The Epson R1900 Photo Printer is a big, powerful printer that can produce sharp, accurate prints at a wide range of different sizes. It can print on paper from 4 x 6 right up to 13 x 19, and can produce very large 13 x 44 prints from a special roll of banner paper that fits onto the back. And it can produce borderless prints at all of these sizes, which is a big bonus for those who want to produce prints for a family album or for exhibition. It can also print onto CDs and DVDs that are inkjet ready, and includes software to produce simple labels.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a printer that produces large prints, the R1900 is a large printer; with the trays unfolded, it is 27 inches deep and over 15 inches high. Fortunately, the main paper input and output trays fold up when the printer is not in use, although it will still take a significant chunk of desk space, and the single heet guide on the rear of the pritner still protrudes from the back a fair distance. The R1900 has three paper inputs; the main paper tray (which can hold up to 120 sheets of plain paper or 20 sheets of photo paper), a single sheet guide below this (which is also used as the input for the paper roll used to produce long banner prints) and a slot on the front of the printer that holds the special tray used to hold CDs and DVDs as they are printed.

Performance (Read the full lab performance results at Printerinfo.com)
In our tests, we found that the R1900 produced prints that had very good color accuracy; our test colors were mostly close to the original colors. We did notice some problems with some blues and greens, though; these came out a little bit darker than the originals. This did improve after we calibrated the printer with a photospectrometer, but there was still some minor color errors, though. The R1900 could produce a very wide range of colors, though; it covered a wider part of the color gamut than the Canon Pro 9000 Mark II. It also had good, deep blacks that

The R1900 was not a fast printer, though; using its highest quality Photo RPM print mode, it took a lengthy 6 minutes and 5 seconds to produce a 13 x 19 inch print, and 70 seconds to do a 4 x 6 inch print. You can get prints quicker if you use one of the lesser color modes (the R1900 took 3 minutes and 39 seconds to produce a print in the Best Photo mode), but the Photo RPM mode did produce the best-looking prints, so the extra time is worth it if you are looking for the best quality.

Comparisons (Read the full lab performance results at Printerinfo.com)
There are a number of other printers that have a similar set of features, such as the Canon Pro 9000 Mark II. All of these are priced at about the same, but they do have other differences: the Canon offers a flat print path (which can be useful for printing on thick card), but doesn't support printing to CDs/DVDs. The Canon was also faster, producing a 13 x 19 print in 4 minutes and 37 seconds on its highest quality mode. However, we did find that the prints from the Epson were slightly sharper; the R1900 did a better job of rendering detail. But the differences between the printers were minor, and the final judgement may be down to which offers the features that you need most; the flat paper path of the Canon, or the built-in CD/DVD printing feature of the Epson.