BIOS: Technology Means Business

Epson's latest inkjet photo printer is designed for home users looking to produce cost-effective photographs up to A4 in size, as well as personalise printable CDs and DVDs. It's far from being the most complete photo studio, but its low cost, wide range of features and above-average print quality make it a solid choice for general photo printing duties. Competitively priced, easy to use and relatively economical to run, the Stylus Photo R220 is hard to beat for the money.

Pros: Attractive price; direct CD/DVD printing; excellent print quality
Cons: Doesn't support bordlerless A4 prints; no memory card slots

The Stylus Photo R220 is designed to meet the needs of those who want to obtain above average-quality photos up to A4 in size from the comfort of their own home or office. The silver-and-black printer is typical in both its design and footprint (470x483x302mm, 5.17kg), so you should make plenty of room if you intend to use it on your desktop. If you only intend to print 6x4in. photos and space is at a premium, you'd be much better off with the company's excellent, but much more expensive, PictureMate 500 (£149 ex. VAT).

The printer is based on a 6-colour (CcMmYK) MicroPiezo inkjet system that delivers crisp resolutions up to 5760x1440dpi (optimised dpi), which, when coupled with Epson's proprietary variable size droplet technology (droplets as small as 3-picoliters), produces borderless photos that are bright, sharp and more vivid than a lot of more expensive products. The USB 2.0 printer is a little sluggish though, with claimed print speeds of up to 15ppm in both black-and-white and colour, and around 57 seconds for a 4x6-inch photograph. In the real world, a top-quality A4 image takes around 4m 30s and a 4x6-inch photo around 1m 50s.

All of the dye-based inks are in separate cartridges, too, which is a more cost-effective design compared to similarly-priced printers that require you to replace the whole colour cartridge when just one colour runs out. Other neat feature of the Stylus Photo R220, especially considering its attractive price, is its ability to print directly to special-coated CDs and DVDs. To personalise a CD or DVD, the Stylus Photo R220 comes complete with simple-to-use Epson Print CD software, which is a great feature for producing your own photo CDs, music and movie collections.

Epson's Creativity Suite is another useful software package that allows you to easily manage and manipulate all of your digital images. For instance, using Epson's Easy Photo Print you can select and edit your images to then print in your preferred format, for example, A4, 10x15cm or two photos per A4 page. Unfortunately, there's no Print Image Matching plug-in for Adobe's Photoshop, no black-and-white filters, and RAW printing isn't supported.

Paper types supported are run-of-the-mill, comprising Plain Paper, Epson Premium Bright White, Glossy Photo Paper, Double-Sided Matte, Premium Glossy Photo Paper, Premium Luster, Premium Semigloss, ColorLife, Matte Paper Heavyweight, Ink Jet Transparencies, Photo Quality Ink Jet Paper, Greeting Cards, Photo Stickers, and Envelopes. Roll paper isn't supported, but it can print borderless photo sizes of 3.5x5-, 4x6-, 5x7-, 8x10-inch, Letter and Panoramic (8.3x23.4-inch). Maximum paper thickness is 90g/m2 and maximum paper capacity is just 120 sheets, 10 envelopes, or one transparency.

Print quality from the Stylus Photo R220 is above average for this class of printer, and the ability to print directly to special-coated CDs and DVDs is an added bonus. Something's got to give, however. Most noticeable is the lack of Epson's UltraChrome K3 inks, as well as no memory card slots, image preview display, or PictBridge support for computer-independent printing, which is disappointing considering the unit is designed primarily to output photos. The printer also lacks a network interface and PostScript driver, the latter of which should be missed by Photoshop users.

The Stylus Photo R220's print driver is also relatively basic, yet easy-to-use, so advanced users aren't provided with black and white image controls. The driver settings also lack quick toning presets, separate controls for shadow and highlight tonality control, maximum optical density control, reduced gloss differential, and custom tone control.

Furthermore, Epson has omitted its proprietary driver and screening technology, which offers a unique method for converting colour digital images into quality black-and-white prints. If you want these types of controls, you'll have to spend almost three times as much and opt for one of Epson's high-end offerings. Nevertheless, the Stylus Photo R220's output is still very good and it's a solid offering overall. [8]