Epson's Photo RX620 (456x439x299mm, 10kg) is a robust and high performing all-in-one photo centre for photo enthusiasts. Placing the emphasis on high resolution printing and scanning, the Stylus Photo RX620 all-in-one offers a complete solution for home photo users working from both digital and analogue photo sources, but will be especially appreciated by those who have a portfolio of film-based images. It's not the fastest printer on the block, but its results are definitely worth the wait. The Stylus Photo RX620 is an outstanding value-for-money offering for discerning photographers.

Pros: Fantastic print quality; high resolution scanner; colour LCD viewer
Cons: Big, bulky and heavy; no built-in fax, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi


The Photo RX620 is built for printing photos. To highlight this fact it comes with a built-in transparency unit for positive and negative film scanning, a 2400x4800dpi MatrixCCD scanner (3.3 Dmax), a 2.5in. colour LCD viewer with timer, PictBridge and USB Direct Print to print directly without the need for a computer, as well as a USB port to backup data directly to CD recorders and Zip drives. It even supports all the popular memory cards - including USB flash drives - so you should have no compatibility issues, regardless of the digital camera you own.

The Photo RX620 is designed squarely for inputting and outputting high-quality photographs up to A4 in size, so we've tested it purely for that purpose - you'll see no benchmark graph at the end of the review. Instead, we focussed on how easy it was to print photos directly from old negative film sources, assessed the unit's print quality, and tested the printer for PC independent printing. You'd be amazed at how often these types of products flounder when they're not being driven by a computer!

Besides its fantastic quality output, another great feature of the printer is that there are a number of ways you can actually print. For example, you can hook the printer up to your computer and you it like a traditional printer, you can connect a PictBridge-compatible digital camera or camcorder to the front-mounted USB port, you can print directly from a memory card (MemoryStick, SD, CompactFlash, Microdrive, SmartMedia and Multimedia Card), or you can print directly from a scanned image. An optional adapter is required for printing from mini-SD and RS-MMC cards. Epson even supplies a plastic transparency unit that lets you scan up to six 35mm frames and transparencies.

The control panel on the front of the printer is relatively easy to use and the 2.5in. preview screen is clear and bright. Unfortunately, the screen is fixed, so can't be tilted to suit, and the on-screen instructions occasionally provide the wrong information. For instance, when we encountered a print problem in testing it ordered us to open the paper output tray, when in fact the printer was not loaded with any paper. Very frustrating! Nevertheless, you can alter the screen's brightness and a screensaver is automatically invoked when the printer sits idle for over 13 minutes.

Producing printouts is a snap and any technophobes will be able to output great quality images with the minimum of effort (as long as the source image is decent, that is). In fact, if you don't intend to tweak images at all, you should be able to have borderless prints sitting in your hands in less than 15 minutes from opening the product's box. The basic printing process is really easy. To print from a memory card you simply insert the card into the dedicated memory card slot at the front the unit (flip-down lid protects the ports) and then select whether you want to print individual images, every image stored on the memory card, a contiguous range of photos, or photos with DPOF information.

You can select the number of copies (1 to 99), paper type, and whether you want the print to be in colour or black-and-white. You can also print from an index sheet, although this really is a needless way to waste ink. An index sheet is a printout of all the images stored on a memory card or camera. You can then select the thumbnail images you want to print in high-quality mode by marking the index sheet, as well as the type of paper you intend to use. Once you've made you selection, you then place the index sheet onto the scanner platen and follow the on-screen instructions. Before long, the Photo RX620 then starts to output the selected images.

Alternatively, you can print thumbnails of all photos, crop and enlarge images, and print photos with frames. However, you'll have to use the supplied PIF Designer software and Image Framer Tool in order to create your own frames. There are a number of other printing options too, such as the ability to print images with a 3mm border, print on the upper part of a page, print up to 20 images on a single page, or print stickers using Epson's fun Photo Stickers media (definitely one for the kids, although this option is great for club memberships).

There are also a number of options where you can tweak an image to produce a better print. For example, you can use the printer's built-in PRINT Image Matching function to auto-correct an image (photo data must support the PIM standard), remove digital noise, alter the brightness, contrast, sharpness and saturation, add date and time stamps, and automatically trim the areas of an image that extend beyond the margins of the selected print size.

To print from traditional film you have to remove the reflective document mat that clip onto the underside of the scanner's lid. From here you then load 35mm film strips and transparencies into their respective slots on the supplied transparency holder and place them base side down onto the platen. Once loaded onto the scanner, you then have to follow a few on-screen instructions before your film is scanned and output onto your chosen substrate. Another neat feature is that you can scan and save to a memory card or to an external CD-R or Zip drive, should you want to print at a later date. After you have finished scanning, the transparency holder can then be docked inside the document cover for safe keeping.

Print quality is ultimately what counts with a photo printer and the Photo RX620 won't disappoint. Its 6-colour inkjet system prints at a maximum resolution of 5760x1440dpi using a droplet size of 3pl and 540 nozzles (90 nozzles per Black, Cyan, Magenta, Light Cyan, Light Magenta, Yellow), and its output quality is stunning - you have to look really closely to see slight vertical banding and ink droplets (flaws found on all inkjet printers).

Viewed at arms length however, prints are as good as any you can get from film. In particular, colours were vibrant and lifelike, details were crisp, skin tones were natural, and saturation levels were spot on. In fact, print quality was superb without having to alter any default settings. In case you're wondering, we tested the printer with a Canon EOS 300D digital camera and an EOS EF-S 18-55mm, f/3.5-5.6 lens).

On the downside, the Photo RX620 has not built-in fax, so it's not a complete all-in-one device, and its paper handling is pretty poor - it can only handle up to 100 sheets and outputted paper tends to just slide out from the printer onto the surrounding work area. Its print speed is also below par, and although Epson claims an A4 colour print speed of 2 minutes and 54s for 6x4in. photos, we could only manage 5m 16s and 2m 25s, respectively - printed from a 32MB CompactFlash card and using the unit's default settings. Nevertheless, the wait was definitely worth it.

BIOS, Feb 10, 05 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In All-in-One printer