RX-530 - Good printer but beware of the limitations

Category: Review on Epson RX530 Inkjet Color Multifunction Printer

Posted by: 25-Jun-2007

Strengths: Good scanner, faultless operation, many features

Weaknesses: Expensive to run, minor ink leaks, color management not as good as some other Epsons

I was running Epson RX 530 for about 6 month and generally found the printer well featured for my use. I use it mainly to print A4 photographs and smaller proofs; contrary to some reviewers I generally do not see any difference in quality between 4 and 6 colour devices. In fact, Epson 4 colours hit above their weight.

The printer is definitely aimed at an amateur photographer and could be basically used as a home minilab. It has a litte screen, pictbridge interface to print without a computer, and a special negative holder which would allow one to scan/print from the negatives and slides (I never tried it though).

The installation was faultless and driver options are multiple and reasonably detailed (if compare to Canon). The driver provides a reasonable accurate colors while printing however it is not perfect. I am used a colour managed process for my photo printing and my monitor is well calibrated. However, using photoshop to manage the colours I did not receive results to my satisfaction. Epson support kindly sent a set of profiles for Epson papers which did better; however I had to made some tweaks here and there to make the prints look like they should. Perhaps to your eyes it would not matter much.

The printer is very quiet and reasonably fast in text modes; I had a little problem under Windows 2000 that the options are not alway set by the driver even if I tried to; as a result I had frustrated waits as printer treated text memos like fully coloured photographs even though I set up options before. No such problem was noticed under XP.

I also found a little problem when the printer sometimes leave a small strip of paint at the bottom of the page; I am not sure whether it is just my unit and how widespread is the problem. Epson's way of creating of different printer models for different countries does not help in checking.

As with any EPSON printer you should be well aware of running costs. The cartridges are very small and pricey; the pack of 4 (RRP 4x$20 = $80) would last you in my experience around 30 A4 full colour photographs.

However, the EPSON ink is a top class; it does not change colour while drying. I have not data about longetivity of this particular ink.

So this is my 0.02 worth.