Another Epson Printer

Preliminary Remarks

Just before the holidays (December 2007) I was shopping in Best Buy and ran across this printer on sale for #24.99. That’s hard to beat. I guess it was one of those “loss leader” sales that entice people into the store. Since I was soon to give away one of my old backup printers I decided to buy it.

I always liked Epson printers since I bought my first dot-matrix too many years ago. This model is a multi-function printer: printing, copying and scanning. Usually I avoid machines that claim to do more than one job but so far this model has worked quite well.

Printing

While the specifications say that it will print 12 pages per minute in black and white the time I tested for a generic word processing document (531 words, single spaced) was a lot slower (just under 4 pages per minute). If you are looking for speed this isn’t the printer for you. Color documents were high quality but even slower. If you print a lot of color documents or photos it might be wise to consider some other higher end models.

Scanning

I was presently surprised at how well the scanning feature worked. I tested a newspaper article and the file was easily incorporated into my word processor as a jpeg file. There are several modes available to scanning: Full Auto, Home and Professional. The last two modes allow the user to select a variety of parameters. The Full Auto mode worked well for me. Additionally, I tried to copy two pages from a paperback book and while I had to press the lid down slightly so the text near the binding was visible the text from the pages were clear.

Copying

I rarely have need for faxing but the copying feature worked well for me to copy and print an IRS document, sign it and then scan it and send it as an attachment.

Ink Cartridges

There are four ink cartridges: black, yellow, red and cyan. I usually try to keep several packages on hand and after I bought the printer I looked for generic ink cartridges online and wasn’t able to find any supplier that stocked this model. I did buy back up cartridges from the Epson store online and was surprised to note that their prices were quite reasonable and their service quite fast.

Problems

Installing the cartridges is easy although the mechanism for holding the tray upright is a bit awkward. Another problem (sort of) is that the printer is quite noisy. Epson says that it has a decibel rating of 47 and I believe it. Another minor annoyance is that the printer is larger than I anticipated so if you are considering it be sure it will fit in the space that’s available. Dimensions are approximately 18” x 19” x 12” and the weight is just a little over 11 lbs.

Other Considerations and Summary

This is a recent model so the only connection is a USB port so you will need a USB cable. The printer does not have any parallel port connection. My printer is connected to a computer system running Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Office 2007.

In summary, for the price I paid it’s a bargain. At the list price of $59.99 I am not so sure. Specifications can be found at the Epson site.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=63070161