Epson Photo 1500W review
When it comes to photo quality printers, Epson is at the forefront with an ever increasing portfolio of high quality printers. Epson has now just announced their latest A3 model the Epson Stylus Photo 1500W. The 1500W printer uses the popular Claria dye based ink set and offers WiFi connectivity as well as PictBridge and the ability to print labels on inkjet compatible CD/DVD disks. So let’s take a look at this new model.
Setting up.
The first task after unpacking is to connect the power supply and turn on the 1500W printer. Press the ink button which moves the print head cradle into position, now insert the six individual Claria ink cartridges. Each cartridge is colour coded and has a unique coded plastic key, so you can’t physically fit it in the wrong slot. Close the cover and the printer primes the print heads with the inks, this process takes a couple of minutes. Next the drivers need to be installed.
As with most hardware and software these days, the user doesn’t have to worry too much about the technicalities, just insert the installation CD and a wizard takes care of the rest. Follow the on screen instructions and plug in the USB cable when instructed to do so. Once completed you are ready to start printing. The entire setting up process is very easy and will only take about 10 minutes to complete.
Printer in use.
This is where we start looking at the printer in detail and looking for things that may turn a few red lights ON for you. The thing that strikes me is how small the ink cartridges are especially for an A3+ printer. The 1500W uses six individual Claria cartridges, Yellow, Cyan, Magenta, Light Cyan, Light Magenta and Black. These are the same ink cartridges that many Epson A4 printers use, including the All in One Epson PX720WD printer. If you want to produce a lot of A3 photos then these small cartridges are not going to yield too many prints. However, looking at the photos, they do display exceptional quality, I will come back to this later.
