The most interesting thing about the Epson Stylus Photo R800 is that it holds a staggering eight ink cartridges instead of the standard two or three.

Notably, red and blue inks have been added to the usual CMYK group to increase the colour gamut. Using the extra inks creates a colour response comparable to that of Silver Halide negative.

This creates a better colour depth in scenes that use these colours such as sky, sea, sunsets and autumnal shots - and it works. There are also two black inks, one for matt, one for gloss and a gloss optimiser cartridge to assist gloss images.

You can produce up to A4 sized borderless prints at a maximum of 5,760 x 1,440dpi with optimisation though software. We found the photo printing results to be excellent, especially on the matt media. The high resolution combined with the new inks really does produce quality images with little fuss.

The accompanying Epson printer drivers and status monitor programs aren't as invasive and resource hungry as in the past. The driver, despite being rammed with settings, is easy to navigate.

In our tests it managed a photo in around 97 seconds, which is fairly quick for this kind of quality. It also managed around two pages a minute of mixed text and images.

The cartridges are all specified for 400 pages at five per cent coverage and cost £11.90 (£10.13 ex VAT) each, bar the gloss optimiser, which is £6.35 (£5.41). This puts the cost, replacing all cartridges at £89.65 inc VAT, which is expensive, but the quality is top notch.

Overall, the R800 is an excellent printer, but its price means it's one for the photo enthusiast only.

Contact: Epson
www.epson.co.uk

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