I purchased the Epson Photo 820 back in January 2002, shortly after they were introduced in Canada. Therefore I have had a fairly lengthy run with this Printer.

The printer was easy to set up as far as installing the drivers and having windows recognize it. The printer was packaged with average photo software (Epson film factory and Arcsoft Photo Impressions).

I have printed well over 200 photos with the 820 and hundreds of documents and I must say that it produces one of the best quality pictures I have seen from an inkjet. This is where it ends. Text print is satisfactory.

I retired an Epson 600 after a number of years of usage and it printed flawlessly. I printed pictures into the thousands until it died. It had excellent ink usage and the cost of the cartridges were average. This is what I expected to find with the Epson Photo 820. I had also used HP Laser and HP Inkjet, Lexmark Inkjet and Brother Laser. The 600 ranked right up there, I was convinced that Epson was the best and this therefore was the reason that I purchased the Epson Stylus Photo 820.

When I purchased my first Epson Photo 820, key words (my first), the printer would not print properly. It would freeze up my whole computer during print jobs, to clear it, one would have to turn the computer off (hard boot) to get the printer working again. A call to Epson was in order and after holding on the phone for almost 45 minutes, I spoke with a techie who put me through the paces to try and correct the problem. Almost an hour later we had to give up and I was instructed to take it back. (No 1-800 number for technical support another draw back).
My problem was simply, it would not print properly using USB it would work fine with Parallel. The USB was the older type 1.1.

I picked up another and you guessed it, the new printer would not work properly using the USB either. After installing and reinstalling drivers from the disc and also from the Epson Site the printer still kept freezing. Epson Support people were very polite and courteous but no help.

Because of the freezing I was using the printer on parallel and occasionally using the USB until it start to freeze up. The 820 is terribly slow using parallel about twice as long to print then when using the USB. Changing the spool settings (from spooling, to direct to Printer) does not do anything to help the speed nor did it help my USB problem. Epson recommends using the spooling.

Printing with parallel port at 1440 takes approx. 12 minutes for a 5 X 7 and upwards of 25 to 30 minutes for an 8 X 10. Printing using parallel port at 720 is about half the time.

Using USB (if it doesn't crash) at 1440 takes about 6 minutes for a 5 X 7 and an 8 X 10 about 12-15. Printing using 720 is about half the time.

I won't even get into the 2880 setting, if you notice how long it takes at 1440 and 720 you can only imagine how long it takes at 2880(much longer). The good thing is, there is a very slight difference in picture quality between using 720, 1440 or 2880. In 95 percent of the pix that you produce you can use the 720 setting and will be more then satisfied saving yourself alot of ink usage).

I will probably get jumped on by people for what I am about to say, but here it goes. The printer is noisy and has a long warm up period (cycling time). It does not print anywhere near the speed that Epson states using USB or Parallel. (If it does, I would like Epson to tell me how, as their support people couldn't tell me). I would classify this printer as slow even using USB. During print jobs the machine will go into long pauses while printing pages, slowing down the print times.

Out of all the printers that I have used over many years this one with out a doubt is the worst ink hog I have seen. Also the cartridges are expensive because they have the memory chips attached, and it is a six color machine. If you buy this machine thinking that you will print out all your digital pictures, think again it would cost you a fortune. It's great to print out the odd good picture in 8 X 10 but you sure could not print out pictures in bulk, it would be much cheaper to take them into a lab.

The nozzles on the printer clog easily especially the black. The machine DOES NOT have to sit for long periods of time to clog up. I have had the black jet clog up completely, during a print job, everything would be printing fine then all of a sudden the black ink would disappear.

I only use Epson cartridges, there are after market cartridges for this printer, where the tanks are re-filled and the chips are pulled and new chips are then popped in. These cartridges are a fraction of the cost however I would not recommend using them, the nozzles clog easily enough using epson ink.

I feel that the cons far exceed the pros on this particular machine. If you want to print a lot of pictures and you are on a tight budget then run away from this printer. The ink cost can be high.

In Ontario Canada, the cartridges are hard to find, they are not in great abundance I have only found them in the Future Shop therefore no competition to knock down the price a bit. The cartridges in Canada run in the $50.00 cdn.($34.00 u.s) range.

In my opinion there are other machines out there that are similar in quality without the problems and excessive ink usage. Personally, I wish that I had never bought or seen this anchor.

I have also had problems with this printer printing out PDF pages (acrobat). In some cases it would print out multiple pdf pages with no problem, then it would come to one certain page and just refuse to print it, it would then just crash and freeze up.

I have recently Nov 2002 replaced my computer and am now using a P4 2.4 with 2.0 USB ports. With the new USB 2.0 I have no more freeze ups. I also have no problems printing PDF. As one person commented on this review about conflicts he is right in most cases. I am very familiar with conflicts and in this particular case it was not a conflict with other programs. I had re-partitioned, re-formatted my old system and with no other programs installed, it was still freezing. The only conflict that could have existed was the old USB's.

Therefore I will change part of my review to state you may have a USB problem with freeze ups. But in no way would I change my opinion of this printer. The nozzle clogging alone is enough to turn you off. I am also using a HP, 3 in one Printer, Scanner and Copier and it works flawlessly. I would still give the nod to Epson for picture quality.
Would I buy another Epson, yes. Would I still recommend Epson, the answer is yes, but I would do a lot of research first. I still believe as far as photo quality goes for the price you can't beat them. Would I recommend this particular printer the answer is No.



Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 140.00
Operating System: Windows