Epson Stylus Photo 935

The boxy 935 has a couple of rather neat tricks up its sleeve. For one thing, it has slots for all media cards (besides XD), and it will print to rolls of photo paper for seam-free panoramas. But the real innovation comes in the ability to connect an external CD-Rom or Zip drive to the integrated USB port and burn photos directly. It has Bluetooth for wireless printing and will connect by cable to a host of cameras from the likes of Nikon, Minolta, Casio and Pentax.

A dot-matrix screen allows for direct photo printing and duplicates most maintenance tasks of the Windows driver. Through this you can perform basic photo enhancements, such as sharpening or adjusting colour saturation. Combined, these features make the printer suited to ambitious home photographers.

Under the hood, the print head holds two cartridges - one black and one CMY plus photo inks - and when used with Epson photo paper their output should resist fading for 25 years. The driver is both comprehensive and easy to understand, and keeps watch over remaining ink levels. The bundled software, meanwhile, is geared towards enhancing and automating your photo printing.

The 935 is not particularly fast. It pushed out 10 A4 pages of text at the default quality setting in just under six minutes, and the same number of pdf pages in a fraction more than five. However, the more demanding A4 test photo was ready for framing just one minute and seven seconds after we pressed the print button, and that was at highest quality on glossy paper. This proves once and for all that the Epson Stylus Photo 935 is a printer for the serious photographer, not the spreadsheet jockey.

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

Specifications:

• Piezo inkjet
• 100-page feeder
• 8.5ppm colour and mono quoted print speed
• 5,760dpi
• Two cartridges
• 32KB memory
• USB 1.1/Bluetooth
• 6.4kg, 492 x 290 x 228mm
• 2.5in LCD
• Cost per page 4.2p black, 8.2p colour