Epson Stylus Photo 950

Epson debuted Print Image Matching (Pim) in 2001. In partnership with 13 digital camera manufacturers, it developed a new way to record camera settings and feed them to an inkjet printer. The printer consulted this adjustment data to produce more realistic looking prints.

However, while Pim coped well with colour balance and sharpness, Exif, an already established standard, did things that Pim did not, such as recording exposure times and white balance settings.

Since 2001, though, a lot has happened, with Exif2.2 arriving on the scene and PimII appearing in Epson printers.

PimII now incorporates Exif2.2, closely aligning Epson to the more established standard. One of the payoffs, in theory, is image noise reduction, which should be of particular interest to those camera manufacturers looking to squeeze high resolutions out of small sensor chips, resulting in cheaper and smaller hardware.

There are no PimII cameras yet, but there is one compliant printer, the Stylus Photo 950. It is a hefty beast with a price to match, but it's worth checking out what it can do.

Epson uses Piezo technology where a vibrating crystal ejects ink from the head. This, combined with tension on the surface of the liquid, allows it to vary the size of each drop.

However, variable sized droplets have been cast aside in the 950 in favour of a faster engine. The crystal's vibration cycle has been halved, allowing it to produce a physically smaller droplet of just 2 picolitres and a top resolution of 2,880 x 1,440 dots per inch. Being twice as fast allows it to print at double the resolution without slowing down.

It certainly flew through our four key tests, and beat every printer in our printer group test by a comfortable margin. Our 50-page plain text file completed its run in just eight minutes 16 seconds.

The 50-page pdf was ready for collection after just eight minutes four seconds, and it only took an impressive seven minutes 54 seconds to process a 50-page mixture of text and screenshots. These results are most likely the fruit of extra nozzles in the head and a second black ink well.

Speed isn't everything, though, so we were relieved to see that the 950 lives up to Epson's boast of quality. Even on photocopy paper, large black characters were dense, and feathering - a risk when using cheaper paper - was barely discernible. Text was easily legible in all sizes down to 2 point.

Switching to photo paper for our standard test photo, we saw speed results in line with those from the group test: two minutes 11 seconds compared to the group test fastest of two minutes 28 seconds.

Quality was excellent. Similar colours could be distinguished one from another, and areas of tonal variation showed smooth gradations. Traditionally tricky skin tones were realistic. However, the 950 really impressed when printing landscapes and nature, with complex forestry, subtle hillside fog and vivid sunny skies well reproduced.

For the photo enthusiast, it takes Epson paper rolls, and has the added bonus of an integrated cutter and hammock-like device for catching the completed prints.

Beneath the hood is a dial that raises the workings slightly to accept a CD caddy. Several manufacturers are now producing printer-compatible blank CD media and Epson has thrown in design software to simplify the process.

While the results were nowhere near as vivid as either its photo output or shop-bought CDs it was certainly easier and tidier than using CD labels.

With individually replaceable ink wells, you should save money on refills, but whether this is reason enough for the initial investment is up to you.

Price: £378.99 (£322.55 ex VAT)

Specifications:

• Piezo inkjet technology
• Max resolution: 2,880 x 1,440dpi
• USB and parallel interfaces
• Five colour, two black cartridges
• Cartridge life: 440 pages from colour cartridges with five per cent coverage, 628 from black
• Operating system support: Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP
• Weight: 7.4kg
• Dimensions: 515 x 663 x 299mm (w x d x h).

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