Epson Stylus C80 - Near Perfection
Written: Dec 01 '01 (Updated Dec 20 '01)
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Pros: fast, quiet and great quality print
Cons: none
The Bottom Line: Best little inkjet printer i have ever used. I recommend this to everyone.
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| opinionated3's Full Review: Epson Stylus® C80 InkJet Printer |
For those of you out there that have been reading my reviews here at Epinions know that I am very partial to Epson Inkjet printers. I very rarely find much negative to say about them and rarely recommend another brand over Epson. This review is on another Epson printer that I found a couple weeks ago. I just had to have one for my office and I will soon have one for my home.
The printer I am referring to is the Epson Stylus C80 Inkjet Printer. I was so impressed when I was reading on Epson's web site, I just had to go and see it in person. So off I went to our local OfficeMax store and took it for a few test runs. This is when I truly fell in love with this printer. I just had to have one for my office, I have been using an Epson Stylus 670 for about a year now. Even though I was happy with the Stylus 670, I was totally blown away with the Stylus C80.
The Printer
Epson has finally created the perfect small format color printer. Until now, there was always flaws of some kind that seemed to turn people away from buying Epson inkjet printers. I have heard that the two biggest reasons people stay away from Epson Inkjet printers. #1 Epson Inkjet printers are way to noisy. #2 The Epson Inkjet printers are too slow. Well, I am here to tell you in my humble opinion they have answered both of those concerns with this new printer.
Noisy?
It would appear that Epson decided to work on the noise concern of prospective customers. I have owned an Epson Stylus 400 and used an Epson Stylus 670 at work. These two printers are pretty noisy as inkjet printers go and I have survived. I guess the reason I don't put so much concern in how noisy inkjet printers are is because they are so much quieter compared to the printers we used to have to use for printing letters. I was printing letters on a dot matrix printer before I got my first inkjet printer. You want to talk about noisy, try talking on the phone while that baby was printing. The Epson Stylus C80 is quiet compared to the other small format inkjet printers from Epson. I would love to tell you that you can't hear it as it is printing, but that of course would be a lie. But, you can definitely tell that Epson has made great strides in addressing the noise issue.
Speed
This is another issue that I tend to take exception with people that bad mouth inkjet printer's in general. They print so slow, they aren't as fast as my laser printer. Well, that maybe true. But, have you looked at the cost of color laser printers lately? They are so expensive and are so huge, try putting one of those babies on your desk. So when I came across this Epson Stylus C80 I was really impressed with how fast it prints. At 20 pages per minute (black and white) in economy mode, it really blazes through my inter office print jobs. Now, we all know that there are other factors that determine your actual speed of the print job. The amount of coverage on the page will play a roll in how fast this printer will print a page. If you are printing a simple email in your office you will achieve pretty close to 20 pages per minute. Now if you are typing a letter to a client and you have a few graphics or even a mixture of colors it will slow your printing down. Epson lists the color print speed at 10 pages per minute. As with the listed black and white speed this listed color speed is based on economy mode. The actual speed you will see is dependent on the print mode you select and the actual page coverage of the print. I will explain the print modes and how to select them a little later. Like most people I don't sit with a stop watch to see how fast the printer will print my print jobs. I can only tell you if I am printing a 8" x 10" full color photo it will take around a minute. As far as in my job, I don't print pictures very often. But, I do print brochures and flier with color text and graphics and it prints great on photo paper.
Print Quality
To me this is the most important factor in choosing an inkjet printer. Speed is all relevant and as long as the printer shoots out great looking images I am happy as a lark. With this Epson Stylus C80 inkjet printer I have found a printer that has combined both great print quality and print speed. In it's highest resolution setting, 2880 x 720 dots per inch I have not seen another printer in it's class come close to the quality that is printed. I have long felt that no other printer maker can match Epson's quality of print as far inkjet printers go and with this model I continue feel that way. The C80 is capable of printing in various resolution modes depending on what type of media (paper) that you are using.
