Product Review: The Epson Stylus Photo R320 Printer

The Epson Stylus Photo R320 is billed as a photo printer, and it does print pretty good photographs, (compared to a standard home printer, not commercial photo printing labs), but in the long run, it may not be very economical to use it for photo printing.

The R320 prints photos well as long as you do a lot of print formatting and use high quality (read: expensive) paper. However, it is very time consuming to format, and most likley Paint Shop as well, the photographs into something that will make a good print, and the margin for error is high even with a lot of preparation. A lot of the expensive paper gets wasted on small formatting errors. The upside of the preparation nightmare is that there are hundreds of different variables to choose from- all kinds of edges, borders, watermarks, color schemes, etc. There are landscape and portrait views, headers, footers- it is possible to make it look pretty much anyway you want it to.

The photo prints themselves are octen not quite as good as a commercial printer, but they are very good for home printed photos. The main reason for using it, then, is for the convenience factor of doing it at home, and for saving the cost of printing at a lab. However, due to the complexity and the perephenalia costs, neither reason is enough to keep using the R320.

The main drawback of using the R320 has been the cost of upkeep- the ink does not last through very many pictures, less than 100 in my experience, and the ink itself is expensive. The inks all seem to run out at around the same time, which is convenient for purchasing purposes, but is a large expense all at once. The paper that makes the best photos- premium glossy, is also expensive and runs out quickly if you make any mistakes.

The costs of keeping the printer happy have so far not far outrun the costs of just taking film down to a lab and having them developed. You do have a lot of control over the end result, but unless you have a great deal of time and money to spend on your photos, the printer is just not worth it in the long run.

The R320 will print other things as needed, not just photographs, but black and white document prints are no better than prints made with any other printer that you probably already have, and there are some of the complex formatting issues that exist with the photographic printing. Based on all of these experiences with this printer, unless there is a very specific need for it that transcends the costs, the R320 is just not worth it.