Epson Stylus 1520 7/10

The Epson Stylus 1520 is one of Epson's top of the range colour inkjet printers. You can print on paper up to A2 size (although not right to the edge)! Since it can print on such large paper, it is quite a wide printer, so you need to find a large space to put it in! There is also a banner paper holder to print out very long posters, which you can see at the rear of the machine. The quality can be nearly as good a photograph, especially when printing high quality sources like slides or high-res digital cameras. It does take a long time to print out photos, especially when printing out large formats. Text only pages are printed very though. It is very impressive seeing A2 prints being printed. The resolution at 1440x720 is high and the quality can be improved by using various settings in the print driver such as "microweave". You also need to specify the paper you are printing on to allow the printer to optimise the quality for that type of paper.

However, the quality largely depends on the paper you feed through the printer. The quality of the output on glossy film is excellent, slightly cheaper glossy paper is nearly as good, inkjet paper is reasonable, ordinary paper is no good! The special glossy film and glossy paper are available in a variety of sizes ranging upto A2. Also you have to carefully configure the ink cartridges whenever you install them, cleaning and aligning them takes up valuable ink. The ink cartridges are not very expensive, but the main problem is that you seem to get through ink cartridges very quickly, if you printing out pages filled with a photo. There are two cartridges one for black ink and another for coloured ink.

If you are looking for a printer to print large format proofs this is a good choice, costing under £400. However, bear in mind the relatively high running costs. As a home printer, it is good choice, since it can also print out high quality black text quickly and efficiently. If you have a bit more money to spend though, I would get a cheap laser for all your letters and save this for printing out posters and large prints.