Epson Stylus Photo R300 Digital Photo Inkjet Printer

This is a brilliant printer. The quality of photos is superb, it has a monitor so that you can view photos directly from a memory card, and print without a computer, if you wish. The included DVD tray allows you to print directly onto blank CDs & DVDs, and again the quality is excellent. Like most printers, the ink (6 separate colours) can be expensive - Epson, around £60 per set, Tesco - around £30 per set, online discount ink vendors - between £8-£10 per set, and they work as well as Epson's own. This is why they retain higher prices on eBay. If you've owned one, most others cannot match their flexibility and quality. I strongly recommend this printer. I've had two, (first one was bathed by my 4 year old).

The R300 is an excellent photo printer & I believe the print quality to be the best of the Epson printers in the price range for most peoples home use- they do better, but the price rockets up not only at purchase but on ink- the 300's use 6 colous which gives great photo's far better than the 4 colour on fine detail- if the original image is of good quality- non genuine cartridges are easily found & so long as you don't allow the printer to go online & do any updates they work fine- some of the later model printers require more expensive inks as Epson is contantly changing the micro chips in each cartridge- you can sometimes get round this by not using the Epson utilities & installing something like SSI- this also allows you to easily reset the counters when the printer says it needs servicing. Print spped at maximum resolution is a little slow as is the speed printing on disc- but again you would need to spend alot more money to get any significant improvement in speed- all in all a good printer, I'm on my second one- but they do alot of work.

Upside:
Fantastic excellent quality prints. Easy to use and printing on printable cd's is easy to do and does a quality job. Bulk
ink systems are available.

Downside:
Epson puts a counter on the amount of prints done, once the
counter hits epsons pre determined number you get a message
telling you the printer has come to the end of its life, this
is because waste ink is collected at the bottom of the
printer in sponges and they estinate how many prints it takes
untill these sponges will be full.

Fix:
You can download a simple program to reset the counter but
because you now know the sponges are full you cannot allow
ink to keep collecting in them because things will get messy,
there is a fix around this too, there is a tube you and access
at the back of the printer where the waste ink flows through,
you simply lever the tube out and direct it into a bottle to
catch the waste ink.

You tube it :)

After using the r300 printer over many years , I have to say that this is a great little printer . It has good printing capabilities with the option of printing on cd/dvds via the cd tray . Very easy to use , with standalone option via the card reader . The Photo display monitor is an optional accessory but can come in useful when printing directly from cards while in standalone mode.
Even though I have a newer Epson model too ( only because I needed a wi-fi printer), I still purchased this R300 as a back up for my old one as this model is now unfortunately discontinued. Compatible inks of various qualities are available at reasonable prices for general printing making it a very good purchase. The only down side you have to watch out for with this printer is that is has an inbuilt "clock" that counts the amount of waste ink that is in the printer . This is a necessary item as you dont wont the waste ink tanks to overflow , but it can be a nuisance as once it is at a certain level the "service" error will show up and it will not allow the printer to be used again until it is corrected. However , even with this I would still highly recommend this printer as the service error can be corrected with information that is available on the internet. All in all an excellent printer , and if you can get hold of a second hand one at a reasonable price its well worth the purchase.

I like this printer because it prints directly on to cd/dvd disks.I had bid on others but the price was always too high.I was a successful bidder for this one because it was collect only, and I was lucky in that I lived only 10 miles from the pick-up point. It is one of the best bargains that I have ever had.I saved at least £150 on the new price.Another advantage about this printer is that ink cartidges are readily available at one pound each which makes it realy cheap to run.The print quality is first class and the ink cartridges are easy to replace.The lcd display indicates the one to replace.All in all, it is the best printer that I have ever owned and I can recomend it to anyone who wants perfect pictures.