Sure it's cheap initially
Written: Dec 21 '03
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Pros: Nice Color Photos
Cons: Uses too much ink, chipped ink cartridges, noisy, not very reliable
The Bottom Line: You get what you pay for; uses too much ink, noisy, reliability questionable. Buy a Canon or HP instead.
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| shotgun_000's Full Review: Epson Stylus C60 Ink-jet Printer |
First of all, let me state that we have three of these printers at work, and that what I say is my experience with all 3, and not just a random bad printer.
The worst aspect of these printers is the ink usage. They consume ink at an incredible pace, and it seems like I'm replacing the cartridges every few weeks. They are used at my work to print an occasional b&w document, at economy setting, and the printers by no means print an excessive number of documents that could account for the ink usage. It's just a fact of cheap printers; the initial investment is cheap, but you pay dearly for the ink.
Another thing I hate about these and all Epson printers is that the cartridges are chipped. What this means is that these chips count the drops of ink used, and estimate when the cartridge is empty. When it gets to a certain point, the printer will not even try to print, it will simply remain inoperative until you install a new cartridge. Refilling the cartridges is a little tricky. You need a special tool or software to reset the counters in the chips, otherwise the printer thinks the cartridge is still empty.
Just for an experiment, I waited until the black cartridge was "empty", according to the chip. I then reset the chip with a software program, and continued to print without refilling or changing the cartridge. The result? I got nearly another 10 days of printing before the cartridge actually ran out. Think about how much these Epson Ink Pirates are making with these chipped cartridges that tell the printer that they are empty when they really have about 20% more ink. This is the nice thing about Canon printers. The ink level detection is optical, plus the cartridges are see-thru, so when it says out of ink, it really is. The Epson just guesses it's out of ink.
Then, once you mortgage your house to buy more Epson Ink, often you have to run the printer thru numerous printer cycles to get a decent print quality. This of course wastes ink. Then, the printer feels the need to run it's own cleaning cycles, everytime it is turned on, and on occasion before printing a document.
I've used many different printers, from Lexmark to HP to Canon, and I would rate any of them better than the Epson C60.
Some of the other reviewers made reference to this being a noisy printer. That's an understatement. All three of our printers are extremely loud. One is worse than the other two; it honestly sounds like it will fall apart while printing.
Another thing worth noting is that one of the three printers just died, and would not print or do anything. Swapping to another computer did not solve anything. After time on the phone with tech support, they determined that it was an internal printer failure. They sent a new one, under warranty.
The only thing the Epson C60 excels at is color photos, if you can keep the print nozzles clean long enough. I've made a few nice color photos from this printer.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 68
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
shotgun_000
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Reviews written: 6
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