EPSON STYLUS PHOTO R1900: Living large.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Smooth color transitions, excellent skin tones, Look-Up-Table, prints on art papers and CDs, roll feeder

Cons: Large footprint, cost of consumables (ink), small ink tanks, average B/W prints

The Bottom Line: 
A great large format color printer for a reasonable price (for serious enthusiasts and some professionals).

Author's Review
There is a time in every photographers life, when digital becomes a real alternative or even preference. Of course if you just started, you may never have considered film anyway. Many enthusiasts and professionals alike simply cannot be without a quality printer. Despite all the advances in recent history, there is still a difference between aspiring professional models and consumer grade printers. The latter (like the excellent Epson R260) are typically built for vibrant photos which don't necessarily have to last for a long time nor need to be very accurate in color rendering. Now that the R1900 has been released in the US and landed on my desk, I certainly feel privileged as color rendition is certainly a step up from mentioned consumer model. Even if that was to be expected, the R1900 knows to impress.


IN A NUTSHELL

The R1900 is Epson's first printer to deploy Orange pigmented ink in order to improve skin tones ... a typical Achilles heel of many printers below $1000. Further, especially the Cyan has been reformulated to compensate for the eliminated Blue ink from the predecessor R1800. In the process, the ability to reproduce deep Purple has significantly improved as well. Epson claims to be able to reproduce several trillion shades of color, which certainly speaks for smooth transitions, but makes you wonder how to make use of that with the typical 24bit color depth (16 mio. shades of color) -- if it wasn't for internal rendering technicalities.

While generally very similar to the R1800 in both price and targeted market, the R1900 offers both speedier prints and more color accuracy due to a newly developed lookup table (LUT) which matches colors of the original picture with predefined render techniques (matrix) to reflect that color on paper. It also speeds up the process by an alleged 30% compared to the R1800. My comparison only allows for the R260 and the R1900 certainly manages to complete the same job 50% faster. However, time is not a major criteria in my daily work (as an enthusiast).

The improvements, of course, come at a price. The base price for the printer didn't change much when ignoring the currently available $100 instant rebate which drops the street price of the R1800 to roughly $350. The R1900 is new and naturally sold at full price or slightly below. Mine changed hands for $475. Surprised? Well, the Epson store offered a general 10% coupon and $50 mail-in rebate when adding certain paper ($25) to the order, tax free and without shipping cost. Sweet! But that's not the only cost as ink is typically the largest expense anyway. Upgrading from the R260 now means two more cartridges to buy for a full set, though each tank is slightly less expensive than the Claria ink of the R260. The biggest hurdle is availability, though, as you will be hard-pressed to walk into any brick-n-mortar store and get a full set of HighGloss2 ink (which of course is not compatible with the R1800).


DETAILS

Style/Design: [****-] - The R1900 got a fresh makeover and presents itself in a more edgy design with a more subtle Silver than its predecessor. Despite the modern appearance, the printer is still fairly big and both printing width of up to 13 inches and size for the print head (w/ 8 cartridges) sign responsible for the majority of that size (especially width). Add the roll feeder and extend the paper tray and the printer is making its presence quite noticeable.

Color Rendering: [*****] - Blame the LUT if you must, but the R1900 exhibits excellent smooth transitions which only truly distinguish themselves from the R1800 in a direct side-to-side comparison. However, the reformulated ink and dot pattern (render) certainly does create smooth prints as usually not seen in this price segment. Skin tones are less "blotchy" and that's a big plus for fine art portraits. The overall vibrancy is hard to compare as my direct reference would be the Claria ink which is dye based and generally very vibrant anyway (at the expense of smooth transitions and weaknesses in both deep purple and skin colors as well as pastels).

Ink: [****-] - Epson appear to reformulate their ink with every new model, which might be interpreted as a way to lock you in to a new model as the new ink typically is not compatible with older printers (not sure why). Blame greedy Epson officials if you must, but it's common practice throughout the industry. The revised pigment based ink is claimed to render stronger blues and better skin tones for which the added Orange and the reformulated Cyan and Magenta take credit. The ink technology also has been revised for a more consistent color rendering under different lighting conditions which of course has its limits since it can't compensate for a light spectrum that's missing a few ranges like a basic fluorescent light would. The print head is now coated to reduce clogging up nozzles which is a common issue for inkjet printers and especially pigment based technology. So far I have no good data to verify how effective the coating might be. However, sporadic use shows significant ink usage due to the cleaning process (at least more than I was used to with the dye-based Claria ink).

