Epson Stylus COLOR 1520
Inkjet Printer

Tony Zilles

The Epson Stylus COLOR 1520 is a colour inkjet printer capable of printing up to A2-sized sheets. The 1520 can also handle standard sizes of paper from A5 up and envelopes, as well as special media for business cards, index cards, banners and transparencies.

The print comes with feed and delivery trays for sheet/individual item feed, a black and a colour cartridge and power cable. Documentation includes a first class user manual, an excellent A4 sized Color Guide with tips for colour printing, a Windows/Mac CD-ROM with all the required software to run the printer and Epson Plot! Printing utility on four disks for Win 95 and Win NT 4.0.

How does it work?
The Epson uses a two cartridge ink system . One cartridge holds black ink and the other is a tri-chambered colour cartridge. The result of a 2-cartridge system is very crisp, dense black printing and beautifully rendered colour prints.

Printing black linework or grayscale images on the Stylus 1520 uses black ink exclusively. Some colour print systems only use colour inks and approximate black by laying down a cocktail of colour to get the darkest combination. Nice in theory, but the result is never black. It always comes out a dirty brown colour that looks dreadful and photocopies poorly.

The dedicated black cartridge is a key feature to this printer. Another important benefit is that doing mono work such as plotting technical drawings or printing letters, proposals, quotes and invoices, only uses the black cartridge. Colour ink is not wasted on mono output.

The coloured ink cartridge has three chambers with cyan, magenta and yellow inks. Colour prints are created by mixing the density of ink droplets deposited on the paper. An infinite range of colours can be created through this process of ink blending on the paper and in the perception of the viewer. The Shading is also enhanced though the use of black ink in colour prints. This darkens areas more convincingly and cleanly than colour only printing.

Ease of Use
I installed the printed on a recent model Pentium computer. The advanced control features require connection to a bi-directional parallel port. The default settings (standard mode IBM compatible bi-directional parallel port) of this system worked perfectly.

Installation proceeded quickly and easily from a CD. The documentation accurately described how to setup the machine, install the software and start printing.

Any application designed for use in Windows 95 or Windows NT will have no difficulty in utilising all the functions of this printer with ease. DOS and Windows 3.x users or folks using applications designed for these environments may experience varying degrees of difficulty. The advanced functions like high resolution (720 and 1440dpi) and MicroWeave are not accessible under these environments.

The printer is quite a sizable unit and takes up about 700x500mm of desk space. Paper is loaded and delivered at the front of the machine. The power switch on the front panel, so access to the rear of the unit is not necessary, unless you intend to use the tractor feed, which draws continuous paper through the back.

The printer control software Epson provides certainly makes this printer very easy to monitor and manage right from your keyboard. It includes controls to modify most settings and regular maintenance functions such as print alignment and nozzle cleaning right from your desktop. This is very convenient and a vast improvement over having to go the printer with manual in hand and press buttons in the right order.

The Epson printer control software displays and allows adjustment to printer settings.

The life of an ink cartridge is impossible to estimate because it depends on the type of work you do. However, the control software provides an excellent indication of ink reserves for each cartridge. When the colour cartridge is empty you can continue printing with black, but not vice-versa.

The printer manual is as good as they come and includes everything you need to know about the printer. The information is presented clearly and fully. The Color Guide handbook is a great introduction to colour printing, which can become quite complex if your are trying to accurately match colours. Getting the best quality of print from a given image is also an acquired skill. The Color Guide introduces and explains the particular image manipulation controls you need to use to prepare the best quality image, to ultimately get the best quality print.

Media
Your first experience with colour output with the current crop of printers is likely to be one of amazement and pleasure. Even the lowest quality of paper produces an image that is exciting and more appealing than what we have been used to. But when the novelty wears off, and it doesn’t take that long, you’ll be pushing your printer to its limit to get the best possible output.

I made prints on a range of media. Plain photocopier paper, special inkjet paper, and Epson’s own special photo-finish paper, particularly designed for this printer.

In deciding your output the only question you need to ask is "How important is your presentation?" The quality of the output on different media is directly proportional to what you have to pay for the paper.

• Regular paper is really only good enough for a check print. The image is dull and flat, The colours in photorealistic images are muddy, particularly in the dark areas. Linework is fuzzy and indistinct.
• Inkjet paper is better and probably good enough for the majority of prints where high definition or colour quality is not so important. Linework and letter definition on inkjet paper is much better and looks very crisp. The blacks are dense and solid. Reports with bold coloured text, or panels of flat solid colour or tint will look quite OK with inkjet paper. This paper costs about three times the price of copier paper, but the prints actually look pretty good… until you see the same print made on Epson paper.
• Epson’s special paper is special indeed. It even comes with a User’s Manual! This paper gave the best color saturation, with dense blacks and crisp detail. For prints with blends or gradient fills and photo-realistic rendering or in any job where the presentation must be as good as possible, you will be disappointed with anything but the best paper and the special Epson paper really is the best. The difference is very clear when the same image viewed side-by-side with other lesser papers.

The quantum leap in quality is also accompanied by a corresponding leap in cost. The Epson paper is nearly 20 times the price of regular copier paper.

The printer control software provided includes settings that can be changed to optimise the print quality for the paper that you decide to use.

Gripes
Ink cartridges are expensive. Surely it is possible to produce cartridges cheaper than this? Alternatively a manufacturer-recommended method of refilling would be valuable. I can’t help getting the feeling that users are being taken for a ride with the consumables.

The marketing model that wins customers with low-cost hardware and ties them to disproportionate ongoing consumable costs is a popular one these days with many printers on the market. Purchasers should be prepared for the fact that the initial purchase cost will probably be very quickly overshadowed by the running costs.

Who could use a printer like this?
The Stylus 1520 is an excellent choice of printer for technical professionals who require colour prints and occasional mono plotting and regular mono and colour printing at standard A4 size on paper or transparencies. The A2 capability makes the printer attractive for people who traditionally use large-format media and who require affordable colour and mono plotting in house. Such professionals could include:

• Building designers
• Landscape designers
• Industrial designers
• Graphic designers
• Educators
• Facility and asset managers
• GIS users

This is not a high speed or high volume printer. If you need lots of colour printing done fast, then there are better ways. For a steady, low-volume output of colour and mono work, this is a good printer.

Tony Zilles

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