Epson Stylus® C80 InkJet Printer

I've waited a few months to write this review. Not because I had any doubt about what I wanted to say, but because my last Epson inkjet was totally wonderful until it glued it's own printheads tightly shut and refused to print any more. I've been waiting to see in the C80 would do the same. It hasn't.

Some background.... I'be been using inket printers for years, and have lamented long and hard about the cost of ink and the speed that cartridges are consumed. Getting more expensive and faster (respectively) as time goes by. My old HP deskjet seemed to last ages on one cartidge at a time, these days the lifespan of many ink cartridges is measured in minutes and modern printers seem to have a ton of them. Sadly, I can't escape because as a digital photographer of absolutely no retpute whatsoever, I rely on good inkjets to get my 'art' onto the wall. Thus I had, in my Mac-loving days, bought an Epson sylus 600 which was truly wonderous. Who cared that it produced sometimes amorphous blobs instead of text when it printed bright, high contrast color images from my photos, and did so reasonably quickly and with no fuss or bother. Then, having not used it for a month in summertime, the ink dried and hardened in the print heads and it printed no more. Unlike HPs and most other inkjets, the Epson's heads are permanent and it's just the ink that's changed, so making the Stylus 600 defunct without a fairly major repair.

Then, after a pause, came a Lexmark Z32. I don't want to offend those who love this printer, but mine drank ink faster than an SUV drinks gas, and while it's text printing was nothing short of staggeringly good, photo printing was dire. Well, not dire exactly, but colors weren't right, images were low contrast and no amount of fiddling with paper types seemed to make it any better.

I muttered dark thoughts often and long enough that my wife quite reasonably interpreted them as an indication I'd like a new printer, and knowing how much I'd enthused over the Stylus 600, a C80 appeared under the Christmas tree. Well, not exactly under, because the box was rather large, but in that vicinity anyway.

I unpacked it and at first was puzzled that she'd bought me a paper shredder, because that's what this printer looks like. It's elegant in the same way the Eiffel tower is, and it swaps the compactness and neat design of the Lexmark models for what is best described as industrial quality robustness. Like most other printers except HPs, the paper feed is vertically at the back and output is face up horizontally at the front. Under the lid, there's space for 4 ink cartridges - black, cyan, magenta and yellow. Cartridges are easy to install, as were the print drivers on my Windows ME PC, and while it has both USB and parallel interfaces, I hooked it up using USB for best speed. It was printing in a handful of minutes and with no hint of problems.

Print quality is - well, amazing. Text is not as good as the Lexmark had been, but is still clear and sharp. But this is not a printer for limiting yourself to Word documents! Printing color photographs, the C80 demonstrates a remarkable level of quality that has to be seen to be believed. With glossy paper, it produced 8x10 prints from my (truly excellent) 2.1megapixel Olympus 2040 camera that are very difficult to discern from photographic prints. Colors are vibrant and clear, contrast is excellent and there is no visible bleeding at all. Print output is also reasonably fast and no hint of misfeed or the off-angle feed that tended to characterize the Lexmark.

The downside is that this printer, like the Lexmark and most others seems to suck ink out of the cartridges like a vampire. I haven't seen anyone publish a table of pages/cartridge from various models, but I suspect the C80 would fall somewhere in the top third for thirst.

That said, color output really is excellent. In a range of work from photos to leaflets and magazine layouts, the C80 gave results that were consistent and impressive, and at least with the seperate ink cartridges I can replace just the cartridge that I need to rather than all at once.

It's an expensive printer that for many would be difficult to justify, but if you're in need of an inkjet to commit photographs to paper, this isn't just a good choice, it's a excellent one. It's not a pretty printer and it's not something you can look at and admire - but the results printed from it most certainly are!!