Epson Stylus Photo 1290S

Happily swallowing oversize A3, the Stylus Photo 2100 is the dream machine of many a designer. But at £600 it's not cheap, so the 1290S is a welcome addition to the range, slashing the price by reducing the feature set.

The seven individual ink wells have been reduced to two - one black, one five-colour cartridge for photos. It's lost the output-catching hammock, even though it will print banners on rolls of paper. It is also missing the integrated razor for slicing off finished prints, and the tray for printing directly on a CD.

Even so, there's plenty to justify the price. The 2,880 dots per inch resolution delivers flawless photos, and the Photoquicker 3.2 software makes short work of printing thumbnail contact sheets or awkward-size larger images.

Installation is a breeze and the driver gives feedback on ink levels and printing progress. Connection is by means of parallel or USB cable and, as the power transformer is integrated within the device, there is no need for an external power brick.

Novices will welcome the fuss-free styling; just three buttons and two status lights adorn the front of the casing.

It's fairly nippy, delivering an A4 photo at best quality on Epson photo paper in 12 minutes 51 seconds. Ten pages of word-processed text at normal quality on photocopy paper were printed a second shy of six minutes and, at the same settings, 10 pages each of a pdf and mixed content document in five minutes 31 seconds, and five minutes 37 seconds respectively.

We've seen better output on photocopy paper from other printers - characters were a little feathered - but this is intended as a photo printer. You don't buy an A3 photo printer if you only want to output text - this is an artist's tool; a role it fills well.

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

Specifications:

• Thermal inkjet
• 100-sheet paper feeder
• 9.4ppm mono, 9ppm colour
• 2 cartridges
• 6 colours
• USB and parallel interfaces
• 609 x 779 x 416mm (w x d x h) with all trays extended
• 8.4kg