Printing on large sheets of paper takes a relatively big printer. The 1400 weighs 25 pounds and measures 8.8 by 24.2 by 12.4 inches (HWD), not including the output tray that you can extend as much as 13 inches to the front to catch the large-size paper. Even so, the printer looks handsome enough to go well with most home office or hobby areas.

Setup is essentially the same as that of most ink jet printers: Remove the packing materials, load paper, snap in the ink cartridges, run the automated installation routine, and plug in the power cord and USB cable. As you might expect for a relatively expensive photo printer, the 1400 uses six ink colors—cyan, yellow, magenta, black, light cyan, and light magenta—with a separate cartridge for each, so you don't have to throw unused ink away every time one color runs out.

The 1400 includes a connector for printing directly from PictBridge cameras, but alas, no memory card slots. The issue isn't the lack of direct printing from cards, as most serious photographers would rather edit—or at least take a look at—their photos on a computer before printing. It's that card slots are convenient for moving files to the computer.

For any printer that's intended primarily for photos, the most important issue is photo quality, and that's precisely where the 1400 shines. It's not quite the equal of Epson's more expensive Epson Stylus Photo R1800, but it's in the same league, as well as being a close match to—and arguably better than—the also-more-expensive HP Photosmart 8750 Professional Photo Printer. The 1400 did nothing less than print every photo in our test suite at true photo quality, without a single flaw on the color output worth mentioning. The only significant problem I saw was with a monochrome photo, which had a distinct off-black tint and some minor posterization (shades changing abruptly where it should change gradually). If you don't care about printing in black and white, this won't be a problem.

Epson promises that the 1400's photos will last, claiming a lifetime of 200 years for dark storage—as in an album—and 98 years for photos mounted behind glass. Prints are also reasonably water-resistant, although they'll stain if you leave water drops on them to air-dry. On my standard torture test—holding a freshly printed photo underwater while rubbing it—I saw some minor bleeding into the white border, but no visible damage to the photo itself. You can feel comfortable passing photos around without worrying about someone ruining them with moist hands.

Graphics quality is good enough (no problems worth noting) for a graphic artist to consider using the printer. Text on plain paper, however, is below par for an ink jet, with fewer than half of our test fonts qualifying as easily readable with well-formed characters at 5 points, and none qualifying at 4 points.

It's a good thing that the 1400's photo output is worth waiting for, because speed isn't one of its strengths. On our tests, it averaged 2 minutes 3 seconds for each 4-by-6 and 4:29 for each 8-by-10. That's faster than the HP 8750, which took 2:29 and 5:20, but much slower than the Epson R1800's 1:18 and 2:42. The 1400's total time on our business applications suite was also slow, at 22:27 compared with 21:39 for the HP printer, which isn't particularly speedy in that test, either. But neither printer is meant for standard printing, so those times are largely beside the point.

In the end, if you want high-quality photos at larger than letter or legal size, the Epson Stylus Photo 1400 costs less than the competition and prints gorgeous photos (as long as you're willing to wait a little). That more than enough reason to put it on your short list.

Don't forget to check out our printer comparison chart.

Benchmark Test Results
Click here to view the Epson Stylus Photo 1400 benchmark test results.

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