Features
Despite its 5,760x1,440 resolution, the Epson Stylus Photo R2400
has relatively large 3.5pl droplets and a mere 180 nozzles per
colour. But the big enhancement to the R2400 over the R2200 is
the company's UltraChromeK3 ink set, which incorporates the
traditional six photo primaries -- CMYK plus light cyan and
magenta -- and supplements them with Light Black and Light Light
Black inks, otherwise known to mere mortals as medium grey and
light grey. The company has also reworked the screening
algorithms for black-and-white printing and, recognising that
great black-and-white actually has some colour, created an
advanced black-and-white print mode in the driver that allows you
to tone your images with yellow, light-magenta and light-cyan
inks.
The inks plus the innumerable paper-handling options detailed in my discussion of the R2400's design comprise the unique features of the printer; the rest is fairly mundane. It has USB 2.0 and FireWire ports for both Mac and Windows compatibility.
I have to admit a partiality for the colour-management implementation in Epson's drivers over those of Canon and HP. For one, it's the most sophisticated I've seen in a desktop printer. The driver provides three colour spaces to choose from: Epson Vivid, Epson Standard, and Adobe RGB, as well as three different ICM options (basic, advanced and host-based). The advanced selection lets you define individual profiles for images, graphics and text. But the most important reason I like Epson's implementation: there's a clearly marked Off option. Without it, you're never quite sure if your software's in charge or whether you're double-applying colour management.
Performance
Overall, I suspect the Epson Stylus Photo R2400 is a relatively
costly printer to operate. Epson's ink yield estimates assume 5
percent coverage per primary, which more closely matches a
business document than a photo; from that, they derive page
yields of 450 colour pages and 520 black pages per cartridge. I'd
say it's at least double that, because most people will use a
much higher density of ink. Plus, in my experience, the R2400
runs through ink a bit more rapidly; a generous estimate is about
100 to 150 prints before a given cartridge cries uncle. Also,
there's always at least one ink tank that the driver reports has
less than 10 percent of its capacity left, which means that
little red out-of-ink light is blinking more often than not.
Wilhelm Imaging Research's longevity tests for the R2400 are still in the works, but the results should correlate quite closely with those of Epson's Stylus Pro 4800 and Stylus Pro 9800, which use the same inks and many of the same papers -- upwards of 60 years for any of the premium papers when framed under glass. As usual, the longevity numbers increase quickly as your storage conditions improve.
Image quality
The Epson Stylus Photo R2400's prints are worth it, though.
First, Epson has resolved several notable problems it had with
the SP2200's blacks on glossy paper, including a gloss deficit,
bronzing, metamerism -- colours appearing
differently under different light sources, and the tendency of
all the inks to show scratches. Unlike the R800 and
R1800, which apply a gloss overcoat for consistency, the R2400's
UltraChromeK3 droplets are encapsulated in the glossy resin. The
new inks are higher density than the old -- Epson says they
achieve a maximum density (Dmax) of 2.4D compared to 2.2D for the
old inks.
Both colour and monochrome prints render beautifully. There's a slight but visible hue difference between the R1800's reds and the R2400's, thanks to the R1800's dedicated red ink tank, but otherwise the R2400 seems to be able to faithfully reproduce a similarly broad range of hues and tones. The gloss deficit is gone -- blacks remain glossy on glossy papers -- and colour fidelity across paper types is excellent for all but the lightest shades (which are affected more by the colour of the paper). It delivers very good tonal separation in areas of subtle variation, such as wet sand. Colours look vivid and punchy when appropriate, while skin tones and memory colours -- sky and grass, for example -- appear fairly accurate.
As long as you print using the Black and White colour-matching in the Epson driver, monochrome prints look great: sharp, with little metamerism and a broad tonal range that includes nice tonal separation in normally problematic shadow areas. Though the R2400 prints black-and-white using both composite grey and the dedicated black inks, the driver seems to throw too much cyan into the mix when treating greyscale as colour and thus requires more extensive custom profiling. Since the driver surfaces the Black and White option only when using a select set of papers -- Premium Glossy Photo Paper, Premium Luster Photo Paper, Premium Semigloss Photo Paper, Matte Paper-Heavyweight, Watercolor Paper-Radiant White, Enhanced Matte Paper, Double-Sided Matte Paper, Velvet Fine Art Paper and UltraSmooth Fine Art Paper -- you'll have to do some serious faking and tweaking to use that mode with other papers.
Speed
Though not the speediest car in the garage, the Epson Stylus
Photo R2400 holds its own far better than did its predecessor and
fits neatly -- as usual -- between the Canon i9900 and the HP
Photosmart 8750. Not surprisingly, you take a significant speed
hit when bumping up the resolution. A 6x10 print in Photo mode
took 1 minute, 34 seconds from click to clunk, compared to just
over 4 minutes in Best Photo mode, a slowdown of 164 percent. And
though I didn't time it, PhotoRPM mode -- the highest resolution
available -- took even longer.
Service and support
Epson has all the bases covered on its service and support. The
Stylus Photo R2400 comes with the usual one-year warranty, and
Epson supplies the de rigueur online drivers, FAQs, and
documentation, as well as an interactive troubleshooter. Though
the help system in the driver is pretty useless, the latest
revision of the HTML manual finally delivered answers for most of
my questions. If you do buy this printer, you'll also have a
plethora of online communities to rely on for help.
Epson Stylus Photo R2400
Company: Epson
Price: AU$1,799
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