New Epson Artisan printer line announced Discussion

[SarahM]

Epson announced the brand new Artisan line of All-In-One Inkjet printers last week.

Read the full content of this Article: New Epson Artisan printer line announced

[RedRob]

I purchased the printer two days ago when my Epson Stylus Photo R320 started having what appears to be unfixable problems (printing three of the colors).

Some things I've noted (sadly, one of which may have me returning it to the store) follow... a "+" is a good thing, a "-" is not so good...

Overall, it seems like a great multi-function device. Cost per page and inability to feed single sheets may be show-stoppers IMO. And when there are $100 options from the same manufacturer that don't have these problems, it leaves me scratching my head wondering why anyone would pay $300 (oops.. I mean $299.99)?!

+ Very very cool looking
+ Very easy to use menu.. I think even my wife can use it!
+ When using a memory card, very easy to review contents and print
+ Size is OK considering all that it does
+ Network setup went very smoothly (wired.. haven't tried wireless yet)
+ DVD/CD printing (which is what I use it most for) seems to be an improvement over older models that had detachable trays.. it loads and prints a high-quality DVD (I use Taiyo Yuden Watershield media) in about a minute each (including swaps)... on my R320 it took about 2 minutes each (loading the tray on the R320 was very very slow).. yay!

Now some minuses:
- NO MANUAL FEED. This is a big BIG minus to me.. want to just print one envelope to accompany your letter? You need to pull out the entire paper tray, take *out* your regular paper, put in your envelope, print it, open it up again, put in your regular paper, shut the tray. UGH! Although the device may appear to have a smaller footprint, needing to keep the entire area in front of the device clear for frequent paper-changes makes the footprint IMO much larger.

- Noisy startups...

- Advanced communications features (e.g. scan-to-e-mail, or scan-to-PC) only become active if directly connected to the USB on the computer (not over network). Epson should have built in SMTP support so it could directly send documents via e-mail

- Availability of Ink -- great that I bought this at Office Max... but they didn't have any of the new '98' or '99' inks! If other inks are compatible, they should document this.. as for now, I'm stuck with a new printer that is pretty much dead until my new ink arrives in the mail.

FYI, I only printed 16 DVDs, and 16 case-wraps (on heavyweight matte finish paper), and it's already out of magenta (and low in others!). 32 prints and I need new ink?!

Supposedly the printer shipped with new ink.. if that's the case and I can only expect 32 prints before changing carts, this puppy is going back.. the cost per page becomes WAY too rich for me.

New ink:
$17 per cart x 6 carts = $104 for all 6
Presuming black last longer...
$17 x 5 = $85
Presuming not all the ink is used equally.. I'll estimate down...
$17 x 4 colors = $68

32 prints for $68 = $2.13 PER PRINT

Even if only 2 ink carts were expended in the process.. it'd be $1.06 per print.

Not impressive... hopefully the "high capacity ink carts" have much much MUCH more ink in them for $17... or else it is totally not worth owning IMO. Not until 3rd party inks come out at least.