The Epson R290 cannot copy or scan pages, but it offers a six-color printing to produce a superior photo print quality that you won’t normally get from printers that use less colors of ink.

The machine is a part of the Epson’s Stylus Photo range. As you might expect from the name, as well as from the number of colors the unit uses to print, it is a photo printer.

Features and Highlights

Claria Ink

The Epson R290 uses the tried and tested Claria Photographic Ink. Unlike the more affordable Home version that features a mix of pigment and dye inks, this one is a total dye-based solution. This type of ink has been known to many as the better choice than pigment ink in producing high quality glossy photo.

On the downside, you may have to spend a lot of money on the ink because the photo printer uses ink cartridges. On top of that, there are six of them.

Even though none of these is a tri-color cartridge, the ink cost is still high. An ink tank photo printer with a similar set of features would be a better choice for users who print more than just two or three photos a week.

Print Speed

Photo print quality is a key factor in choosing a good photo printer, but speed is also important. No one wants to waste, say, fifteen minutes for a printer just to spit out a single 4R photo. With the Epson Stylus Photo R290, the print job can finish in approximately twelve seconds in draft mode.

Despite aimed at photo printing enthusiasts, the printer is also quick to print documents, with a speed up to 37 pages per minute (ppm) for black and white printing in draft mode.

Paper Handling

The R290 has a typical paper handling like almost every other inkjet printer. It has a tray in the back and another one in the front.

The former is where you load a stack of paper which will be pulled into the printer automatically when the printing starts and the latter is where the printed page will end up after the printing is completed.

That’s why the rear tray is called paper input tray and the front one is called paper output tray. Each of these has different paper capacity. The input tray can hold 120 sheets of A4 plain paper and the output tray holds less. Both can be left open after printing, but doing so would waste your desk space for nothing.

Epson R290 Driver Free Download

The process of setting up the inkjet photo printer includes installing its driver, which is available for free for everyone who needs it. The installation is so easy to do that anyone would be able to get it done quickly.

Its file size is also so small that you may still be able to install it even if your hard drive doesn’t have much space left. You can click the link below to download Epson R290 Driver for Windows: