Epson Stylus Photo 875DC InkJet Photo Printer

Other products by Epson

Product Details

Product Manual [20.97mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 21 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004YZC4
• Item model number: 875DC
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1999

Product Description

From Winmag®

If you're a digital camera user, there's nothing more important than high-quality output from a printer that does justice to your images. Epson's Stylus Photo 875DC does just that, and features a built-in digital film card reader to simplify transferring images from your camera. At $299, it's a steal.

The Stylus Photo 875DC works with a variety of media, from glossy photo paper to heavyweight matte paper. It even has a paper holder for feeding in roll stock for printing a continuous stream of 4 by 6 inches snapshots – with coverage right to the edge of the paper.

The unit's digital film card reader is a PC Card slot that is recognized as a drive by Windows. There’s a PC Card in the box that supports Compact Flash-compatible memory cards. If you have Smart Media or Sony Memory Stick storage, you may need to purchase an adapter. There's no LCD display window to lead you through menus that allow you to print thumbnails or individual images from the files on your memory device.

The printer offers five print modes. For everyday printing you'd choose economy mode to print at 180 x 180 dpi (for business documents). The remaining modes make use of Epson's Variable Sized Droplet Technology, putting down large droplets in dark areas and smaller droplets (down to 4 picoliters) in light, complex areas. Smaller drops means gradients appear smoother and skin tones look more natural.

Normal mode (360 x 360 dpi) and fine mode (360 x 720 dpi) are the "low-end" choices for photos. The Stylus Photo 875DC's strength is how it handles photos, however. Photo Mode (at 720 x 720 dpi) is best for detailed photographic images. It's a balance between speed and quality. A second Photo Mode prints at 1440 x 720 dpi. It's the top-of-the-line setting when only the highest quality output will do.

The printer uses two quick-drying ink cartridges -- a black cartridge for true black and a five-color cartridge (cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan, and light magenta). You can view ink levels at any time by clicking on a tab on the printer's Properties screen. Both print heads have 48 nozzles per color.

The 875DC's forte is its photo quality output, so we didn't expect much in the way of speed for our standard text-based tests. For our 20-page monochrome text-only document, the “Speed” setting (which doesn't resemble the washed out "draft" modes of some competitors) and "Black print" setting resulted in 1.8 pages per minute output. The 3-page text-and-graphics test document, using "Speed" and "Color print" settings, emerged into the printer's 30-page output tray at 2.1 ppm. Switching from Speed to Quality setting didn't result in noticeably faster output.

There's no question about the quality. Even small text (4- and 5-point fonts) was readable. Another plus: the printer is whisper quiet – the best Epson I've ever tested in that regard.

Then I started working with Epson's Premium Glossy Photo Paper, and…Wow! There's plenty of speed; a 5 by 7 inches image took 31 seconds to print on plain paper, and just 2:22 to print on the photo paper. Results were excellent. A picture of fruit showed grapes and apples with the right sheen. Images of a young model showed true, properly saturated colors and excellent detail (hair strands and facial shadows, for example), even tricky flesh tones were no trouble for the 875DC. I ran a whole gamut of images through the printer, from on-the-fly digital camera shots to professionally produced graphics files; for my money, the output quality can’t be beat.

The input tray can handle 100 pages or 10 envelopes, from 3.5 by 3.5 inches media to banner-sized 8.5 x 44" paper (either pre-cut or on a roll).

The driver incorporates an option to automatically adjust optimizing digital camera images. Called PhotoEnhance 4, it automatically corrects exposure and contrast.

Epson includes Sierra Imaging's Image Expert for managing your photos. The program starts automatically when it senses media in the card slot. If you need to touch up your photos, you'll find Adobe Photo Deluxe 3.1 in the box as well.

The driver lets you reduce your output (from legal to letter, for example, or to a user-selected percentage), print 2- and 4-pages to a single sheet (you can even specify how those pages are arranged), and you can print a 4-, 9-, or 16-sheet poster. There's support for watermarks, too, but, as you’d expect in printer optimized for photos, none for duplex printing.

With paper supports fully extended, the printer measures 11.5 x 17.5 x 24.5 inches (HWD); it weighs 14 pounds. Epson backs the unit with a one-year limited warranty.

There are two limitations worth mentioning. In order to handle the PC Card interface, the printer connects via USB only (and no cable is included). Furthermore, the printer works only with Windows 98 and 2000.

Some discussion boards have raised concerns about color-shift in some Epson photo prints. The company says it's mostly a result of ozone and other contaminants reacting with Epson's Premium Photo Glossy paper, but if you put your output under glass or out of harm's way, you shouldn't have a problem. The company also says it has reformulated its paper which will be available in retail in December. I didn't see any color-shift problems during or after my tests.

If you want a workhorse printer for your everyday print needs, you'll be best served by the Epson Stylus Color 980 on our WinList, for $199 after a $50 rebate. The 980's faster print speed with text and mixed-text-and-graphics documents recommends it. If you need a printer that will deliver higher-quality photo output (where speedy text printing is a lower priority or if you already have a text printer), the Epson Stylus Photo 875DC makes sense. The Stylus Photo 875DC joins the WinList, replacing the Stylus Photo 870.

Product Description

The Epson Stylus Photo 875DC makes it quick and easy to go from digital image capture to captivating digital image printing. Its built-in PCMCIA digital film reader is compatible with virtually any digital camera storage card that comes with an adapter. This printer delivers beautiful photos and laser sharp black text that last and last. Print your digital images using 6-color quick drying Photo Inks and new Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper and their fade resistance compares favorably with 35mm color prints developed at a photo lab.The versatile Epson Stylus Photo 875DC even prints continuous edge-to-edge snapshots. It's easy with your included Digital PhotoLab Starter Kit, which features a roll paper holder, a startup supply of Epson Premium Glossy Photo Roll Paper and Adobe PhotoDeluxe. Whatever the size you print, you get photo lab quality results from the printer's harmonious blend of advanced Micro Piezo technology, AcuPhoto Halftoning, and 4 picoliter variable-sized ink droplets. These tiny droplets vary in size, to create finer shadow detail and dazzling highlights across a wide spectrum of colors-twice the tonal range, in fact, of other ink jet printers! So get yourself an Epson Stylus Photo 875DC ink jet printer. It's the real photo lab solution for digital camera owners just like you.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great contender in the photographic inkjet world, November 6, 2000

By A Customer

The Epson Photo 875DC produces some of the sharpest photos I have seen. For use at home or a small office, the speed is very good, noise level is minimal, and print quality excellent.

I have printed on special papers from the glossy to the matt finish and have been very satisfied with the quality of each. I have even put through heavy card stock paper, such as for greeting cards, and it works like a champ.

The ability to plug in your digital camera memory pcmcia or flash memory cards is a great feature and well worth the money. Even though you require a PC to actually print, that is usually a non-issue since most people will want to do some manipulation of the photo before printing. Cropping and brightness/contrast at a minimum should be done before printing.

Enjoy your new printer.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent printer!!!!, February 14, 2001

By A Customer

I purchased this printer recently and I am so suprised at how well the photos turn out. I printed out some professional photos and they looked almost identical to the originals. Anything you print out only takes a few seconds to print & the quality is excellent. I also like how you can attach a small roll of photo paper to print smaller photos. There is also a helpful feature that lets you see how much ink you have left. Cards also look great when printed out. Highly recommended!!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT Quality and Speed, but Epson support is terrible., February 24, 2001

By	Olaf the Bear (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

I've owned Epsons all my life, and if there's one thing they've always kept focus on is the quality of their prints. They were the first printer company to really target "photo-realistic" printers to the mainstream market, and I think their R&D team has done a fabulous job at improving their technology over the years. The prints are absolutely fabulous, and I haven't noticed any of the fading that some of the older models had a problem with... and I treat my photos like crap, too. :)

The roll feature is also very nice, because you can print banners... reminds me of back in the day when Print Shop was the coolest program on the market and my dot-matrix printer could print banners. Nostalgia aside, these banners are a different breed- you can do ANYTHING with this printer. I love it, in terms of quality.

The PCMCIA slot is also a very nice touch, especially if you have a digital camera. The DC model has the Compact Flash adapter included, but you can buy a PCMCIA card that takes smartmedia or Sony Memory Sticks (if you want the epson with the Sony Memory Stick adapter instead of the Compact Flash adapter, go and get the 875DCS model).

But here's the downside to this printer. Sure, it's got USB and everything, but the USB support for win2k is horrendous. I've tried working with Epson on numerous occasions, but I've come to realize that they had no clue what the problems were either, and that they were taking stabs in the dark with what to do with my system. With most other printers, you could actually just hook up the parallel port, but beware, THIS PRINTER HAS NO PARALLEL PORT. IT ONLY SUPPORTS USB.

The problem I had was this: It would print about half a page, stop, then print out garbage. Or, it would print out half a page, eject the piece of paper, and the print the other half on a different piece of paper. it was insane. Or- it would print half a page, and then kill my USB ports. Plus, now my USB Root Hub is completely messed up, because not even my intellimouse works on it anymore.

I still don't know why this printer doesn't work with one of my computers & win2k (my pro-intel friend John is CONVINCED that it's because it's an AMD Anthlon), but I DID get it to work on my other machine that also runs win2k (yeah yeah.. it's a celeron. Leave me alone). So right now, I just have my AMD networked to my Celeron... so yes, this printer does just fine with Win2k Networking. :)

So, if you can get this printer to work, it's absolutely incredible. It has my highest endorsements. But getting it to work is easier said than done if you're running win2k.