Exceeded all expectations
Written: Dec 11 '02 (Updated Oct 29 '03)
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Pros: Can't tell whether the photo is from Target or from the C62.
Cons: Slower than photo printers and cannot do edge to edge printing.
The Bottom Line: I can safely recommend this printer unless you want to do all your digital photos at home.
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| yoshimato's Full Review: Epson Stylus® C62 InkJet Printer |
Updates about compatible ink cartridges and long term usage.
A personal or photo printer
My printer at home is out of action for a long time. I'm a paperless inclined person so it doesn't matter that much. But somehow you need a printer. Say to print out the confirmation number of an on-line order. Saving the web page doesn't always works. Anyway saving the page or cut and paste of the info are less convenient than pressing the print button. The paper goes to recycling when the order arrives.
I was looking for a minimal "personal" printer than can also print quality photos occasionally. The C60 comes as one of the best buy as recommended by Consumer Reports - reasonably fast, good quality photo, good price and economical to run. I ordered a C60 at Gateway.com, but they gave me a C62 for $59 with free shipping. I was so impressed by the printer and the photo quality that I might consider an entry level photo printer if I could do that all over again.
To this day, I have been using the C62 to print photos on glossy papers, large and small, on DVD labels, plus color graphics on invitation cards and envelopes, rarely plain old text on plain paper. If you look at the Epson entry level photo printer, the specs look very similar to the C62. Basically the photo printer does everything the C62 does and more. The photo printer can do edge to edge printing, much faster. But less fast on black text and consumes more ink in this mode. They are both priced at $99 currently. The C62 can't do edge to edge printing and perhaps for this and the lower speed for photos, you get rebate.
If you print a lot of black text and the ink consumption and speed is important to you, a personal printer like the C62 is for you. Otherwise go for a photo printer, unless price is important to you and you find that the C62 is available at $59 again. The C62 can do photo just as well, but with border. That's OK because the border gives an nostalgic look to me. And for large prints you want to frame it, masking the border area anyway. If you really want to get rid of the border, buy the "borderless" papers from Epson at a reasonably price. You tear away the border by hand after printing. Not perfect edge but not bad.
But beware that some other photo printers are too specialized for photos. Some photo printer can use photo paper rolls. I doubt that if they can feed any size of other papers, even if they can it may not be as convenient as the C62. If you frown on printing all your photos at home, you may change your mind like me. You probably cannot feed 36 photo papers on ordinary printers, but no problem for papers on rolls. At less than 1 min a photo, its about half an hours wait without supervision. "Backing up" DVD's needs about the same time, burning adds another 30 min. Capturing old VCR tapes takes the same tape running time plus about 30 min to burn. 30 mins is not a short time but you get use to it provided you don't need to supervise anything.
Printing experience
You get a large folded quick installation sheet. So the installation is as easy as you expected. What impressed me and changed my mind about photo printing is the maintenance features of the printer. You all know that for entry level ink jets, if you don't use the color very often, the print head clogs. Now you can print out a very quick test print pattern first to see if the print heads are in tip top condition. The pattern is about half an inch high at the top left corner, so the printing is very quick and the paper can be reused at least 4 times. If the print head is not at top form, you can start a head cleaning cycle that lasts for 15 to 30 sec(?) This cleaning consumes ink but that's the proper way to do it. In the old days you have to try and error repeatedly.
You can feed anything rectangle into the feeder within the width and thickness limits. The paper guide adjustment is easy and precise. Though you can't put the printer too high up on the shelf. It helps if you can see the paper guide.
When you print on any application, you can click on the printer properties to use the printer features. You can see the ink level, start the print head check, and clean the head, before carrying on to actually print what's in the application.
To print photos on XP, you don't even need applications. Just say print.
You have to select the right paper type and the right size in the Epson printer driver software. That cannot be done without your input. The printer behaves differently for photo paper and plain paper. Remember that you have to select your paper size twice, once in the application and once in the printer driver. Because what you have (the paper size in the printer) and what you want to (the size of the photo or paper in your application) can be different. For example, a photo is not really 4x6. You can blow it up to any size with the same aspect ratio. If your stuff and the paper size don't match the driver will allow you to select different ways to fit your stuff into the actual paper. You can do everything easily by clicking printer properties when you print, and a default print preview by the printer driver is always a good idea. I printed various sizes of different things - photos, envelopes, invitation cards, DVD label sheets. With the preview on I corrected several mistakes, mostly wrong paper sizes. Remember that your application have to match the paper setting in the printer.
