The LX80 is Epson's newest low cost dot-matrix printer which, in addition to the usual facilities, has near letter quality printing.

It is smaller, neater and lighter than its worthy predecessors. The all important dip switches are accessible from the outside of the case and will set start up options for international character set, paper out indication, form length, NLQ or draft mode, character width, beeper on/off, carriage return with or without linefeed, printer active/deactive and open or slashed zero.

In its basic form, the LX80 only possesses friction feed, but a neat tractor unit that sits on top of the printer and takes only a few seconds to fit is available as an extra at low cost. This tractor unit accepts paper from four to ten inches in width and has one particularly nice feature - the friction feed must be set to "free" in order to install the tractor unit, so that one cannot get paper torn because both drives are active.

However there is no protection at the rear of the tractor unit, so that paper already printed can get caught up in the rear of the mechanism. Loading paper is easy, with or without the tractor feed.

Epson also offers a very low priced single sheet feeder which I have not had the opportunity to try. Paper tear-off facilities do not exist, so that the continuous roll user will have to get used to using scissors.

Epson have departed from the long ribbon cartridge that was characteristic of MX, AX and FX printers, the LX80 having a four inch square cartridge which clips on to and moves with, the printhead.

Although it doesn't last as long as the traditional type, the replacement cost at the moment (only Epson make the cartridges) is the same. When second sources become available, no doubt the price will fall.

One great advantage of the new system is the ribbon guide, which prevents the bon touching the paper during pager loading or paper feed. No more messy black smudges.

All the usual print facilities are supported, such as enlarged, emphasised, condensed, double-strike, underline, italic, unidirectional, superscript and subscript - the majority being available in pica and elite sizes (see Figure 1) Although proportional spacing and reverse paper feed are not present (only on the FX80), five fine spacings, both margin settings, vertical and horizontal tabulation, perforation skip, and form length setting are all supported. Buzzer, paper end detector, sheet paper feeder (when fitted), delete, backspace, halt speed and re-initialse are all software accessible.

One feature in common with the FX80 is the master select facility, in which several commands may be given at one time by setting different bits in the command character. Also, many print modes may be selected by Epson's Select type in which the on-line, line feed and form feed buttons are used.

Although this is clever I found it difficult to be certain that I had the complex sequences right, there being no indication of the mode selected until printing was started.

The best feature, and the newest for Epson in 3 budget priced printer, is the NLQ print face available. This is really superb as Figure II shows.

NLQ is approximately a sixth of the draft mode speed. It supports a justification facility, offering left, right or full justification and centering. Emphasised printing is also possible, but most other typeface options are not.

Eleven international character sets are supported, being selected by dipswitch or software. These sets are also supported in NLQ mode. Thirty two preset graphics characters are present in the LX80 (see Figure III) and they may be modified to change pitch and weight by combination with enlarged emphasised, pica and so on. In most cases the characters are contiguous horizontally, but line spacing needs to be altered in order to join successive lines of characters.

In common with the FX80, programmable characters are supported but only six in number. However these can be designed in both draft and NLQ modes.

All the graphics modes present in RX80 and FX80 printers are supported in the LX80. All the various dumps I have tried work well including Mini Office.

The buffer in the LX80 is only small, taking only about half of one A4 page and disappearing when characters are redesigned. When compared with the RX80 and FX80 on a speed test the LX80 took only 58 seconds in draft mode against the RX80's 75 and the FX80's 53 seconds.

The manual is a great improvement on its predecessors, being written in English English as opposed to the Japanese printer dialect! Many examples of the various facilities are given after careful explanation of their function.

A number of appendices contain a detailed breakdown of the codes, in ASCII, decimal, hexadecimal and control formats. The ASCII codes and character fonts are listed and the software commands are listed in numerical and function order.

The dip switches, technical specification, parallel interface protocols and tractor unit are all detailed, and an especially helpful section on trouble-shooting and matching different computer systems is also present.

The pull out reference card with all commands and the ASCII character sets is, however, let down by the absence of decimal codes, which would have been of value to some users.

All in all, Epson have produced a great new little printer, but I wish they had designed a tractor mechanism into which the paper could not re-enter. A tear off facility would also help. Still, highly recommended.