Dan Littman

Epson Stylus Photo 2200

Epson designed the Stylus Photo 2200 for professional digital photographers, and gave it numerous high-end features that avid amateurs will also appreciate. For one, it uses pigmented inks (instead of more-common printer inks that contain organic dyes), so its colors are highly predictable and stable, as well as water resistant. Most photo printers use six inks--black, two shades of cyan, two shades of magenta, and yellow--but the 2200 adds a second, lighter black to the mix to fine-tune shading and color density. You can swap in another black for printing on matte paper, as well (Epson sells a large array of special paper types for the 2200). The printer's oversize carriage accommodates paper up to 13 inches wide and--according to Epson--44 inches long. Actually, it comes with spindles to feed rolls of 4-inch-wide or 13-inch-wide paper, so there's no real limit on paper length; when you send a batch of photos, a paper cutter chops completed prints off the roll and drops them into a fabric sling that hangs off the edge of your desk. You can feed extraheavy paper through a slot in the back of the printer to avoid bending and wrinkles. In addition to USB 2.0 and parallel ports, it comes with a six-pin FireWire port, so you can hook up a digital camera to print pictures without using your PC. Did we mention that the Stylus Photo 2200 prints great photos? Using Epson's glossy photo paper, we were awestruck by the subtle shading, intense colors, and lifelike detail of its pictures. And though you'd never buy the 2200 to serve as an office workhorse, it does an acceptable job printing text. On ordinary paper, its text looks fairly clean but slightly grayish; on coated ink-jet paper, its text looks quite nice.
The Stylus Photo 2200 costs $699, which is a bundle if you don't need its wide paper carriage. You can save a lot by buying Epson's Stylus Photo 960, which has some of the 2200's advanced features but prints using standard 8.5-inch-wide paper. The 2200's black and color inks run a reasonable $12 per cartridge. Epson estimates that black cartridges yield 628 pages of text (about 1.8 cents per page) and color cartridges yield 440 pages (about 18.2 cents per page).To accommodate oversize paper, the 2200 takes up a lot of room: It's 25 inches wide and 35 inches deep with its paper trays fully extended, and it sticks out several inches in front of your desk if you use the automatic paper cutter. Switching between flat sheets and rolls is inconvenient, because unlike with some other Epson printers, you have to empty the 2200's main paper tray to attach the automatic paper cutter. The 2200 lacks both flash card slots and an on-board control panel, so unless your camera can drive a printer through the FireWire port, you'll need to download your images before you can print them on the 2200. The 2200's photo print speed of 0.2 ppm was slower than that of any photo printer we tested for our January 2003 roundup. But the results are worth waiting for.
The Photo 2200 printed text a little slowly, at 2.9 pages per minute; graphics printed at 1.9 ppm. (This printer was second fastest in our roundup on our graphics and text-and-graphics files.) Epson bundles its FilmFactory photo-archiving software and a PIM image-matching plug-in for Photoshop. Epson's printed documentation guides you through setting up and running the 2200. The unit also ships with a software-based manual on CD that you can copy to your hard drive for easy reference. The manual provides detailed information on perfecting print quality, along with several animated sequences on basic operation and maintenance.
The Stylus Photo 2200 is sophisticated, but not intimidating. If you love digital cameras and you want to make big prints, you can't go wrong with it.

Buying Information

Epson Stylus Photo 2200 No monochrome or color print speed ratings available from the vendor, 2880-by-1440-dpi maximum resolution, 100 sheets input, 30 output $ 699 No monochrome or color print speed ratings available from the vendor, 2880-by-1440-dpi maximum resolution, 100 sheets input, 30 output http://www.epson.com 800/463-7766