Software is easy to use in the extreme. You get warning when the ink is less than 20%, counting down to seriously low level. Though it's a bit annoying if you are using down to the last drop. But you need this warning if you are printing photos. You don't want to waste time and paper. When you give up and agree to change cartridge, you can follow the pop-up diagram to do everything. There's no need to find the hardcopy manual or online manual. The name of the Film factory software is a little bit misleading in that you don't need to print a lot of photos to find it useful. Actually everything is pre-configured for Epson products, borderless photo paper, borderless greeting card, and of course common type of papers. By accident I got Epson borderless greeting card. It used to be a nightmare to print on both sides of the card. But I got it right the first time by following the large icons and simple instructions. I was reluctant to start using something new - the film factory, but I manage to go straight into printing cards very quickly.
The way the printhead moves is impressive. If you have small fonts, it looks like that the C62 prints several lines at a time! If you have only one line of text rotated 90 deg on paper, the head only moves around the very short distance around the area with text. The feeding is therefore very fast. In short, the print speed is directly proportional to the text coverage on the paper. The print head don't go where there is no text.
The feeding mechanism is also quite impressive. I printed half a photo, ran shot of ink, stopped the printer. I put in a new cartridge. I wasn't thinking and print on the same photo paper again to savage the paper. Surprise surprise, the feeding tolerance seemed to be zero to the naked eye. The eyes and nose print at the same place. The only difference is that the part of face that got printed twice got darker. There wasn't any jam yet. There were some misfeeds but I was setting the side clamp too tight. Sometimes the intended photo paper got fed together with the unintended thicker supporting paper underneath. But the printer didn't seem to bother, printing like normal. By the way, I think there should be a warning when the front tray isn't opened. I forgot to open it more than once and the letter size thick paper got curled and folded badly inside the front tray. But everything that are supposed to be printed were there without distortion.
A note on Epson borderless photo paper. They are slightly larger than 4x6, they are 4x6 plus a narrow margin. If you select borderless paper in the print driver, everything is set. Otherwise you just enter the dimension of the paper and the margin you want - these are given on the package. The photo is printed slightly beyond the margin lines. After printing you tear the margin areas away, by hand is OK. The margin lines are pre-cut with find dots. The final edge is OK but not perfect.
Ink cartridge and print quality
I'm no expert but I can say that the print quality on Epson glossy paper (not even premium) is good enough. By the look of everything, you can't tell whether it's from the photo labs or from your printer.
In addition, I was trying to duplicate a large photo taken in a studio (for kids). I scanned the photo using my Epson scanner. I use the auto enhance feature in Photo Impression, as I know that the color of the photo is a bit off, the vivid color of the dress in the photo doesn't match that of the dress. It looked better on screen after enhanced. When I printed it out, it looked better than that from the studio! The dress in the picture is as real and as vivid as the real dress. When I printed the picture on Epson borderless cards, it beats everybody. The cards from photo labs looks very 'home-made' in comparison. Firstly, general photo labs cards doesn't look like a card. It's a picture with fancy frames to diffuse the squareness of the picture, plus a few words. After tearing the borders away, the Epson cards looked like a card, not a letter size paper folded in half. You can print on all four sizes of the folded card if you want.
After 30 plus borderless cards less than half letter size, 10 plus 4x6 borderless photos, similar number of colorful envelopes, one or two head cleaning that also consumes ink, I ran out of color ink. The official cartridge cost about $28. I got some for less than $9.
It was manufactured by G&G, and I got it from supermediastore. It first I thought it was a mistake. After one year of use it's great. I saw some Japanese manufactured ink in Fry's costing twice as much, so it must be even better.
The Epson ink looked great, by the look of it, not that I compared different printers and inks side by side. The G&G ink looked just at great, again I didn't compare prints side by side. I read that the ink dye are somewhat patented so that compatible inks can never be the same. But I think the color looked the same, but I didn't compare side by side.
However, there are simple tricks to use compatible ink successfully. When the ink cartridge are installed and charged, the test print pattern will look awful. The trick is to give it time first time, say 1 hr but not to long so the ink dries again. Use head cleaning cycle if necessary.
1) Clean head if necessary
2) Wait for an hour
3) Print test pattern
4) Repeat if necessary
The important is never to print test pattern after head cleaning. If you don't give it time, the test pattern will be bad. There's no harm to print the test pattern though. Just don't clean the head again and again without waiting an hour because the test pattern looks bad. You just waste the ink.
After first use, the ink will be perfect, I have a year of experience. Most important, don't ever let the print head dry. I think printing a little bit of color once every few days to a week will be fine. Even a non-colorful web page will be OK because there are always color on the web. It is a mistake to turn off color printing to save money. Once the head dries, it consumes a huge amount of ink to clean the head when you need color printing. For the original Epson cartridge is OK, just one head cleaning cycle and you can print immediately. But for compatible ink, you have to repeat the first use routine above.
