Epson Stylus Photo R360 review

Given the identical print engines of the Epson Stylus Photo R360 and R265, you’d be forgiven for expecting a significant number of extras to justify the £23 price difference between the two. After all, both print at the same speed and produce the same quality photos.

The design is different, with the R360 sporting a bulkier body, but your £23 is spent on a 3.5in LCD screen, which is integrated into the front panel. This pairs up nicely with the memory card slots to allow simple printing without a PC, although there is, of course, a USB interface as well. There’s also the option to add a Bluetooth adapter for printing directly from mobile phones, although this will set you back a further £25 from www.epson.co.uk.

But the rest is the same as the cheaper model. Print speeds are nothing to write home about: 2mins 8secs for a 6 x 4in print at best quality, a little over 4 minutes for a full A4 print. Mono documents come out at 3.3ppm at normal quality and 14ppm in draft mode. All in all, the R360 lives in the middle of the pack for speed.

In terms of print quality, it’s a mixed bag, with superb skin tones and a good level of detail in dark areas in our garden photo, yet an annoying bluish-grey cast in our mono test. Text is disappointing for a printer costing this much, with visible spidering at normal quality and an odd brown colour for draft. Finally, in the five-page ISO document, the R360 didn’t accurately reproduce the blues and reds of the presentation graphics.

It does offer direct CD and DVD printing via the supplied tray, and comes with a collect-and-return warranty that betters the return-to-base cover of the Canon and HP ranges. The R360 also fared superbly in our fade-resistance testing, but, unfortunately, there’s one printer that betters it at this price point.

The HP D7160 is £7 cheaper, matches the R360 for card slots and LCD screen, and has a separate 6 x 4in photo paper tray. It automatically detects the paper type and prints better-quality photos at faster speeds so, unless you really need the CD and DVD printing function of the R360, we recommend looking to the HP at this budget.