First Prints

This is the page that many of you will be waiting for, as per my previous reviews I am going to print a single sheet of A4 using our test chart. I will leave all the settings set to fully automatic and see what you can expect from the R1800 out of the box. The media I am using is Epson Premium Glossy A4. Please note that the samples below are actually scans of the prints and as such they will have lost some of the colour accuracy. However, I use the same settings for all my scans so any variation will be relative. All the scans are made with the Epson 4870 using Ed Hamrick's excellent VueScan software

Original file	Epson R1800	Epson R800

The first print (center image above) was too light for my taste. For the second print I clicked the Advanced button and selected a Gamma of 2.2 (default setting is 1.8). This produced an excellent print with neutral colours throughout. For the third print I selected the Epson SPR1800 Premium Glossy profile, this produced excellent colours but a slightly darker print. I will take a closer look at the colour space later in this review.

Settings used for first print	Second print was set to Gamma 2.2
2nd Print on Auto with Gamma set to 2.2	3rd print using SPR1800 Premium Glossy profile

Looking at the A4 prints in my hand, the reds are vibrant and well saturated, the yellow cotton reel seems to have lost some of its vibrancy, but the blue and green reels are excellent. The small b/w picture shows no sign of a colour cast in the Auto setting, but in the 3rd print for which I used the Epson profile, it is slightly warm but not unacceptable. Bearing in mind that the pictures above are the very first prints to come out of this printer, this is not a bad result. I will spend some time experimenting to produce the best possible quality print for my close up details.

Just for the record. The A4 full coverage prints took 1 minute 27 seconds to print using USB 2.0 (time is measured from the press of the OK button to final delivery in the front paper catcher).

Compared to:

The R1800 boasts a 1.5 picolitre drop size, this is smaller than the human eye can see, for all practical purposes you can forget about print dots. What I am looking for is image definition, colour accuracy and smooth gradients. Lets start by looking at some close up details of Sophie's eye ball and compare it to the competition.

Epson R1800	Epson R800
HP 8450	Epson 4000
Canon iP8500	Canon i9950

Looking at the eye balls, the R1800 puts in a fair performance, but perhaps not quite as sharp as the two Canon printers. The Canon printers use dye based inks, whereas the Epson printers are all using UltraChrome pigment inks. The smoothest looking print is the HP 8450. The grainiest print is the Epson 4000, but then this is an A2 printer so you might not be looking at this printers prints so close. I will cover colour on the next page.