BIOS: Technology Means Business

The Stylus Photo R340 is Epson's latest consumer colour inkjet. The A4 printer is designed to allow you to print photos either from a computer or directly from a digital camera. It also sports a fixed 2.4-inch colour LCD preview display, which makes light work of printing images from a digital camera or memory card independently from your computer.

Designed for digital photo enthusiasts looking for a mid-priced solution, the Stylus Photo R340's LCD is used for previewing, selecting and cropping images before you print. The display also allows you to select from a choice of photo-finishing options. For instance, you can adjust contrast, brightness and saturation, select filters and choose print layouts. Photos can also be printed directly from memory cards, or via PictBridge, USB Direct Print, compatible digital cameras or from mobile phones via Bluetooth (optional adapter required).

The optional Bluetooth Photo Print Adapter (£39.99 ex. VAT) lets you print wirelessly from Bluetooth-enabled devices, such as digital cameras, PDAs, mobile phones, and laptop computers. While the product complies with the Bluetooth Specification, it is not guaranteed to work with all devices that have Bluetooth wireless technology. It's also worth noting that the communication range of the adapter is approximately 10 meters (33 feet). However, this may vary depending on obstacles between devices, signal quality, magnetic fields, static electricity and electromagnetic interference, software, operating system, reception sensitivity, and antenna performance, so it's not an attractive option compared to Wi-Fi (not supported).

The Stylus Photo R340 (483x478x297mm, 5.4kg) is one of the highest quality photo printer in its class, and its 6-ink (Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, Light Magenta) Micro Piezo inkjet system delivers an optimised resolution of 5760x1440dpi while the Variable-sized Droplet Technology creates droplets as small as 3pl for crisp and defined images. The printer is pretty slow though, taking a whopping 9m 32s to print a borderless A4 photo at its highest quality setting and a 6m 51s for a borderless 6x4-inch image using Epson's Ultra Glossy Photo Paper.

The benefit of having individual ink cartridges is that you only need to replace the colour that you have used, making it a cost-effective choice compared to low-end models that require you to change the whole colour tank when just one colour expires. Another key feature is that the printer includes a direct CD printing function so that you can create professional-looking CDs and DVDs using Epson's bundled Print CD software. Its hardly a threat to LightScribe DVD burners, but the ability to print to optical media is a neat additional feature that will be greatly appreciated by families working on creative projects.

PhotoEnhance technology is included which automatically detects the type of scene in the digital image and adjusts colour reproduction accordingly to help ensure a photo quality every time. For example, when an image is detected as 'portrait', PhotoEnhance makes sure the skin tones brighter and the contrast softer. When the image is detected as 'landscape', the contrast is made harder, accentuating detail and texture and the colour is more saturated.

Similar to most Epson home printers, the Stylus Photo R340 comes with a range of excellent software utilities. For instance, the Print Image Framer (P.I.F.) tool lets you add, copy, or delete P.I.F. frames for supported digital cameras, printers with a memory card slot, or even Epson Easy Photo Print software, while PIF designer lets you create and edit P.I.F. (PRINT Image Framer) frames.

Epson's Print CD lets you create your own label design and then print it directly onto an 8- or 12cm CD or DVD (caddy supplied), Web-To-Page (Windows only) makes printing Web pages easier by resizing them to fit your paper and giving you a preview of your printed output, and Easy Photo Print lets you lay out and print digital images on various types of paper. The step-by-step instructions in the window let you preview the printed images and get the effects you want without having to make any difficult settings.

Finally, Epson's excellent Creativity Suite is a group of programs that lets you scan, save, manage, edit, and print your images. Using the main program, File Manager, you can scan and save your images, and then display them in an easy-to-use window. From there you can print them, attach them to an e-mail message, or open them in an image-editing program. File Manager can also be used to retrieve images from a scanner, digital camera, or memory card and send the files directly to the application you want to use, as well as view supported images as thumbnails or as a slide show. There are also basic retouching options, but you'll want to stick with your regular image-editing program.

You can use the printer's memory card slots to copy photos to a computer connected to the printer. You can also use them to copy photos on your computer to your memory card. Supported memory cards include CompactFlash, MagicGate Memory Stick, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Microdrive, MultiMediaCard, SD Card, SmartMedia, xD-Picture Card, and xD-Picture Card Type M. Memory Stick PRO Duo, Memory Stick Duo, MagicGate Memory Stick Duo, and miniSD Card require additional adapters. The memory cards support DCF-compliant JPEG or TIFF format images, EXIF Version 2.1/2.2/2.21, and image sizes between 80x80 and 9200x9200 pixels. Up to 999 files are supported.

You can achieve decent results with most types of plain bond paper. However, coated papers provide superior printouts because they absorb less of the printer's dye-based ink. Epson provides special papers that are formulated for the ink used in Epson ink jet printers, so you'll definitely get the best results with these types of paper. In our print quality tests, colour photos exhibited sharp details, even in areas of shadow, with plenty of contrast and minimal dithering. General saturation levels, however, were a little too deep by default. Greyscale photos printed very well, showing good contrast and sharp details overall. Skin tones looked smooth and realistic, but were again a little oversaturated.

The Stylus Photo R340 (Best Current Price: £122 ex. VAT) is in no shape or form designed for office-oriented features. Indeed, you can forget about top-notch print quality on plain paper, though text did appear dark and solid on high-quality inkjet paper. In other words, using this printer for school projects and large print runs would prove very expensive if you need optimum print quality. The printer also lacks support for automatic double-sided printing and doesn't support an optional automatic document feeder (ADF), so you'll constantly be loading paper into the 100-sheet output tray if you use it for large-volume printing. [7.5]