Epson Stylus Photo R1900 – Printer for Advanced Photographers

Pros

The Epson Stylus Photo R1900 offers superb color photo printing, is roll feed capable, is sufficiently sized for scrap bookers, and apart from this all it offers long-lasting prints, numerous paper options, CD- and DVD-label printing and has a new ink set that enhances the skin tones.

Cons

The Epson Stylus Photo R1900 doesn’t have a card reader and has huge footprint.

Introduction

You don’t see momentous advancement in printer technology that often and even if they take place not many of them are worth noticing. It has been three years since Epson released its extensively popular Stylus Photo R1800 and now after three years the company has brought an upgrade to it in the form of Epson Stylus Photo R1900. The Stylus Photo R1900 comes with an all new variant of company’s pigment-based UltraChrome Hi-Gloss ink set named as UltraChrome Hi-Gloss2. The new ink set brings an additional cartridge of orange color rather than the blue used in R1800. It offers a tad better skin tones.

The Stylus Photo R1900 also gets an enhancement in the way the printer can translate the colors in the picture taken from your digital camera to the colors which the printer can reproduce. The company is naming it the all new system Radiance Technology, while there have been some claims from Epson regarding the smoother color transition and grain reductions from printer, in actual it has been a whole new set of look-up tables which according to the company could be bettered and maximized in the number of colors the printer can offer.

As the Stylus Photo R19 comes with all new set of ink, we cant compare what difference exactly the Radiance Technology has made here, but one thing is pretty apparent here, and that’s is that the Stylus Photo R1900 has a wide assortment of printing colors that can be a problem for the other inkjets. Some different colors that this printer offers include shades of blue and deep purples. Also as it has a different set of orange ink, you surely can expect few shades of darker yellow here.

Design

The design of Stylus Photo R1900 is almost identical to Stylus Pro 3800. Though, both the printer uses the pigment inks, but the Pro 3800 which is more expensive one uses the K3 ink set from Epson and does not support roll-feed media. Although, the ink cartridge in Pro 3800 is definitely largely than the Stylus Photo R1900, which will be beneficial for you in long print runs and will give you better money for print value. But the orange ink found in Stylus Photo R1900 is missing from Pro 3800. Certainly, it’s clear that the Pro 3800 is the printer for the people who prints a lot and in addition it is priced twice the price of R1900.

Most of the specifications of Stylus Photo R1900 are also similar to its precursor. The printer can print on CDs and DVDs, has the maximum print resolution of 5760 x 1440 dpi and with minimum ink droplet size of 1.5 Pico liters. Of course, the CDs and DVDs used for printing will be special ones with white coating on them. One another enhancement in R1900 is in the form of MicroPiezo AMC, which has been enhanced by Epson. Though the printer doesn’t have an inbuilt Ethernet connection, by it comes with two Hi-Speed USB 2.0 jacks positioned on the rear end of the printer and lets you connect one more printer from it. Also there is a separate USB jack positioned on the frontage of the printer to facilitate printing through PictBridge. The driver included with Epson Stylus Photo R1900 is basically the same that were used for all the Stylus printers from Epson, so there hasn’t been any major change in this department for Stylus Photo R1900.

System Configuration

Starting price: $439.99 – $549.99
Manufacturer: Epson
Part Number: C11C698201
Printer Type: Photo printer, Ink-jet – Color
Operating System Supported: Apple MacOS X 10.4.x,   Apple MacOS X 10.3.9,   Microsoft Windows Vista,   Apple MacOS X 10.5.x,   Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Microsoft Windows 2000 / XP

Dimensions (W x D x H): 24.3 x 12.7 x 8.4 in
System weight: 26.9 lbs
Inkjet Technology: Epson Advanced Micro Piezo
Media Type Supported: Photo paper,   DVD discs,   Velvet paper,   Plain paper,   Watercolor paper,   Semi-gloss paper and Glossy photo paper
Software Included: EPSON Print CD

Power Device: Power adapter – Internal
Compliant Standards: FCC Part 15 B, UL 60950-1, FCC Class B certified, CISPR 22 Class B and CSA C22.2 No. 60950-1-03
Interface: USB and Direct print USB
Connectivity Technology: Wired
Ink Type: Epson UltraChrome Hi-Gloss
Ink Palette: 8-ink magenta, Cyan, photo black yellow, red, gloss optimizer and orange

Performance

The Epson Stylus Photo R1900 definitely is not an exceptionally fast printer, neither for texts nor for the photos, but still can print photos at satisfactory speeds. Though you can increase the speed for the printer, but that will have a straight impact on the quality of the prints and you will get really poor quality prints.

The print quality from Stylus Photo R1900 is also pretty decent with smooth color transitions, and even though the transitions here were not the best that we have seen, but still delivers great print quality. So the overall performance from Stylus Photo R1900 was simply satisfactory and nothing especial.

Support

The Epson’s website offers all the essential support information for Stylus Photo R1900. You can get drivers and downloads, FAQs, documents and manuals and material safety data sheets and other sort of contact information that you want. You can use the website for any sort of troubleshooting on your own or for contacting the technical support from Epson.

Word from the Experts

The Epson Stylus Pro R1900 is a decent 13 inch wide photo printer ideal for scrap bookers who likes printing with pigment ink or for the modern photographers who likes to print large, but don’t want to buy a pro-level printer.