Good Photos!! High Maintenance!!
Written: Jun 27 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful photo quality.
Cons: Nozzle are always clogged. Consumes lots of ink. Only one cartridge for all colors.
The Bottom Line: This printer is now outdated. I would recommend shopping around for something faster with just as good of quality.
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| kanderson111's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 1280 |
I bought this printer back in May of 2002 so I have had a lot of time to try it out. I paid $500 for this printer.
Setup : Setup was easy with the required instructions. I was up and going relatively quick.
Bundled Software: The bundled software is nice. The photoquicker allows you to print your photos in different sizes and configurations, photoquicker is a smooth easy to use program. The ink monitor does exactly as the name describes, easy to read and warns you when you need more ink. Mine came bundled with an Adobe photo shop disk, this is a great piece of software. It allows you to do just about anything to a picture, including enhancement of color and size.
Quality of print: Photos are breathtaking. They are clear, the colors are accurate. When everything is going well there were no noticeable blemishes. I showed my prints to friends and family and they were amazed that they had come from an inkjet printer. Text is pretty good, and most of the web pages, homework, letters, etc. I printed on the fastest speed and they came out just fine.
Ink consumption: Terrible this thing gobbles up a lot of ink, especially when you have to clean the print nozzles.
Ease of Use: This is the main draw back to an otherwise good product. When the nozzles are clean this thing does a beautiful job. The problem is that the nozzle get clogged up frequently. Sometimes it is very hard to get them clean, as you may have to run the nozzle clean several times. I found that when you have to run the nozzle clean several times, the print head gets so messy that you have to wait 10 or 20 minutes before you print, or you will have little blemishes from dropped ink where it shouldn't be. You pretty much always need to run the nozzle check before you print anything on expensive paper or you will waste it.
Once I had to have my print head professionally cleaned because the nozzle cleaner could not get it cleaned out. I could not imagine what this would have costed if I hadn't had that 2 year service agreement.
Cost of Use: This is also a big draw back to this printer. Since the print head is constantly clogged, you have to run the nozzle clean a lot, which consumes massive ink. The color cartridge is one piece and you throw away a lot of money because its worthless when one color runs out. The price of a new cartridge is about $35.
Speed: For text the speed is decent, if you print on the fastest, lowest quality setting, which is great for text. Photos must be printed on the highest quality setting for good results. When you print a photo, expect a long wait. I would say a good 20 minutes to print an 8" X 10".
Conclusion: When I bought this printer, there was nothing that came close for print quality. Now there are printers with better quality, for less money, that do it all about 10 time faster. My printer just went out on me after my service agreement ran out, and I think I'm going to try a Canon i950 based on the high amount of favorable reviews.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
kanderson111
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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