THE EPSON LQ 500 PRINTER REVIEW - By Tim Patterson.
Ater having my Amiga 1000 for almost a year, the question of a printer finally came around. My first intenetion was to go for the Epson LX 800, but lo and behold, Epson releases an absolute gem of a machine, the LQ 500. So I bought one. This is truly a remarkable acheivement in both price and quality.
FEATURES
The Epson LQ 500 is a 24 pin dot matrix printer which supports all the standard plug-in font cartriages available for the rest of the Epson LQ range, which includes the LQ 850, the LQ 1050, and the top of the range, the LQ 2500+. For the price (I picked mine up for just over $600), this is really good value when you consider the quality of the printout, and the price of other 24 pin printers. Standard fonts supplied are draft (180 cps) and two different letter quality fonts, Roman and San Serif (both rated at 60 cps). These fonts are simple to change to and from as they are all changed via buttons on the front panel, with indicator lights showing which font is currently in operation. These can also be changed through software commands.
DESIGN
Great thought has been put into the design of the printer, taking into account noise reduction and ease of use. In fact the printer comes with two seperate covers, one for tractor and one for single sheet feed, to cut down the noise. The effectiveness of this can easily be seen by raising the cover whilst doing a graphic dump. To change from continuous to single sheet feed and back again is simply a matter of lifting off the cover, leening back the single sheet feeder (which becomes a paper guide), and clipping in the tractor feed attatchement and vice-versa. I find myself using the single sheet feeder most of the time because you can use photocopy paper which is generally cheaper, and of better quality than most continuous sheet paper available. The single sheet feeder is easy to use, as all you have to do is slide a sheet of paper into the guide and press the line feed/auto load button. The paper is automatically fed to the top of the page, correctly aligned and ready to go.
The LQ 500 comes with a parallel port and there are a number of optional interfaces that can be installed. The DIP switches are easily accessed in a side panel where the font cartriages also plug in. This is a much better set up than most printers, where changing DIP switches is a tedious task, because they are tucked away at the back of the printer. These switches can be changed to numerous settings such as international character sets, character pitch and font, extended graphics, etc. The LQ 500 also supports all standard options such as supersripts, subscripts, double height and width, etc.
MANUAL
The LQ 500 is light and small, weighing only 7 kg, but is certainly anything but light on performance. The manual is very concise and accurate, and easy to read, with step by step instructions, easy to follow diagrams, and information on writing programs for it. At the back of the manual is a very handy pull-out quich reference card, and the whole thing is bound with a very durable ring bound system. Generally a good companion to a good printer.
PRINT QUALITY
The print quality of the LQ 500 is amazing. In letter quality, you would have a hard time distinguishing it from typeset fonts, and I've been informed that the print quality of the LQ 500 is actually better than that of the LQ 2500+. This is mainly due to the design of the ribbon cartriage used, which runs the full width of the page, parallel to the platten, whereas the 2500+ uses a more conventional ribbon cartriage.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Printing method : 24-pin impact dot matrix
Printing Speed : 10 pitch draft - 150 cps
10 pitch letter quality - 50 cps
12 pitch draft - 180 cps
12 pitch letter quality - 60 cps
Printing direction : Uni or Bi directional.
Buffer : 1 Kbyte or 8 Kbytes (DIP switch selectable)
Character : 96 standard ASCII character set
13 international character sets
Epson Extended Graphic character
Paper : Paper feed methods - Friction
Pull Tractor
Single-bin cut sheet feeder
Paper width - Single sheet : 182 to 257 mm
Continuous : 101 to 254 mm
Paper length - (Single sheet) 182 to 364 mm
Ribbon : Cartriage #7753
Dimensions : Height - 139 mm
Width - 390 mm
Depth - 320 mm
Weight - approx 7 kg.
And Finally ...
I would thoroughly reccommend the LQ 500 for home and small buisness use where a letter quality or good graphic dump are required. The printer is at its best as a low to medium volume printer for word processing with either auto load or tractor feed. By the way, there is a printer driver for the Epson LQ series on the new 1.3 Workbench, called EpsonQ. Do yourself a favour, get an Epson LQ 500.
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