Cost: [***--] The R1900 isn't breaking any ground in the economy department. The base price is slightly higher than the R1800, but ink is roughly the same. With droplet size being controlled by the same DX5 technology (down to 1.5 pL droplets), consumption is about the same an heavily depends on the printed media anyway. It's common to have individual ink tanks in order to maximize usage of remaining ink when one tank runs out. A set of 8 replacement cartridges changes hands for roughly $100 which isn't that much more than the $80 a set of six costs for the consumer grade Stylus R260 and the likes. Of course the larger the prints and the more absorbent the media the quicker the cartridge is used up too, especially with the used low-capacity cartridges. Currently there are no high-capacity tanks or economy bundles available.

Speed: [****-] The R1900 claims to be 30% faster than the R1800, if that matters to you it certainly results in a nice productivity gain (or a faster way to deplete your ink). Either way, optimizations are apparent without being all too noticeable for single prints. Relative to the R260, however, the R1900 is both visibly faster and smoother (quieter). The paper feed mechanism on the R260 sometimes makes me wonder if the printer is going to rip itself apart when paper gets low.

B/W Prints: [***--] As the ink set includes a glossy Black and a matte Black, these are options only to adapt to different paper types and don't result in more reproducible Grey tones. Especially lighter Grey is still a bit handicapped in the ability to render fine tonal detail and no match for a dedicated model with at least one shade of Grey (rather than Black). For home usage, this isn't a big issue as especially high-key ("contrasty") prints are still great. Gallery quality B/W portraits require the R2400 with actually three shades of Black (a.k.a. Grey) compared to only one Black in the R1900. The output is impressive with very detailed Grey shades and excellent detail rendering. In the end, the R1900 is clearly designed for color prints. Would be nice though if one could simply swap ink sets to switch between color and b/w pictures.

Print Media: [****-] Pigment based ink is generally easier to apply to a wide variety of substrates and the R1900 reflects that trend by allowing the whole gamut of media from (typically very absorbent) fine art paper to glossy and CDs or DVDs. Provided you find a suitable profile (which regulates paper specific parameters), the output is fairly consistent, and of course has the greatest chance with Epson's own paper as those profiles are built in. The name "UltraChrome Hi-Gloss2" sort of gives it away that the droplets are optimized for glossy or luster type media, which in this case means that saturated color areas still have a slight gloss to them even when printed on matte media. As for B/W prints, the R2400 may be a better fit for matte media since the UltraChrome K3 ink isn't as glossy. Nevertheless, for my favorite output media (Luster finish), the R1900 is a perfect fit, not to mention the ability to print from roll in order to achieve prints up to 40 inches long (for more you need special software as the Epson driver "only" supports up to 40 inches or 1 meter).

Extras: [***--] The R1900 is a no-frills-printer and aside from the typical control buttons for power, paper and ink handling, the only other thing worth mentioning is the 2nd USB port which allows to hook up two computers at the same time. The printer does not offer the "essential" consumer features like a card reader or computerless printing. The latter is certainly not needed, though it does provide PictBridge compatibility which allows supporting cameras to print direct. If you're serious enough to invest $500+ in printer hardware, you probably also insist on properly processing pictures before printing. With all current effort, no camera can replace a good RAW converter or photo editor to optimize gamut, contrast, white balance. Speaking of software, the included driver is Epson's typical design and functionality and the CD printing software is the only extra that's included. Premium color profiles are currently rare and more are promised for download on February 29. Standard paper types are already supported by the included software.

Caution: As with most other printers, it is important to set the driver to AdobeRGB if you're sending pictures in that format since the driver won't know the difference. In light of the popular dSLR cameras and that option to be taught as a way to slightly extend the color gamut, it can be easily missed in the process and the output of an AdobeRGB file onto a printer set to sRGB will be consistently too dark and not colorful at all. Of course a similar effect is visible when sending sRGB to a printer set to AdobeRGB. Yet, for the most accurate prints it's best to use Epson's premium ICC pofiles with a supporting application (Photoshop, Lightroom, Photopaint ...) and the printer's internal color management (ICM) turned off.

© 2008, theuerkorn