Derwolf's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 780 InkJet Printer
I've always liked the quality of the hardcopy from Epson Printers, all the way back to the original Stylus color printers. They have always been competitive and the black only output has almost always been short of amazing. The 780 has not disappointed in the hardcopy department and I found its overall performance (speed after the timely startup) to be good if not very good. Where I have concerns are its long-term durability.
Build Quality
Epson has long been on my list of printers which are built very cheaply. The Photo 780 is no exception. It is all plastic for the most part and it simply feels like it'll fall apart if dropped or mishandled. Nothing on this printer (hardware wise) feels substantial or rugged.
Non Photo Output
Good to very good even on plain paper. I think the way the printer feeds paper is better than the "folding" method that HP and others use. Plus it is easier to figure out what side the paper will get printed on. Blacks are uniform with just a hint of feathering and the other colors are well saturated and fairly true to expected.
Photo Output
This is where this little printer shines. For $99, this puts out borderless and bordered prints which are very nice with a nice tonal and light balance, the high resolution work very nicely to blend (optically) the colors - even skin tones. Some moire in consistent colors, but not bad for a hundred bucks.
Ink
While the inks are generally good, I use the printer to make t-shirt iron-ons and I've found that the inks run too much for my tastes. It sometimes takes a number of washes to get the bleeding inks out of the garment. I wish they made permanent inks or fabric-fast colors. The 6-color inks are a nice selling point, but I've purchased and used 3 color and 2 black ink cartridges already in less than 6 months. This is in comparison to 2 black and 2 color ink cartridges for my old HP 855C that I've used for almost 6 years! The ink cartridges run about $20 for black and about $30 for the color.
Drivers/Software
The drivers installed without a hitch and the software is downloadable readily, and works well with my computer, so no complaints there. Their web site (www.epson.com) is a bit deep and it takes quite a few steps to get to the drivers, but it isn't too hard to access.
One problem I have with their driver is, if you run out of one ink, the printer basically stops printing until you replace the cartridge. For instance, if your color ink cartridge is out of ink, you CANNOT print at all, not even black only prints. That is annoying.
Side Note
Think twice before buying non-Epson brand ink cartridges too. Epson puts a special chip on their ink cartridges which "speak" to the printer to let them know how much ink is in them and what brand of cartridge they may be. And don't even think about refilling the used cartridges. Because they are chipped, they are resistant to refilling and you may end up voiding your warranty.
Conclusion
This is a nice printer if you wanna sink money into the ink cartridges and you don't mind the cheap build quality. There may be better printers out there, but for $99, what do you expect?
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