How do you review a printer?

This is the question that had me scratching my noggin at first when given the opportunity, but not about to be outdone by a piece of equipment that has been around for almost as long as computers themselves, I acquiesced to giving it a bash.

After all, the PR company dubbed the Epson Stylus Photo 1410 the "mothership of printers" — now how can one say no to that?

A quick search on the internet later, I at least knew what this inkjet mystery is supposed to deliver: an A3/A4 photo printer that aims to be the solution for mid to high end users looking for something that will print quality photos.

Having some quality photos in need of quality printing, I loaded the individual print cartridges into the printer tray, slapped photo printing paper into the '1410's in tray, hooked up the power and USB cables, installed the accompanying software and printed away.

The first attempt, however, didn't come out so great. Is this what a mothership of printers is supposed to print like? Obviously not — so the printer head must be dirty. A quick run through the self-cleaning system provided with the install disk later and I was ready for print run two.

Which... left me completely gob-smacked, having never seen a "normal" inkjet printer delivering this kind of quality. The colours are rich and bright (depending on the source image, of course) and the ink refuses to smudge.

On an A4 size photo paper, it's impossible to see the individual inkjet dots. For this you'll have to go A3 but even then it's barely discernable to the eye. You'll have to look very closely to find any fault with it.

All this quality does, however, come at a bit of a price — yes, in price too (it goes for about R6500) but I'm more referring to the juice required. The Epson Stylus Photo 1410 needs quite a bit of ink to keep it running, and gurgles through the ink cartridges at an impressive rate.

Fortunately you can buy the different base ink cartridges separately, so if you use a little more black than yellow, you can simply replace the black ink cartridge when it comes to its end. The installed software will also prompt you in time to warn you when a particular colour is running empty, so your photos will continue to come out great — assuming you heed the warning, of course.

The Epson Stylus Photo 1410 is not going to be your average, every-day-use printer — the price tag and the fact that printing on plain paper is not the greatest will prevent that. But if you're looking for a good photo printer, this is most certainly it.

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