PGPP Comparison - 1270 vs. 1280 Drivers on a 1270 Printer

Will the 1270 print at 2880 dpi with this driver? Nope, not a chance. The 1270 doesn't have the hardware, and its firmware doesn't understand the driver commands, for 2880 dpi. Sorry. How about borderless printing? Well, almost. The 1270 will print borderless on three sides, but not four. Whether this is worthwhile I leave to you.

There is, however, one problem with this driver: The status monitor won't work, so you can't monitor ink levels. It is possible to install both the 1270 and 1280 drivers at the same time, so you could print with the 1280 driver, and check ink levels with the 1270 driver, but I don't see the point. (And no: disabling the status monitor does NOT keep the chips on the cartridges from keeping track of ink levels.

But does the new driver offer any benefits? I made some comparisons prints to try to find out. The prints above were both made on my 1270 printer. The one on the left was made using the 1270 driver that shipped with the printer, the one on the right with the 1280 driver downloaded from Epson America's web site. You may not be able to see it on a web page, but there's only one obvious difference: the color balance is noticeably cooler with the 1280 driver. Is this Epson's attempt to bias the prints away from orange, so any shift that takes place will be less objectionable? Or is it simply the result of using the wrong driver on the wrong printer? I have a similar print made on a 1280, and the excessive blue does NOT appear on that one, so I suspect it's just a mismatch between printer and driver.

But is the print using the 1280 driver sharper, or smoother, or in some other way better than the one using the 1270 drivers? Certainly not that in any way that's visible to the naked eye. Using a 7x loupe, I can almost convince myself that skin tones in the photodisc image are slightly less grainy with the 1280 driver. But then I think that maybe the transitional tones in the watch are slightly better with the 1270 driver. Net result: I can't see any reason to bother with the 1280 driver. Especially since the status monitor won't work with it. Click on the images below to see enlarged views of two parts of the test prints.

This section of the photodisc target was scanned at 600dpi. This isn't going to be as revealing as a microscope image, but it's certainly shows more detail than you're likely to see with the naked eye. I can't see any difference between the two in any meaningful aspect.

And this is a section of Todd Flashner's watch photo scanned at 600dpi. Again, I can't see any meaningful difference between the two images.

1440 vs. 2880 dpi -- Any visible difference?

So what about it? Is 2880 dpi really better than 1440 dpi? First, let's make one thing clear. The Epson x70 printers have a resolution of 1440 x 720 dpi. The x80/90 printers' resolution is 2880 x 720. So we're really not looking at a 100% improvement. But enough talk. Let's look at some prints and see what we see.

The kind owner of a new 1280 made prints of the same test image that I used above at 720, 1440 and 2880 dpi. And I printed a copy of the same file at 1440 dpi on my 1270. All prints were made on the 3rd generation PGPP at highest quality. The only variation in settings was the print resolution. The prints were labeled on the back, so I couldn't tell which print was which while making my comparison.

The difference between 720 and 1440 is easily visible at very close viewing distances. From several feet away even that difference is hard to see.

The difference between the 1270 and 1280 at 1440 dpi is negligible. There are subtle differences in color balance, but that may be explained by sample to sample variation between printers, batches of ink, and batches of paper. Or it might represent printer and driver differences. But there was no detectable difference in image quality, even under magnification (7x loupe).

But what about 2880 vs 1440 dpi? Comparing the 1440 and 2880 dpi prints with the naked eye, I could see no real difference. Oh, if I really tried hard, I could convince myself that there was maybe a subtle difference in areas of smooth color, like skin tones. But half the time the one I though was better turned out to be the 1440 dpi print, so any improvement I saw was probably in my imagination..

Under the 7x loupe, however, the 2880 dpi print was noticeably better in areas of light continuos tone, like skin. I was surprised at how much smoother and more "dot free" the 2880 print was, considering how good 1440 dpi prints are already.

But I don't normally view my prints with a loupe. With the naked eye, at normal viewing distances, I think the difference is undetectable. If you make very small prints that will be viewed at very close distances, then maybe, maybe, the extra resolution is worth considering. Otherwise, it makes for very good advertising copy.

I've made scans of 3 small sections of the test prints. Two small sections of faces from the photodisc target, and a section of the china teacup shown in the image at the top of this page. These image sections were scanned at 600 dpi, but I'm honestly not sure how much useful information you'll get from them. I couldn't decide whether it was better to show sharpened or unsharpened results, so you can look at both.

Click on any of the images above to see scans of these test samples (All three will take you to the same page).

Because of the size of these scans, I've had to put the images on an outside photo storage site. This link takes you to a thumbnail page. Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it, then click on the "View Full Image" link below the images.