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This unit is 43x30x24cm, the 30cm depth includes paper in the tray (face forward) at the rear waiting to be printed, however as a drop down door is used as a repository for printed pages I have not included that in the dimensions, however this will need another 24cm of space in front of the unit.

This is a six ink printer and not only does that mean you are not replacing a partly used cartridge the extra inks allow subtle shades to be created on the printed output.

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Installation on a reasonably fast PC took 12 minutes and used 400MB of hard disc space for little intervention linked full install. You can choose what to install but all the software is worth at least looking at, with the Photo and CD printing modules as good as any around.

As always manufacturers take timings using 'draft' mode and while the nonsensical 200 word document printed at around 12PPM and a more normal 1500 word document - spread over four pages - printed at 8PPM the Epson draft mode is really only suitable for proofing as the output is mid to light grey in colour.

Good quality 'normal' pages called 'text' by Epson print at around 3PPM for the 200 word offering, and, around 130seconds for the four page offering. In the text mode the black is sharp and crisp and quite acceptable for letters, reports etc. In this mode printing is very quiet.

Printing photographs using the Epson software allows four images at close to 15x10cm to be printed borderless on an A4 sheet, the output was excellent and took just on five minutes, again the printing was very quiet. Printing single A4 borderless images took almost the same time, in both cases the final edge was still slightly tacky for a minute or so.

However the final choice is printing direct onto CD's - these do need a special coating - the printer has a special drop down shelf that a provided tray fits into the front on the unit, place a CD recorded side down in the tray and align the arrows. Having used the Epson CD printing software to input your text and or images you proof it on screen and press the print button. The printer now checks the CD's alignment and prints. I found it took around 150 seconds a CD + around 30 seconds to line up and centre. So in total about 3 minutes a CD and the image is dry. By the way should you try printing on ordinary non coated CD's I doubt it would ever dry.

So an ordinary text printer, a good quality photo printer and a very nice CD printer. Text print speeds were poor, I am not over concerned with image printing speeds - only quality - but they were good, and the CD image and text quality was excellent.

Doing my normal Internet search found this unit available for as little as £59.91 at www.misco.co.uk in their search window enter Epson R220.

http://www.epson.co.uk/products/inkjet_printers/Stylus_Photo_R220.htm