The advantage of the Epson cartridge is that after you uninstall from the printer, it's tank valve are supposed to seal itself, allowing it to be stored for months. So if you can find some decent compatible cartridges, they can be used rather conveniently when not printing quality photos. This is my previous thought but I think now it's not advisable. The head will dry and you need to clean it first wasting a lot of ink. And I found the compatible ink looks just as good.
It is interesting to know that the Epson cartridges cannot be recycled, while many other manufacturers like HP can. If this is important to you, search the web first for manufacturers and printer models. In additional to environmental concerns, practically the price of Epson compatible cartridges are higher. Many other cartridges can be refilled by yourself, or many dealers are happy to take your empty cartridges for re- manufacture.
Comparison with photo printer
The current Epson line up starts with 4 ink colors, 3 color plus black. I wouldn't try anything less than 4 because mixing 3 color to produce black is a waste of ink, and the quality isn't true black according to Epson. Epson's photo printer starts with 6 ink color. The two additional color is the same but with a lighter tone, which seemed to make sense. If a 4 color printer can beat the studio (for kids) sometimes, I can't wait to try the 6 color one with similar money for the printer. I think you use less ink because of less mixing. So the running cost for ink is not any higher, except that the color cartridge has 5 compartments rather than 3. Check the cost to see if that's for you.
The non-photo printers got more nozzle for black ink to speed up the text printing speed.
Photo printers can do edge to edge printing, but that's not very true. You need some place to grip the paper with high precision. So edge to edge means the support of photo paper rolls, at least for Epson. But you got to cut off the printed roll into separate prints, don't you? Therefore edge to edge isn't everything. If you don't want your photo curved at all, you have to print on sheets of paper, so you will have a border. If you want a 8x10 print on high quality photo paper, you still have a border.
The minimum margins (on letter size paper) for the C62 are 3, 3.3, 3 and 14.3 mm for left, right, top and bottom. The bottom margin can be set to 3 mm as an option. But I think the catch is the feed precision or something like that.
If you go for a photo printer, color management is something you need to consider to beat even the studios. Ideally, the camera captures precisely what's real, and the printer is calibrated (say if you use all Epson printer, ink and paper) to print exactly the color as recorded on the file. But things are quite complicated. We know that the picture looks different for different setting of aperture and shutter speed. You need a filter in bright sunlight for the picture to look better. When you make prints, you have second chance to adjust things. So there's no such thing as true, real. Photo is a subjective thing since the human eye is different to the camera. Photo labs can't adjust for you photo by photo. Even if the studio experts adjust the picture for you, you can do better since you know what your dress color look like, or your skin color, or how you prefer yourself to look. You can easily make adjustments with bundled or free software. But the problem is that what you see on screen is not what you see on paper. This is because the display and print uses very different physics to produce color. To calibrate everything, you need to use windows that support color management, and printers that do the same, and you need to know something about your monitor. With XP and Epson printer for example, you can match the print to the display if you set the color temperature of your display to some degree. But there cannot be exact match. Usually the camera captures more info than the computer display, the monitor color changes with age. If you use 'compatible' ink, you add another level of calibration that no one will be able to help you but yourself Despite all these, you can easily beat the labs and studio because you are the one with the ultimate knowledge of the color your wear, under the given lighting conditions.
Long term usage report
Great. Never jammed. I use quality ink jet paper as well as thinner money saving paper for everyday office use, laser & copiers. Also thicker cards and labels for ink jets.
The relative printer alignment is also perfect. You can test and adjust it from your printer, but I don't need to. The absolute alignment could be a bit off. At first I printed circular DVD labels and it was spot on. After a couple of months, less than a year, I can see that it was slightly off by an mm or two. I never demand that sort of precision from any other printers before so I can't tell whether other printers are better. However, I spotted that the Film factory have adjustments to compensate for this. So this must be normal at least for the Epson printer. Again if you don't print circular DVD labels and something like borderless photos, you won't notice this. In addition, I used the minimum margin setting so I can print 3mm from the bottom of the paper. That may contribute to the alignment also.
Specifications
If I left something, see the specifications according to Epson below along with my notes.
Light Resistance / Print Longevity
Available on select EPSON Printers including the EPSON Stylus C82
* Say normal ink on normal photo paper will last certain number of years without noticeable fade. There are special inks and paper available if you need the output to last even longer – look at the Epson.com site. But being digital, I would print that photo out again if that fades after 10 years.
Maximum Resolution (dots per inch)
Up to 5760 x 720 optimized dpi using RPM on various media
* I can't tell whether the photo is printed in the photo labs or my printer. But that is not a side by side comparison, an impression rather.
Ink Cartridge Configuration
Black and tri-color ink cartridges
* It make sense to have separate black ink for printing text. The photo printers have 6 inks.
