Product Reviews

Epson has an already enviable reputation in the colour inkjet market. With the EPL-5700, it hopes to get the same in the world of laser printers.

Unlike its predecessors, the EPL-5500 and Windows-only EPL-5500W, the EPL-5700 sports a dedicated 150-sheet paper cartridge (the fold-down flap on the 5500 series wasn't the sturdiest in the world). The cartridge slides into the front of the machine, while the flap mechanism moves to the top of the unit to provide the paper output area. The new tray makes the footprint rather larger than that of the 5500 series (though smaller than the 5200 series), but the overall look is one of curvaceous quality - a visitor to the office took one look and immediately asked: 'How much and where from?' They didn't even want to know about the resolution!

A pity. Because that's one of this machine's strong points. The 5700 boasts a genuine resolution of 600x600dpi, and printing enhancement software can sometimes make this look more like 1200dpi. Rated print speed is

ADVERTISEMENT

eight pages per minute, and in multiple print tests this proved accurate. The 5700 will take a while to think about outputting very complex pages, but with text documents the first print consistently appeared within a perfectly acceptable 20 seconds.

Setup in Windows 98 is as straightforward as we've come to expect. Turning on the PC with the printer ready to go brings up the detection window, and 98 finds the driver on the supplied CD all by itself. After that, there's very little to do, though the Epson driver does allow you to tailor just about every aspect of its operation.

Given that our office's ageing EPL-5200+ still produces decent print after many toner cartridge changes, we expected high-quality output from the 5700, especially since it puts four times as many dots on the page.

We weren't disappointed. Text is of the highest quality. Blacks are crisp and sharp; curves curvy, rather than stepped. Greyscale graphics are also clear and sharp, though there's some small evidence of banding on large areas of dense black. This was worse when printing full page photo images - lasers often find large areas of greyscale hard to cope with. The density of the print helps compensate for this, making the images punchy and full of contrast. And given the range of settings available in the driver, you should be able to fine-tune output and get it just right.

Overall, the EPL-5700 proved to be a useful, fast and quiet device. While pricier than budget GDI models, its speedy engine, 4Mb memory and 'proper' printer control language make it well-suited to higher workloads.