Resolutions
2880 x 720
1440 x 720
720 x 720
720 x 360
360 x 360
360 x 180
All of these different resolutions represent levels of print quality and the different modes that can be selected. These different modes can be used to print on the many different types of media that you can print using this printer. The nice thing about Epson printers include a software program that allows you to select all the different options of how you want your printer to print your job. All you do is click on the print button or choose print from the file menu and it automatically activates the printer control software. When it pops up on your screen, you can select from the many different features to control how your page will print. You can select from a list of paper options ( plain paper, 360 dpi inkjet paper, photo paper, glossy photo, heavyweight matte finish and so on). Then you can select whether you are printing photos and what type of enhancements you want. You also can choose between quality print or speed print and this will cause your printing time to speed up or slow down.
One thing to keep in mind when considering Epson inkjet printers, this software program will take up valuable system resources. This is due to the fact that the printers do not have much installed memory like other brands of printers. So it must use your system memory to buffer the data as it is sending it to the printer. So if you have an on going memory issue with your PC, I would recommend you not select Epson printers at this time.
Improvements
New improvements on the Epson Stylus C80 over previous small format inkjet printers from Epson. They incorporated the 4 separate ink cartridges, this is normally found on the high end Epson Stylus 3000 and 5000 inkjet printers. The black cartridge is larger than the previous models and the cyan, magenta and yellow larger than the old tricolor cartridges. This feature in itself will save you money as instead of having to replace the whole tricolor cartridge if the magenta color runs out. Now you just have to remove only the empty color cartridge. Another big improvement is in the new ink Epson uses it is called DuraBrite. This new ink has saved me on a few occasions, when I accidentally sprayed my paper with water. I just finished printing a flier for my boss and she needed it in a hurry and it got wet. I freaked out thinking that this flier that I have been working on for over an hour was ruined. Well, to my surprise it didn't seem to bother print at all. I had to find out why, so I did some research and this is when I found out about this new ink Epson is using. It said that with this new DuraBrite ink that it creates a water RESISTANT image, notice I didn't say water proof. So don't try and pour a bunch of water on it and expect that it won't ruin it. One thing it did mention quite clear that it is not water resistant on plain paper. The last thing as far as improvements goes, the Stylus C80 is much quieter than the previous models. Don't ask me what they changed to reduce the noise, but as far as I'm concerned I really don't care.
Media
This printer is capable of printing on a wide range of type and size of media. Unfortunately, due to the limitation of it's width you cannot print on tabloid paper. So
you are limited to a maximum of 8.5" wide and up to 44" long with banner paper loaded.
Paper size
Letter, legal, half-letter, user definable 3.5" x 3.5" up to 8.5" x 44"
Paper Type
Plain, bond, double-sided matte, premium glossy photo paper, premium semi-gloss photo paper, Epson Matte-Paper Heavyweight, Photo Quality Paper, Transparencies, Self-Adhesive Sheets, Ink Jet Cards, Banner Paper, envelopes.
Connectivity
Last but not least, I need to mention how easy this printer was to setup on my computer. The drivers for the different operating systems and control software are located on a CD that is included with this printer. The printer has two interfaces built in to give you an option of which type of computer you want to connect it to. You can use the parallel interface and easily connect it to your PC or you can use the USB port on the printer and connect it to a Macintosh or a PC with a USB port installed. The Epson Stylus C80 has the capability to be connected to computers at the same time using each of it's interfaces. The driver CD comes with the drivers for most of the operating systems you will need.
Windows USB: Windows 98, Me, 2000/XP
Windows Parallel: Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000/XP, NT 4.0
Macintosh USB: Macintosh OS 8.5.1- 9.1
Likes and Dislikes
I really like that fact that Epson decided to go with the 4 separate color cartridges and they worked on making the printer quieter. I never had a real problem with how noisy Epson Ink jet printers are, but I heard it all the time from other people.
There really isn't anything that I dislike about the Epson Stylus C80, maybe after using it for a long period of time I may find something wrong with it. But, as of now I really like everything about it.
In conclusion, I would recommend the Epson Stylus C80 printer to everyone looking for a new printer for their home or small office.
Note
Since I work for a computer service company that sells Epson products. The company is given a discount and I get the discounted price. I wan't to share something I found, if you go to Epsons web site www.epson.com and click on the rebates and promotional button you can get a $30.00 mail in rebate.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 129.00
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
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