Prints nice photos, eats ink like nobody's business
Written: Jun 14 '08 (Updated Jun 23 '08)
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Pros: Good photo print quality, has ability to monitor ink usage
Cons: Goes through a lot of ink, defaults to full color printing, prints slowly
The Bottom Line: This has great photo print quality, probably because it uses as much color ink as possible. The scan and copy functions work well, albeit slowly.
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| lucidlemur's Full Review: Epson Stylus® CX5000 InkJet Photo Printer |
I got this for free with the purchase of a camera at Staples, and wow, I can see why they're giving these away. I'm considering giving it away myself, but I'd hate to saddle someone else with the monstrous ink cartridge costs.
The Basics
The Epson CX5000 is an all-in-one: it prints, copies and scans. Here are the specs that Epson gives:
- up to 27 ppm (color and black text printing)
- borderless 4x6 photos in as fast as 28 seconds
- one-touch copying with auto reduction and enlargement
- Direct photo printing from memory cards and PictBridge-enabled cameras/phones--PC-free
-One-click, color restoration of old, faded photos
-1200 x 2400 dpi scanning for vivid reprints and enlargements
-Up to 5760 x 1440 optimized dpi for ultra sharp detail
The printer comes with a software CD and four ink cartridges (black, cyan, magenta and yellow)
Print Quality
The photo print quality is great. We immediately used it to print wedding and honeymoon pictures, and you can't tell the difference between the home-printed ones and those developed at Walgreens. Of course, we stopped printing photos after we ran through the ink and I calculated that it was costing us about $1 per each 4x6 print.
In general, the text print quality is way too dark, and will show through if you use cheap thin paper like I do. The only way I've found to make it lighter is to mess with the contrast and brightness, but that can only do so much. Printing in draft quality comes out lighter, but sometimes I need a little more resolution than that provides.
Ink
This printer has a good feature where, if you're running out of black ink, you can mix the colored ink to extend the black ink life. The flip side is that the printer always uses some color ink, so even if you select "black ink only" you're burning some colored ink.
When you print, a little screen comes up showing the ink levels so you know how much you have left. I've read, though, that some models of this same printer had a flaw where the printer would tell you it was out of ink when it wasn't. I haven't had that problem (as far as I know).
Epson wants to charge $12.34 for a colored ink cartridge and $16.99 for black. You'd think you would save buying the multi-pack of three colored cartridges, but it's $37.04, or $0.02 more than individual ones. I've been buying knockoff ink on ebay for $3.25 a cartridge and it doesn't seem to have affected the print quality.
Printer Mechanics
The paper feed is the one area where I've never had problems: I've printed envelopes, 4x6 photos, and regular paper, and never had a paper jam. I use cheap flimsy paper, and often print on the back of old stuff, so if anyone could cause a paper jam it would probably be me.
This printer is pretty loud. The printer that I had before this one was an ancient HP that I snagged when some office was about to throw it away, so I'm used to noisy. The Epson is quieter than my old printer, but not by much! If you think you might ever need to, say, print off a lab report at 6:00 AM while your partner is trying to sleep in the next room . . . just plan on needing to apologize later.
Scanning and Copying
I've scanned a few photos and they've come out well. The scanning software just does the basics, but it works. One thing that's a pain is that after you scan one photo, the scan program closes, so you have to go open up the program again to scan the next photo.
I've never had a copy machine at home before, and it is nice to be able to make copies occasionally. There's no document feeder, though and the screen is only 9 x 12 inches, so there are definite limits to the copying capabilities. Also, my printer defaults to the "resize to fill the page" copy option. Twice now I've needed to copy something small (ticket stub, small receipt) and ended up with a giant enlargement. Not a big deal, but similar to the printer defaulting to full-color printing: the default is the opposite of what I usually want.
Other
The one nice thing about this printer was that it helped me recover some photos. I had dropped my digital camera during my honeymoon, so there were photos stuck on there that I wanted. My new camera didn't have the same kind of memory card, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do. But this printer has a slot for a memory card. You can either do a nifty thing where the printer prints an index sheet and you select which prints you want, or you can copy photos to your computer.
In general, I've been surprised at the things you can do without hooking this printer up to the computer. You can clean the print nozzles and print a test page, for example, by pressing different combinations of the "on" and "ink" buttons. These features have limited use, however, since you'd have to go look them up in the manual every time. (I mean, it's not exactly intuitive that holding down the "on" and "ink" buttons while the printer is off would clean the nozzles.)
The print settings are a bit of a pain. The software allows you to create a certain print setting (say, "black ink only", low contrast, high brightness), then give it a name and save it . . . but it won't default to that setting. It will default to the printer's favorite setting, which is "saturate the page with as much full color ink as possible."
Support
The users guide is lousy in some areas. For example, on the print screen there are options for things like PhotoEnhance and ICM, but no description of what those actually are. On the plus side, when I e-mailed Epson and asked about this, they directed me to where I could read about this . . . in the users guide to a different printer model. At least it was out there somewhere, and at least I got a reasonably quick response. I wish they would have just put that in the manual in the first place.
I also asked Epson how I could get the printer to just use black ink, and they confirmed that I couldn't: it will always use some colored ink. Since it won't print without all the ink cartridges full anyway, it's not like you'd ever be without colored ink, I guess. But that is a weird feature. Maybe it helps keep the nozzles clean or something.
Pricing and Availability
Are you really thinking about paying for this machine? I got it free, and I kind of regret the transaction. I just did a quick Froogle search and found it at 13 stores, costing $40 to $104. I wouldn't consider even the low end of that range.
Overall
I don't print much, and when I do I don't usually care about speed, so having an inefficient printer isn't a huge deal for me. The memory card reader came in handy, and it's nice to be able to scan and copy. But I'd recommend spending some money and getting yourself a real printer.
Recommended:
No
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
lucidlemur
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Member: Mic
Location: Pacific Northwest
Reviews written: 55
Trusted by: 3 members
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