Epson Stylus Pro 9700

Epson Stylus Pro 9700

This month Sophie Matthews-Paul visits Colourgen in Maidenhead where she puts the Epson Stylus Pro 9700 through its paces as an option for quick and easy production of full-colour posters and displays

There's so much emphasis placed on outdoor durability and longevity that it's often all too easy to forget the numbers of jobs which, in real terms, only need to be in place for a short period of time before they need to be removed or replaced. No-one expects to pay a premium for a one-off or short-run poster application even though the quality remains key to the end result. So, when an inexpensive print is the order of the day, and it needs to be produced speedily at a keen price, this can be done without frills yet still result in a high quality end product.

When Epson announced its Stylus Pro 7700 and 9700 some people were confused because it is, in reality, only a four-colour machine with five inks (CMY with matte and photo blacks). Was this a mistake or merely a retrograde step on the part of this manufacturer whose numbers of inks and their configuration has made them infamous amongst the photographic fraternity? The answer is a resounding "no"; what Epson has done is acknowledged that there's a definite market area where an easy-to-use aqueous-based printer can become a valuable bread-and-butter tool for large and small companies alike. Using this ink technology allows businesses to keep their UV-curable and solvent-based printers concentrating on what they do best whilst enabling one-offs and short runs of posters, fliers, point-of-sale and other displays to be output inexpensively and quickly.

Photographic quality has become a very subjective, personalised ideal. Does it really need six, eight or 12 colours or we now just eager to accept these additions? Testing a file which combined an image with text and a dark back-ground on the Epson Stylus Pro 9700 produced excellent results with good colour accuracy and dense solids - it's not intended to be a photo printer but it does a great job nonetheless.

The test job was created as an A3+ image at 300dpi in Adobe Photoshop CS4, flattening the image so there were no vector outlines. Even though the resulting file was only a high resolution RGB JPG, putting it through EFI's latest version of eXpress resulted in crisp text and fine detail across all areas. Even a tricky typeface (ITC's Arid) was used and a photographic inclusion which contained a large amount of fine detail and critical variation in its graduated tones. Outputting the job across the full width of the printer (1.12 m) was a clear demonstration of how eXpress and the Epson complemented one another's capabilities in terms of consistency and quality.

The ink-set used in the Epson Stylus Pro 9700 is the familiar UltraChrome product with the addition of vivid magenta. This mix is used in several of the company's printers, including the 1.625m 11880 at the top end and the Photo Stylus Pro 2880 A3+ at the other. The 9700 is configured with five pigmented inks, arranged in two lines of cyan, vivid magenta, yellow, photo black and matte black, with auto-switching between these last two.

Printheads used in this unit feature Epson's MicroPiezo TFP (Thin Film Piezo) with automatic alignment technology and the ability to handle bi-directional and uni-directional printing. There are 720 nozzles/colour, with droplet sizes as small as 3.5 picolitres, and a maximum resolution of 720 x 1440dpi, although for line drawings this can be increased to 1440 x 1440dpi.

Speeds were good, too, with the test file only taking a few minutes to print at the maximum quality. When the version with a white background was tested, the printer's function detects when there's no need for the heads to pass across the entire sheet if there is no data to be output. The cutting facility is quick and efficient and this can be set to manual, automatic or turned off altogether if required.

For the tests Epson's enhanced matte paper was used and the facilities at the company's UK distributor, Colourgen, in Maidenhead. The company offers Rip products from ColorGate as well as EFI whose eXpress software starts at ?616.00.  The RRP for the printers are ?2,395 for the Stylus Pro 7700 (610 mm) and ?4,795 for the larger 9700. The media is priced at ?62.29 for a 610 mm x 30 m roll, and ?113.55 for the wider 1.2 m x 30 m option. All prices are exclusive of VAT.

The Epson Stylus Pro 9700 is an excellent option for producing a wide variety of posters and general short-life displays, although lamination is an option where longer life is wanted. Don't discount aqueous-based print for jobs like these; it's easy to set-up and cost-effective, too.