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Printer Season - 3 reviews: Epson CS870, HP DeskJet 952C, Xerox/Tektronix Phaser 850DX

Toronto Star Fast Forward column for July 13, 2000

Copyright ©, Myles White, 2000. All rights reserved.

Summer is a wonderful time. Roses appear, baby birds start peeping, cicadas hum, and the new crop of printers comes out to gambol in the sun. Over the past several weeks, I've been inundated by printers ranging in price from under $150 to over $7,000. That's quite a spectrum of prices and you'd be right if you said it wasn't fair to compare such disparately priced units. And you'd be right. 

So what we're not doing here is declaring which of the four printers I'm about to describe is best. What we're going to do instead is to try to show you why some printers cost more than others and what the extra money buys you in terms of print quality and performance. The four printers include the Epson Stylus Color 670 (although not reviewed in depth – my colleague Gerry Blackwell did that for this $129 printer a few weeks ago – it's here to demonstrate print speed only), the Epson Stylus Color 870 ($449), the Hewlett Packard DeskJet 952 C ($299), and the Xerox/Tektronix Phaser 850DX ($4,195 to $7,195 depending on options)..

Speed trials

I have a standard 8 x 10 photo I use to test today's printers. It has a nice combination of flesh and other colours that allow me to compare what I get to what I sent and it's complex enough to give the printers a workout. I use Corel's PhotoPaint 9 as the originating software and the computer used to generate the print request is a 500 MHz Pentium III with 128 MB of memory (noted because processor speed and memory are a factor in the results you'll get if you try the same tests). 

Timing was from the moment I pressed the "Print" button to the time the finished product hit the paper tray and all models were warmed up and ready to print when the print command was given. Last, but not least, all printers were told to use photo mode on high-gloss photo paper. 

As you might guess, the speed champ was the Phaser 850DX. Although this printer can take 10 to 15 minutes to wake up from its power saver mode, once alert it finished the photo in under 20 seconds. 

The Epson Stylus Color 870 was next, taking six minutes to do the task. It was followed by the HP 952C at 11 minutes, and trailed by its little brother, the Stylus Color 670, at 16 minutes. 

I had no serious complaints about the quality of the results from any of the units. The 870 produced what was to me the closest match to what I saw on screen. The HP added a little red to the image and, although it wasn't nearly as close to what I sent, its compensation actually produced a more aesthetically pleasing image. No, I didn't mention the Phaser: the solid-ink printer's output is simply awesome and I'm going to have to keep buying lottery tickets just in case some day I can ever afford one. 

In fact, I'm going to concentrate on the other three printers after giving a brief description of the Phaser. Our test model came network ready (Ethernet 10/100 Base T), with Postscript 3, automatic duplexer (two-sided printing), 128 MB of memory, a high-capacity paper tray and 6 GB hard drive. No small corporation or advertising agency should be without one. 'Tis to drool for.

Pair of Epsons 

The Stylus Color 870 and 670 are two quite different printers. The 870 is one of Epson's new photo printers using special 6-colour ink that, when matched with Epson's special paper, the company says will last as long as a silver-halide process photograph (roughly 20 years) without fading. However, despite the similar "70" part of the model number, the 670 is a standard four-colour printer that doesn't use the special ink. 

The 870 comes with a roll of paper and holder for printing off multiple photographs. The 670 doesn't. Both models can be connected to a PC or Mac via parallel port (PC only) or Universal Serial Bus (USB) port (both). Although the Epsons, the HP, and the Xerox/Tektronix printers are all technically "ink-jet" printers, they use different technologies to accomplish what they do. 

HP uses the traditional method of heating an ink reservoir and using the resulting pressure to blow a bubble of ink onto the paper (Canon uses the same technique, calling its printers "bubble-jets"). Tektronix's solid-ink technology does much the same, although instead of starting out as a liquid, its inks come in large, crayon-like sticks that are melted internally. Only Epson uses what it calls "Piezo-Electric" technology that, put crudely, vibrates the printhead and shakes the ink out. 

Epson also uses what I consider to be a very good print driver that not only reports on basic things such as paper out, but also monitors the amount of ink in each cartridge and shows you how much is left each time you print. A new feature in this year's version of the driver is an independent print preview built into the driver software that allows you to check your work before you send it just in case the application you're using doesn't have its own preview routine. 

Among other things, using print previews can cut down on the number of bad prints you make and the number of times you have to replace the printers' ink cartridges. The 870's output range is180 by 180 dpi, 360 by 360 dpi, 720 by 360 dpi, 720 by 720 dpi, and 1440 by 720 dpi. It uses two ink cartridges, one black and one 5-colour cartridge (cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, and yellow). The 670's output range is the same. It also uses two ink cartridges, one with black, the other with cyan, magenta, and yellow.

HP 952C

Few of the Epson driver features, which are the same for both models above, are available from the HP 952C. It doesn't report ink or paper status, nor does it estimate the time remaining for a job. It does have its own preview, however. 

Despite that complaint, HP's drivers do offer some services. Once told it was to use premium glossy photo paper, the driver automatically selected "Best" quality and invoked HP's PhotoREt technology. It didn't appear to care what the photo's subject was (Epson's wanted to know if it was people or one of several other choices including black and white or sepia), but HP's driver does offer using greyscale or optimizing the print for faxing. Like the Epson models, the 952C offers parallel or USB connectivity, but ships with drivers only for PCs, not Macs. 

The HP has a manual two-sided printing routine with on-screen instructions showing how to orient the paper. It also has an optional duplexer (two-sided printing module) you can buy to do it automatically. Epson has neither. The DeskJet 952C loads from a paper tray in the front and has to bend the paper (so that you're printing on the back of the sheets) to deposit it in an output tray above the paper feeder. 

According to the manual, the Kodak 117 lb. photo stock I used to flatten that playing field shouldn't have worked (the maximum is stated as 110 lb), but it did. HP also provides a way to print 4 by 6 snaps with a special well under the paper out tray to hold up to 20 pages of its own specialty paper sized to the task. Its output in draft black and white mode is 300 by 600 dots per inch (dpi), and 600 by 600 dpi in both "Normal" and "Best" modes. In colour, the draft mode is 300 by 600 dpi and it automatically uses its PhotoREt method in Normal and Best modes. If you choose not to use PhotoREt, you can push the printer to 2400 by 1200 dpi when using photo paper. It uses two ink cartridges, one black and one three-colour cartridge (cyan, magenta, and yellow).

More info: Epson Canada: www.epson.com, 1-800-GO-EPSON (463-7766) HP Canada: www.canada.hp.com, 1-800-387-3867 Xerox/Tektronix: www.tektronix.xerox.com, 1-877-662-9338 (toll free)

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