Epson Stylus Photo 2100

Clear plenty of room before you bring this printer home. It's black and silver, the size of a small window box, and will print on pretty much any paper size up to A3+ (oversized A3 with room for crop marks).

Connection is by parallel, FireWire and backwards-compatible USB2. We opted for USB1.1 in our tests, and the buffer was filling up far quicker than the 2100 could spit out the pages.

The 'Photo' in this printer's name gives a clue about its intended use. Under the hood there is space for seven ink cartridges, including photo- and light-black, half-strength cyan and magenta.

This produced slightly grey text when the driver was set to 'speed' rather than 'quality', so you may need an £8.95 matt black cartridge as back up.

This is the first printer to use Epson's new water-fast and light-fast Ultrachrome inks, which should give extra life to demanding output, such as photos or documents intended for archiving.

On the back of each cartridge, a chip keeps track of the amount of ink used. Even if you remove it from the printer (when it will seal itself to prevent leakage) it will remember how much ink is left when you return it to the device. You should never run dry mid-run again - in theory.

This all adds up to a professional offering with Print Image Matching to produce more accurate colours on prints from compliant cameras.

In our tests the 2100 performed far slower than its cheaper, smaller brother, the Stylus Photo 950, but this device is aimed at the professional market, where quality and confidence, more than speed, are paramount.

As we have come to expect from Epson, photo reproduction is excellent. Our standard test photo was clean and bright, and skin tones were spot on. In areas where colours blended into one another the transition was smooth and, where a yellow flame was set over a black background, the edges were crisp with no evidence of bleeding.

An A4 image, printed at the highest quality setting (2,880 x 1,440dpi) on Epson photo paper, completed in nine minutes 48 seconds (the Photo 950 did the same job in two minutes 11 seconds).

Upping the print size to A3 kept the 2100 busy for a tedious 17 minutes three seconds, but it's worth bearing in mind that this is still far less time than it would take to source a quality A3 print out of house.

All 50 pages of our plain-text test file were ready for collection from the output tray after 20 minutes 38 seconds (eight minutes 16 seconds on the Photo 950).

As mentioned above, the finished product was slightly grey, but only when directly compared to output from other devices. Examined in isolation it was crisp, well-formed and tidy.

Even on photocopy paper the edges of letters were smooth and unfeathered - a relief to anyone after a photo printer that can tackle occasional office use on the side.

Aside from its A3+ platen, though, it is the extra features that set this printer apart. Like the Photo 950 it can print directly onto compatible CDs, which is great for small-scale audio repro houses or anyone interested in producing a small batch of presentations on CD-Rom.

It takes Epson's now well-supported photo rolls for continuous prints, and the front-mounted paper tray can be unclipped and replaced by a sling to catch the prints as they are completed and automatically cut by the printer so that it can work unattended.

Classic photos are often printed in black and white and, with this in mind, Epson has included grey balancing software.

This collection of reference charts, combined with a step-by-step interface, takes you through calibrating the printer for accurate results.

This is an expensive printer, but it is aimed at the professional market. The 2100 would find a home in any graphics production company, and even small art shops looking to sell short-run prints. If this isn't you, check out the Stylus Photo 950.

Price: £599 (£509.79 ex VAT)

Specifications:
Piezo inkjet technology
2,880 x 1,440dpi max resolution
USB2, parallel and FireWire interfaces
Five colour, two black ink cartridges
Operating system support: Windows 95/98/NT4/2000/ME/XP; Mac OS 8.1 or later
Weight: 11.2kg
Dimensions (all trays extended): 631 x 864 x 409mm (w x d x h)

Contact: Epson 0800 220 546
www.epson.co.uk