Pros: Excellent prints, average priced inks, reasonable speed output, print without a computer!
Cons: Even though ink is average price, it could be a little cheaper!
The Bottom Line: An excellent printer that scans, prints, copies from your computer (Windows or Mac, memory cards or directly fro your camera! Great bang for the buck.
psimon's Full Review: Epson Photo / All In one InkJet Printer
Timing in life is everything. My wife decided it was time to start working on scrapbooks for the kids. She comes up to me and asks me to scan this stack of photos so she can mount them in the book. Wouldn’t you know it, the scanner dies while working on the first one! Guess its time to replace the scanner.
Then I hear that it sure would be nice to be able to have a copier as well. Now that ups the ante and means I need to get an all-in-one. I started looking around and found the Epson RX595. From Epson it was $129 after an instant rebate of $30.
Even without paying their additional shipping fees, it arrived at my house in 2 days. Can’t complain about that.
This unit is a 6-ink printer. It uses black, cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta and yellow. These are ink tanks, as opposed to ink cartridges. The difference is that with an Epson, the head is part of the printer. With ink cartridges, such as HP uses, the head is part of the replaceable cartridge. If all goes well, it is not an important issue. Replacement ink (standard size, #78) are about $13 each, or you can by a complete “set” of color inks for about $60. The black ink is not part of the set. There are two sizes of ink tanks, the #78 or standard and #77, or extended inks. I have only found the 78’s at the local office supply stores. The 77’s are about 50% larger and from Epson and are $20 each. You can decide which is a better deal.
One observation is that after printing about 50 8x10 color glossy prints, I have found that the light magenta is the closest to empty, and it really is close. The light cyan is also about to go, but is second to the light magenta. The other colors are around 3/4s full and the black looks barely used. It appears that this printer makes black by mixing colors, as opposed to using the black ink. Again, you can decide how important that is to you.
This printer will print on paper anywhere from a 4” x 6” borderless photo paper up to anything that is 8.5” wide and up to 44” in length. Not sure what it would be like to make 44” posters with this printer but at least I have the option if I ever desired.
It has a 2.5” LCD screen on the front to provide different menus to show you how the printer is configured. You use this menu to set all the options.
The main button on the left allows you to select between COPY, MEMORY CARD, and SPECIALTY PRINT.
The photos that I have COPIED, meaning scanned and printed, are coming out excellent. The colors are true to the original. Prints, though dry to the touch, need a few hours to “harden” and set. After that, the prints are supposed to be good for over 200 years. Sadly, I’ll never know!
A full size photo quality print takes about 90 seconds. They really look good when finished.
The scanner is a full size scanner, accepting originals up an A4 size. This is larger than most applications will require. Depending on your settings (and because I didn’t know what I was doing at first) when copying a document can enlarge it. I had placed a wallet size print on the scanner, and when it printed, it filled the 8x10 page! IT was smart enough to enlarge it. It looked very good in the enlarged mode.
Using the MEMORY CARD function allows you to use camera memory directly. SD, Compact Flash, Sony Memory Sticks and more. They all just plug in. You can then see your photos on the screen and decide how you want to print them. It also has a USB interface so that it can interface with any camera that is PictBridge compatible. What that means is that you can print directly from your camera instead of removing its memory or needing a computer. A very handy feature.
This printer will also print directly on printable CDs and DVDs. There is a slot in the front printer to put in the disk and off it goes. On the scanner bed there are marks to show you where to place an original so that you can copy the disk label onto a new disk. I haven’t tried this feature yet. One reason is no need and the other reason is that the media costs more. You do not need to buy the media from Epson; many disk companies offer them.
The third feature, or SPECIALTY PRINT is not found on most printers. It offers the ability to take faded, old or discolored photos and restore their color or just convert them to black and white. Also, with this feature you can convert 4x6 photos to 5x7, 8x10, letter sized, or A4-sized pictures. While doing that you can also use the black and white, crop and photo restoration options! Like I stated earlier as long as you can get your phot in to the printer’s memory through a memory card or PictBridge you can doo all of this without the use of a computer. Very helpful!
They claim up to 37 pages per minute if you are just printing black. I haven’t seen those kind of speeds but it is a quick printer. I suspect that is if you print a black ink only page in the draft more. Not something I or most users would probably do very often.
This is 48 bit scanner with a hardware resolution of 1200 x 2400 dpi which, through software is interpolated up to 9600 x 9600 dpi.
Other than the appropriate software drivers, the printer came with ArcSoft PhotoImpressions 6 and ArcSoft PhotoCreations. These are nice applications and are very good at what they do. I am more familiar and happy with other applications so I really do not use them. One of these days, I will check into them further. I would have liked to have seen some form of OCR software, but none came with it.
Bottom line….
Without question, I would buy this printer again. It does an excellent job of scanning, and printing. The prints are crisp and bright. Printing is done as fast as I have seen for a home scanner/printer. I don’t think you can go wrong with this printer.
5760 x 1440 dpi Resolution, 37 ppm mono / up to 37 ppm color Copying Speed 99 Copies Max, 37 ppm mono / up to 38 ppm color printing Speed, CIS scannin...More at eCOST.com
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