STAR QUALITY PRINTERS

Star has launched two new printer ranges, which, at the bottom end of the range, offer exceptional features at a reasonable price.

The SG10 is an 80 column 120 characters per second printer with a built-in 2K buffer, at a recommended price of £259. The SD10 has the same features as the SG10 but runs at 160cps, and costs £389.

The SG10 uses a typewriter ribbon and has an adequate printing mechanism. The SD10 uses a ribbon cassette and is capable of very good quality print.

What raises these printers above the standard of the Epson is the wide range of print styles produced. As well as enlarged, condensed, italic and so on, you can select near letter quality and proportional spacing. The printers are compatible with both the standard Epson and IBM commands.

On the face of it both the printers are good value, but the SG10 at £259 has the edge. The SD10 is fast but that is its only advantage over the SG10.

Star Micronics UK Ltd, Craven House, 40 Uxbridge Road, Ealing, London W5. Tel: 01-840 1800.

Star
£259 upwards

Say the word "printer" to the average home computer user, and the chances are he'll think of Epson, for so long the dominant force in the printer market. With this new range of printers, Star hope to make some kind of inroad into this market.

The range consists of three dot matrix printers aimed at the home user; the SG10 at £259, the SD10 at £389 and the SG15 also at £389. They are either Epson or IBM compatible, and offer an attractive near letter quality font and a removable tractor unit. The DIP switches for selecting character sets etc. are easy to get at, usually on the left hand side, a major improvement over Epson's hiding them away inside. In the software, Star have come up with a neat idea, you can define a printer macro, once you define a series of often used commands, you can execute them by just sending the macro command. Perhaps this might have been more useful if several macros could have been defined. The SG and SD10 printers are both eighty columns with speeds of 120 and 160 cps respectively and 2k (just over half a page) buffers as standard, expandable to 6k. The SG15 is 136 columns, at 120 cps and has a 16k buffer as standard. The SD10 uses a ribbon cartridge, the SG's, typewriter style ribbons.

So how do they compare'" Well, in use, they seem rugged and reliable. Noise levels were reasonable, the paper feed reliable and precise. The only slight quibbles are that the paper guides are a bit clumsy and the paper tear off is a long way from the print head, which means after doing a form feed after printing your document, you've still got to move the paper by hand before tearing it off. Certainly anyone looking at a printer in this sort of price range should carefully consider this bunch.