backs the unit with a one-year limited warranty.
There are two limitations worth mentioning. In order to handle the PC Card interface, the printer connects via USB only (and no cable is included). Furthermore, the printer works only with Windows 98 and 2000.
Some discussion boards have raised concerns about color-shift in some Epson photo prints. The company says it's mostly a result of ozone and other contaminants reacting with Epson's Premium Photo Glossy paper, but if you put your output under glass or out of harm's way, you shouldn't have a problem. The company also says it has reformulated its paper which will be available in retail in December. I didn't see any color-shift problems during or after my tests.
If you want a workhorse printer for your everyday print needs, you'll be best served by the Epson Stylus Color 980 on our WinList, for $199 after a $50 rebate. The 980's faster print speed with text and mixed-text-and-graphics documents recommends it. If you need a printer that will deliver higher-quality photo output (where speedy text printing is a lower priority or if you already have a text printer), the Epson Stylus Photo 875DC makes sense. The Stylus Photo 875DC joins the WinList, replacing the Stylus Photo 870.