hello Epson.
from AntBlog701

hello Epson.

In January I bought a Brother MFC-240C all-in-one printer. The main reason for that was that I need a scanner, and the Brother MFC-240C is the cheapest one that comes with ADF (Automatic Document Feeder). Please see this blog entry for more detail on Brother machine I bought.

On Saturday, I bought another printer. I must be crazy! This time, it's just a printer, not all-in-one. And it's Epson Stylus Photo R230.

Okay, why did I buy another printer? I want to print on CDs/DVDs labels. Blank CDs and DVDs are getting a lot cheaper nowadays, and many of them have inkjet printable surface. And I think I have quite a few to print. In short, I bought this Epson printer for the CD/DVD print.

Photo of my Brother MFC-240C and Epson Stylus Photo R230:

And why Epson? It's the cheapest inkjet printer that can print directly on CD/DVD.
Epson Stylus Photo R230 has RRP (recommended retail price) of AU$179, and I got it for AU$139. Not bad I believe. One good thing about Stylus Photo R230 is... the colour is great. In fact, it uses 6 colours instead of regular 4-colour printing. Epson Stylus Photo R230 has Light Cyan and Light Magenta in addition to CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black).

And what about the print quality of Epson one? The print on CD/DVD is great. Much better than the cheap pirated movies you can buy from streets. (No, I don't buy any, but I borrowed a few from my friend sometimes.) The colour is really good. Much better than the print from Brother MFC-240C. I make a comparison below, both were using the default setting on plain paper (A4) since I don't have special inkjet or photo paper.

The one of the left is printed from Brother MFC-240C, and the one on the right is printed from Epson Stylus Photo R230. The picture is this Carlson Twins image I mentioned last year. It is without a doubt the print on the right is a lot brighter. You can see the unresized photo of the comparison shot above. (Warning: 172KB file size). The prints do not have such noticeable grains as you can see in unresized comparison photo, it was due to the ISO setting. Okay, my mistake of leaving it on ISO 200, but should be enough for comparing colour output.

Hence the conclusion: 6-colour printer wins 4-colour printer. As everybody expected?

But the 6-ink cartridges also means more expensive to maintain. Take the average price of AU$19 per ink cartridge of this model, one set of ink replacement would be AU$114.

related blog entry:
hello Brother (22nd January 2007)
latest Carlson Twins wallpaper (8th December 2006)