After testing and examining all of the available ink-jet printers on the market, I finally decided to go with the Epson Stylus 880 ink-jet printer.

When I first brought it home, I found the setup for this printer to be a breeze. I simply downloaded the printers to my computer and plugged in the printer. I was up and printing within ten minutes. I printed everything from simple black and white documents to actual photographs that were scanned into my computer. The promised 2400/1800 resolution delivered images that were crisp and vibrant.

On the surface, this sounds like a great price for all the great features you get. It is a fast printer at 12 pages per minute and delivers excellent quality graphics and text. Alas, like most products the true measure is the test of time.

You are fair warned...

I must say that I was absolutely delighted with this printer for about six months. After six months I began to notice that the resolution on my color documents was slowly becoming worse and worse. Thinking I may need to clean the printer heads, I simply followed the easy cleaning process which only involves pushing a few buttons on the printer. Surprisingly, this did not solve the problem. I tried the cleaning process again as suggested by the manual. Again this did not fix the problem.

I returned the printer to an Epson dealer since the printer had a one-year guarantee. This is where my review of Epson and this printer goes downhill. After waiting nearly one month for Epson to fix my printer, I finally got irritated enough to demand another printer. The Epson dealer finally agreed to give me another refurbished printer.

Once again the printer worked great for about six months and I noticed the same thing happening. All of my color documents were beginning to look worse and worse. Once again I followed the cleaning procedure with the same result. I tried to return the printer again, but the dealer informed me that even though it was a different printer it was still only a one-year guarantee. I had missed the deadline by exactly 3 days!

After doing my own research on my Epson Stylus 880 printer, I discovered that I was not alone in my disappointment of this printer. It turns out that this printers heads get clogged fairly easily and the cleaning process does not really unclogged the heads. Why do they get clogged so easily? Unlike the Hewlett Packard printers, when you remove the print cartridges, you are ONLY replacing the ink. HP was smart and realized that this would be a problem so they built the printer heads into the cartridges. I cannot begin to understand why Epson does not follow Hewlett Packard's example and build the printer heads within the printer cartridges.


Final Comment

I must admit that I was extremely disappointed with the Epson Stylus 880 printer. After printing beautifully for six months, I was hoping that this printer would last a long time. I have since bought a Hewlett Packard printer and I have had no problems for almost a year now. I am sure that some Epson 880's will not experience the problems that I had with the clogged print heads. From my experience, however, I cannot recommend this product.

Recommended: No