Is It Really Worth It?
Written: Mar 20 '03
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Pros: Excellent Print Quality, Improved Print Drivers, USB and parallel ports
Cons: Warmup period, slow, expensive ink, ink runs out quick
The Bottom Line: I'd buy 5 more instead of buying the ink over and over again.
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| jnoschese's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 820 Inkjet Printer |
What an attrative printer. I had an Epson Stylus II before this one, and I was happy with it, so I wanted the Epson Photo 820 because at a price of $99 at most stores, you can't go wrong on a new printer. Sorta.
This little puppy has incredible resolution and when used with Epson's Premium Glossy Photo Paper, digital camera picture printouts are absolutely stunning.
Printing takes a long time to print an "8.5x11" printout using the best quality print settings you possibly can, but its well worth the wait, and you can make the pictures borderless, which will take up the full size of paper. I wouldn't recommend it in a business environment because of the speed, but quite nice if you want to start printing out your own photos on the side. It also comes with PIM drivers so if you print from Photoshop you get exact print color matching, and the pictures come out stunning. A few of my family members thought I had the pictures developed and blown up.
Printing standard webpages or text is pretty quick and I can't complain at all. It puts my old printer to shame, plus I'm not dealing with paper problems like my previous printer which I bought for over $250 at the time and now it problem worth, umm..nothing.
Ink, yes. of course you need ink. Sporting two carts, one for black, and one for color, it doesn't have to "make black." Pretty much every decent printer has this these days, but when you start printing out photos in the best quality, expect the color ink to run down quickly. I can print out about 11 to 15 8.5x11 best quality prints before I need to replace the color ink cart. The black seems to last a little longer in this case. Problem is, color ink is about $35 and black ink is $25. You can wait for a good deal, but thats the general ballpark figures. I sometimes feel when going for new ink, that I'm better off buying the printer again, and for some extra cash, I'll get a brand new printer. hmmm..
The printer drivers are much improved from Epson's line of bad developed and annoying drivers that always seem to take up much of my desktop when I'm trying to print. Normally I just use the standard Windows drivers, but these are pretty nice actually. one box pops up and shows me the ink levels and when the ink runs out, it will tell you so, and if you'd like, you can purchase them directly from Epson (I wouldn't recommend because you can probably get them slightly cheaper at the store). It does have annoying tips by which the second day of printing, they could've done without this in this "box." One cool thing is that you can get some techy details about each ink cart in the printer. Not really "needed" but you can at least find out some info on it..pretty neat...
Plugging in the printer, you can use USB or parallel hookups, but you can't use both at the same time. It doesn't allow this physically. So you still need to share it the same ol way your sharing it now (if you are). I have to say printing via USB is so much faster than parallel, and plus you don't really use up as much overhead as you do with parallel printing, but the option there is good because I can use it with just about any computer.
Setting up the drivers was a breeze, I popped in the cdrom and it did its thing...non nonsense.
Personally, I can't stand printers because its such a rip off.
I'd rather get a laserprinter to print day to day stuff, because its quieter and faster, however they are very expensive, but probably less expensive in the long run, I'm not sure...
I'd use this printer strictly if your looking to print photo quality images and don't mind the steep ink prices, or just keep buying it over and over again when you run out of ink.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 99
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
jnoschese
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Location: Long Beach, NY
Reviews written: 68
Trusted by: 5 members
About Me:
Insane New Yorker with a knack for electronics
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