The Bottom Line
Pros
- Great job restoring old photos
- Lots of editing options
- Large, tiltable LCD screen
- Fantastic printing of labels on CDs and DVDs
Cons
- No automatic document feeder
- No USB cable included
- Doesn't fax
- Instruction book doesn't cover everything
Description
- Six ink cartridges
- Prints black text up to 40 ppm, and color text up to 40 ppm (depending on print settings)
- Can print 8.5x11 photos without a PC; can also print on CDs and DVDs
- Color restoration built in
- Two paper input trays
Guide Review - Epson Stylus Photo RX680
This Epson multifunction printer fits a strange niche. It’s a full-size printer, copier, and scanner (it doesn’t fax) made especially for printing photos.The printer has a large, tiltable LCD display that’s sharp and bright, useful when previewing and editing pictures. There are a lot of editing features built into the printer (so you don’t have to do all your photo doctoring on the PC). Stick in a memory card and you can view or print all the photos on the card, just photos taken on specific dates, or an index sheet.
The printer has a Specialty Print button that uses photo enhancement to improve the quality of old or damaged photos. In less than a minute, a 30-year-old photo that had lightened and discolored significantly printed out (expect to wait twice as long on Best Photo setting). The color improvement was phenomenal, far better than I expected; the picture looked brand new, and all the colors—even the ones that were barely discernible in the original—were fresh and clear.
Printing a label on a CD or DVD was easy to do, once I figured it out--the printer's Quick Guide doesn't cover this, however. Here's my Step-by-Step guide to printing directly to a CD/DVD.
Scanning a 5x7 photo took about 36 seconds, and the software has color restoration and dust removal features that worked adequately. Copying was also high quality and somewhat slow, with a monochrome copy taking about 19 seconds to come out.
If there’s bad news, it’s what the machine is lacking. An automatic document feeder is an important feature for an all-in-one printer. There is a built-in duplexer but no information in the manual that explains how it works (instructions come up while printing); information on printing a CD label is also missing. Perhaps most frustrating was the prominently absent USB cable. Why are these cheap cables missing from so many printers?