Nozzle Configuration
Monochrome head 144 nozzles; Color head 48 nozzles x 3 (CMY)
* In the photo printer version, there are less nozzles for the mono head, so the print speed for black text is slower.
Print Speed
Black Up to 14 ppm
Color Up to 10 ppm
4" x 6" Photo 1 min. 24 sec. (photo mode, glossy photo paper)
8" x 10" Photo 3 min. 7 sec. (photo mode, glossy photo paper)
* In the photo printer version, black text is a bit slower, but photo printing is much faster at 48 sec for 4x6.
Paper Handling
Maximum Paper Width Single Sheet - 9.5 in.
Maximum Printable Area 8.26" x 10.76" (letter size): Top margin .12" Left margin .12"
* Note: there is always a margin - you cannot print from edge to edge like a photo. You can buy special "borderless" photo paper, print and then tear off the edge. It's easy to tear off by hand and the edge are not bad, but not perfect.
Paper Sizes
Letter, legal, executive, user definable from 3.5" x 3.5" to 8.5" x 44"
4" x 6" Borderless Photo Printing on EPSON Glossy Photo Paper
* You can easily feed any size paper and envelope into the printer up to the max width. You can also enter the paper dimensions easily into the printer software.
Paper Types
Plain, bond; EPSON Photo Grossy Photo Paper, EPSON Premium Bright White Paty Ink Jet Paper, EPSON Matte Paper Heavyweight, EPSON Double-Sided Matte Paper, EPSON Photo Quality Ink Jet Paper and Cards, EPSON Photo Quality Glossy Film, EPSONlf-Adhesive Sheets, EPSON GlossPhoto Stickers, EPSON Iron-On Cool PeePSON Inkjet Transparencies, Banner Paper
Envelope Types
Standard (No. 10)-Plain, bond and air mail paper
Maximum Paper Thickness 0.27mm
Paper Capacity
Input paper tray 100 sheets, 17 lb/10 envelopes
* You can, but I won't put too much weight on the feeder. The plastic support as you can see in the pictures is not that sturdy. It's a feature of vertical feeders for space saving. In older style printers the paper lay flat inside the printer so it doesn't matter.
Ink Cartridge Life
Black Ink Yield 600 pages text (ISO/IEC 10561 letter pattern); 420 pages of graphics (5% coverage)
Color Ink Yield Color ink yield 300 pages (5% coverage each color CMY)
* The C60 was reported to be economical in its class by consumer reports. The photo printer version yield less on black text.
Ink Shelf Life
2 years from production date
Printer Dimensions & Weight
18.8" x 19.0" x 7.1" (W x D x H) with trays extended; 7.5 lb (including ink cartridges)
* Be careful with the D and H if you want precise measurements to fit your available space. You have to add the paper height as they are fed vertically at the back of the printer. There is a plastic support for the paper, but not as high as the paper. This support is slightly inclined so it adds depth in addition to height, but the 19" may include the depth already. When not in use, the front tray can be easily folded up to the printer, saving a few inches of working space.
Printer Case Color
Light gray and dark gray
* Two tone is quite nice, goes well with the epson scanner. But the blue/grey scanner looks better.
Interface and Connectivity
USB, Parallel (IEEE 1284)
* Comes with the USB cable as well. Parallel port seems a waste of space on the printer. I have 4 USB port and cable - 1 for digital camera, 1 for scanner, 1 for video capture, 1 for printer. If I have less USB or add one web cam, the parallel port may come in handy. You don't want to plug in and out the USB connectors all the time.
Operating Systems
Windows® USB - Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP
Windows Parallel - Windows 95, 98, 2000, Me, and XP
Macintosh® USB only System 8.6 to 9.x; OS X: 10.1 or later
* I have XP and use USB - no problems.
Software Included
EPSON Software™ Film Factory™ 2.5 (Exif Compatible)
* From a single photo to rolls, to both sides of greeting cards, the factory did it all with ease.
Color Management
Standard, Charts and Graphs
* Color management usually means matching the display color to the print color with support via windows. In addition, there are some adjustments via software, like what you can do on photo software, auto enhancement, color adjustment etc.
Sound Level
48 dB (A)
* Not at all quiet, but don't feel that it's noisy or annoying when I'm in front of the printer. But because the print head is moving at an incredible speed and stop at an instant, there are strong base sound that travel far - a bit like a subwoofer. It can be spectacular behind the room where the printer sits near the hollow wall. If you want to compare with other printers, 3 dB less is half the physical noise power, but human perception is quite complicated. (1 B is 10 dB.)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 59
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
yoshimato
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Location: Beach Cities, CA, USA
Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
Among other things I reviewed, I also like writing, or more appropriately, being read.
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