Subscribe

Review: Epson Stylus Photo PX730WD


Johannesburg, 29 Feb 2012

The Epson Stylus Photo PX730WD is aimed at consumers wanting to print their photos at home. It's easy to use and also reads from a variety of inputs.

Look and feel

The printer has a black plastic casing with glossy finishes. It boasts a stylish, yet simple design, which will complement the home office and won't look out of place in an executive's office, either. Accessing paper trays and ink cartridges is easy, and the printer boots up pretty quickly.

At almost half-a-metre squared, this printer is not small. However, it boasts an internal user interface, which is simple to use and makes up for the printer's bulky size.

Performance and usability

The Epson Stylus Photo PX730WD is incredibly easy to use. It comes with an installation CD, which means installing drivers is simply a click-through process.

The printer itself has a user-friendly interface. It boasts a touch-sensitive control panel, with intuitive menus. Users can print straight from SD cards and flash drives by merely following straightforward instructions. Running basic maintenance, including checking ink levels and head alignment as well as cleaning the nozzles, is also made easy with basic instructions.

The printer comes with two paper trays, which together accommodate a variety of paper sizes, including A4 and A5, as well as standard photo sizes, including 10x15cm and 13x18cm.

One feature I really liked is that the printer warns you if you do not have the correct paper in the tray, instead of printing photos on whatever paper is.

The device does overheat when printing photos and this will cause the ink to bleed. However, if users allow the machine to cool down between prints, printing more photos is not a problem. It is also slightly prone to paper jams, which is annoying on a new machine.

Printing quality

The Epson printer handles standard black and white printing on folio paper very well. It also prints out fast. For example, a 10x15cm photo will print out in roughly 10 seconds. The printer also gives users the option to print photos in matt or gloss finish. Overall, I was pleased with both.

In summary:

Good: User-friendly, prints hi-res blacks beautifully
Bad: Battles with colour, somewhat bulky
Rating: 7/10
Recommended retail price: R2 570
Dimensions: 445 x 458 x 150mm
Weight: 9.8kg
Connectivity: WiFi
Nozzle configuration: Black: 180 nozzles; colour: 180 nozzles x 5 (cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan, light magenta)
Print resolution: Up to 5 760x1 440 optimised dpi on suitable media using RPM (Resolution Performance Management)
Sensor type: Contact image sensor

The machine prints out at 5 760x1 440 optimised dpi. This is a very high resolution, and is good news for users who often print hi-res images. However, it's not likely that users will print out 10x15cm photos from a 5MP phone camera. In fact, the printer does not cope well with images that do not have a lot of picture information. I found that these printed out with lines of missing colour.

The printer handles hi-res images beautifully, however. I was especially pleased with black and white prints, which showed great contrasts and looked gorgeous in a glossy finish. For the most part, the printer handled colour well, but not as well as black and white, and some colour photos lacked brightness and came out with soft edges.

However, it must be said that no saturation problems came up when I ran a colour chart using the Macbeth colour management profile. The Macbeth profile is a chart used by photographers that provides a reference of known colours that can be used to set up photographic equipment, and also provides a good reference to judge the colour capacity of printers.

Features

The Epson PX730WD is also a scanner and colour copier. I found that scanning documents and images was really easy.

The printer also features WiFi connectivity, which means users can print wirelessly from their computers. I really liked this feature because it eliminates my pet peeve: cables. The PX730WD also finds the relevant network connection settings automatically, which removes set-up on the user's side.

In a nutshell

The Epson Stylus Photo PX730WD is a great home device, letting users print photos and documents as well as make copies and scans. It is incredibly user-friendly, apart from frustrating paper jams.

Share