Epson has long been well-known for its high-quality dot-matrix printers - starting with the MX and FX series on which it made its name and moving through the many letter-quality jobs on which it makes much of its current money.

Late last year the company moved to update the ageing FX and MX ranges with the introduction of new FX machines (the FX-85 and FX-105) and a new low-cost model, the GX- 80. We've already told you about the new GX machine (Your Computer, December 1985), so you might be interested in more on the FX range - specifically the wide-track FX-105.

The first thing that you should know about it is that it's not cheap - at £654 the FX-105 is a substantial investment for any micro user and should be considered very carefully. It does, however, offer a pretty impressive range of features.

The extra-wide platen is perfect for printing spreadsheets, ledgers and pre-printed forms, while the hardware-driven Near Letter Quality printing mode makes it an attractive vehicle for writing business letters which don't look as though they've been written on a computer. The Near Letter Quality is made possible by a new Epson print head - which increases print density from a 9 x 9 matrix to an 18 x 18 matrix in NLQ mode.

The FX-105 also offers a choice or tractor or cut-sheet feeding - giving you a choice of paper and seeming to eliminate sonic of the "paper-chewing" habits of the MX range. DIP switches are also easy to set (although they don't pass the 'screwdriver test' - one is still required to get at them) and are located beneath a cover at the top of the machine.

Speed is impressive - 160 cps (Characters Per Second) in draft mode and 32 cps in NLQ. The latter rate is still a good deal faster than many high-speed daisywheel printers.

An 8K on-board RAM buffer gives you a de facto print-spooling system and space in which to store your own user-definable characters - including perhaps a standard letter-heading or your own graphic design.

Speaking of graphics, the FX-105 is pretty good at printing them. Eight different modes allow densities from 60 to 240 dots per inch. These graphics can also be combined with text within a document.

The FX-105 is certainly a machine which lives up to the Epson reputation and heritage - but unfortunately also lives up to the old Epson price. Unless you need the higher speed or the wide carriage, you should probably be looking at the sub-£500 Epson GX-80 or at one of the many Epson compatibles currently available.

One of the biggest decisions which faces anyone considering the purchase of a printer is whether to opt for dot-matrix or daisywheel technology.

Dot-matrix printers are usually cheaper, and offer higher printing speeds and a variety of easily accessible typefaces. The quality of print is inevitably poorer than the average daisywheel printer - although the availability of 'Near Letter Quality' modes on some modern printers has slightly alleviated this problem.

Daisywheel printers, on the other hand, produce high-quality typewriter-style print (indeed many daisy wheels can be used as typewriters with the addition of an add-on keyboard) and offer a huge variety of typefaces - although they are difficult to access because you must physically change the daisywheel on the print-head. Daisywheel printers are often used by people who don't necessarily want the person receiving their letters to know that they were produced on a computer (such as those writing hundreds of personalised 'form' letters).

A difficult decision, but one which you may no longer have to make. Brother, one of the leading Japanese manufacturers of printers, typewriters, calculators, sewing machines, etc, has now come up with a printer that incorporates both dot-matrix and daisywheel printing technology.

The resulting machine is known as the 'Twinriter' - a big, powerful printing beast with two print heads and a control panel which looks as if it would be more at home in the cockpit of a 747 than sitting beside your micro.

According to Brother, 'the Brother Twinriter 5 (Model HR-35DD) is an innovative combination - a two-in-one daisywheel/dot matrix printer. The two print elements are installed on a single carriage, offering the best features of both - high resolution graphics in six selectable densities can be mixed with letter quality text in the same document'.

In short, the machine is not simply an el cheapo daisywheel with a poor quality dot matrix head strapped on top of it. The print heads can, in fact, even operate together on the same line when non-standard characters are Near Letter Quality (NLQ) printed with the dot matrix to complement the main Letter Quality (LQ) printout from the daisywheel.

Graphics printing is also excellent so that, for example, you can print a business letter from VIEW on your Beeb and then switch into the AMX mouse painting software and print some dot-matrix graphics to go along with it.

During our test, the Twinriter performed faultlessly - switching from daisywheel text to high-resolution dot-matrix graphics with ease. It was also surprisingly quiet in its daisywheel mode (Brother rates it at under 60 Db) and the speed was respectable (between 30 and 36 cps, depending on which daisywheels you're using).

The dot matrix printing is ironically slower than the slowest daisywheel operation when Near Letter Quality mode is used (although I personally can't see many reasons for using NLQ mode when daisywheel printing is available to you) - churning text out at only 17 cps. Ordinary Epson- compatible 'draft' printing, however, is a far more respectable 140 cps.

The printer is supplied with a parallel interface, although a serial interface is available as an extra option. You should have little trouble connecting it to your micro - we tried it with both a BBC micro and a QL without any problems. DIP switch settings for line feeds, form feeds, line spacing and other esoteric preferences are easily controlled by a bank of switches at the back of the printer. The Twinriter passes the 'screwdriverless DIP switch setting' test as no covers, panels or other bits of plastic have to be removed to get at them.

There are, however, three banks of DIP switches - each assigned to cover different tasks. One controls the settings for the optional serial interface (baud rate, data bits, parity, etc.). another the character sets (for both daisywheel and dot matrix operation) and the third decides which modes will be the 'default' setting.

Also at the back is a DIN plug for either a cut-feed or tractor-feed mechanism. Our review model came without either of these, and seemed to suffer from slight paper 'drift' as a result.

On the whole, however, I can think of no reason not to recommend the Twinriter 5 - except for the (ouch!) price. At £1295, it is not really the sort of machine which is budgetted to sit beside your Spectrum or Amstrad CPC - but it does portend a far more flexible future for printer buyers.

THE DAISY DIFFERENCE

The two printers featured here both offer an impressive performance but equally they are rather expensive.

Unless you have an immediate requirement for the up-market specification offered by the Epson FX- 105 and Brother HR-35DD our advice would be to wail awhile.

The price of printers is set to fall dramatically during 1986 - there are going to be plenty of bargains around later this year.