Epson touts the Epson Artisan 730 ($199.99 direct) as an all-in-one for the photo hobbyista more accurate description than you might assume. Unlike most ink jets today, including even the Epson Artisan 837 ($299.99 direct, 4 stars) that serves as the next step up in Epson's Artisan line, the 730 is most at home as a strictly home printer focusing primarily on photos. More than that, the high-quality photos are the best argument for considering the printer.
The 730 is one of the few inkjet MFPs today that doesn't fit well into the dual role of home and home office printer, even for light-duty office use. It prints, scans, and copies, but it lacks office-centric features like a fax capability and an automatic document feeder. More important, its text and graphics quality aren't up to what you probably want for business use, even for a home office. On the other hand, its photo quality is good enough to make it stand out from the rest of the low-cost inkjet crowd.
The printer also delivers a full set of photocentric and home-oriented features, including menu options on the front panel to print lined notebook and graph paper as well as personalized notepaper using scanned photos for the background. It can also print from memory cards, USB keys and PictBridge cameras, scan to memory cards and USB memory keys, and both print on and copy images to printable optical disks.
Very much worth mention is that the 730 offers both Ethernet and Wi-Fi. This not only allows easy sharing on a network, but it opens the door to an assortment of options for printing from iThings and through the cloud from any device with email. In particular, the 730 supports Apple Airprint, Google Cloud Print, and Epson Connect Email Print.
Speed, Output Quality, and Other Issues
Setting up the printer is standard fare. For my tests, I connected to a wired network and ran my tests from a Windows Vista system. The speed was impressive. On our business applications suite, I timed the printer at an effective 5.1 pages per minute (ppm), essentially tied with the Artisan 837 and significantly faster than the office-centric Editors' Choice Canon Pixma MX882 Wireless Inkjet Office All-in-One ($199.99, 4.5 stars). Photo speed was also reasonably fast, tying the Artisan 837 with a 58-second average for a 4 by 6 on our tests.
Output quality was impressive for photos, but disappointing for text and graphics. Text on plain paper was readable enough in my tests, but notably gray, rather than black, and notably lacking in crisp edges. The effect was like looking at a photo with soft focus.
Graphics had a similar faded look, with colors that were dull or pastel rather than rich and vibrant. However, the graphics didn't show any obvious flaws otherwise, making them usable, if not impressive, for any internal business need. Depending on your level of perfectionism you might even consider them good enough for, say, PowerPoint handouts. It's worth mention also that both text and graphics would likely look better on a different, more expensive paper that didn't absorb the ink quite so much. For our business applications suite, we use a low-cost multi-purpose paper.
Photo quality was just short of excellent overall, with most of the photos, both monochrome and color, displaying higher quality than you'd typically get from drugstore prints. One photo came out noticeably oversaturated, but given that many people prefer oversaturated colors, whether you consider that a problem is mostly a matter of personal taste.
One last issue that demands mention is the 730's paper handling. The 120-sheet input capacity is sufficient for home use, and the built-in duplexer for automatically printing on both sides of a page can help you save a bit on paper. More significant for photos is the separate photo tray, a welcome convenience that lets you switch between plain paper and photo paper without having to swap out paper in the main tray. The photo tray can hold up to 20 sheets of 3.5-by-5, 4-by-6, or 5-by-7-inch photo paper.
I'd like the Epson Artisan 730 a lot better if it offered higher quality for text and graphics. If what you care about is photos, however, the issues with text and graphics are irrelevant. If you need a printer for home use, particularly for photos, and don't need high-quality output on plain paper, the Epson Artisan 730 can certainly do the job. More to the point, if you're the kind of photo hobbyist Epson has in mind, it may be exactly the right printer for your needs.
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