Four months ago I did a first look review at the Epson Artisan 800 printer shortly after receiving it. Now, after having it around to work with for awhile day-in and day-out, let’s talk about how it did over the longer haul for me.
After the initial honeymoon period of being impressed with the superb quality that this printer is capable of putting out, using it began to get rather frustrating, actually. It is somewhat like a thoroughbred animal that needs delicate handling to perform at its finest: capable of excellence, but needing an awful lot of attention to do it.
The Epson Artisan 800 is extremely sensitive to changes in its print settings. Miniscule changes in settings (paper type, print quality) actually makes a noticeable difference in the output of the machine, unlike with many printers. That is a good thing for the print quality that you can get out of it – you have a high element of control and adjustment to work with. The problem is that being off just a bit in your settings (paper type, for instance) can result in a very poor print, and it can take some time and wasted supplies to get it right.
I also found that because of the printer’s sensitivity, printing the same file through different print drivers resulted in drastically different outputs. Printing via Photoshop Elements using either printer or software color control, and directly from Windows Explorer, yielded three completely different print results for the same file. (I’d show you but the results don’t scan well for comparison.)
The Windows print was sharper, than the Elements prints, which had a noticeable softness. In Elements, depending on whether I chose printer or software control for the color, it produced very brown or very pink skin tones in the print. The printer’s profile was installed, which should have minimized that. (And neither of those color variations came close to the accuracy of the Shutterfly print I’d had made from this same file.) These variations could easily give you fits trying to produce consistent results from print to print if you don’t use the exact same printing method and supplies every time.
The Artisan 800 printer driver gave me difficulty in other ways too. For some reason, the part of the driver that sits on my computer and monitors the printers ink levels lost the ability to see the printer on the network shortly after I installed the printer – rendering that driver function useless. I never was able to get it fixed, and there is no way to uninstall that part of the software without uninstalling the entire printer off of your system. So I ended up stuck with a piece of broken software on my system that I could not remove. It could possibly have been fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling the entire printer, but that process was such a pain there was no way I was going to go through it just to be able to see ink levels on my computer that are available to me on the machine itself as well.
I also discovered after my initial successful test that it was in fact necessary to empty the full-size paper tray if I wanted to change the type of paper I was putting into it. I couldn’t just put a sheet of photo paper on top of my standard printing paper or it would pick up two sheets, resulting in wasted ink, paper and time.
That said, there are actually some good things about this printer.
I was most impressed by the archival tests I ran on Epson’s inks in this printer. One of the reasons I haven’t printed my photos at home until now is concern about archival life compared to lab prints. I soaked a print from this Artisan 800’s Claria ink in water for an hour, and then rubbed on it and tried to smear it. Other than some scratching in the glossy surface from rubbing on the paper while it was soft from being soaked, the printing itself stood up with no damage. There was no running, smearing or blurring. This result convinced me that I would use Claria inks for scrapbook printing in the future in the right machine.
The scanner on the Artisan 800 is quiet and very fast. It gives good but not fabulous results, and the lid extension is not sufficient for handling items that have very much thickness. It did not allow the lid to lie flat with thicker items (such as books), resulting in flare. This is not a machine intended for heavy, detailed scanning work, but as a copier and fax and for limited scanning work, it is very serviceable.
I do a lot of small printing on special items (chiefly envelopes and labels). I was able to print 4×6 label sheets and envelopes very easily from the paper tray, and they moved through the machine with no problem. The only downside is that the part of the tray you are using has to be emptied, and in the case of envelopes, you have to adjust the guides in the tray bottom as well. Considering the HP I am used to using has a dedicated slot in the tray just for feeding these items, the Epson inconvenience was notable to me.
Borderless prints are a nice feature of the Epson Artisan 800. The ability to get full-size prints using a piece of 4×6 photo paper is almost a necessary feature these days. This printer performs the task well, with no noticeable degradation near the photo edges.
There are a lot of cool extras on this printer: coloring book page creation, printing ruled paper, restoring of images. But on a day-to-day basis most of us won’t be using those. They are fun toys, but usually most of us will be doing routine printing, copying, scanning, and faxing.
Bottom line on the Epson Artisan 800: It can give you amazing print quality, but it will make you work hard to get it.
Some of the “frustrations” you are talking about are common to Epsons, I have had a couple of Epson Photo printers (and currently have an R320 because I liked the ability to put a media card directly into the printer and print) My printer is my “workhorse” and I use it for photos and everyday stuff so it gets a ton abuse.
and the quality varies big time. If I am doing regular prints using windows, and the Epson photo paper, the quality is fantastic, If I use someone else’s paper, forget it. (I went to a class at an expo one time that Epson was running and they said that their ink was designed to work “best” on their papers…makes sense but a pain and can be expensive.) Also I found out humidity can effect it’s “temperament” with heavier papers. Tech support tried to help me with my “multiple copies” issue once and finally determined it was humidity after messing with advanced settings, and settings within the settings (it shouldn’t have to be that difficult)
Paper type changes are big frustrations, my printer does not like multiple copies with anything heavier than paper, meaning photos, cardstock, envelopes etc. all have to be fed one at a time (a pain if I don’t have a kid available
My Mac recognizes the printer but the settings are different and it took a bit of playing to get it to work right. My other frustration is that it totally quits printing when 1 color is gone, (I never did understand why I need magenta ink for black text when there is a black cartridge?) Meaning the need to keep extra cartridges around of all colors. Granted great quality for documents and journaling and it will print on a variety of surfaces (transparency (inkjet ones only), canvas(faster settings, otherwise to much ink soaks in) , cardstock, vellum (use slowest print setting.) Sorry for rattling on….my point. Even the specialty printers seem to get similar ratings as my everyday model good to know I didn’t have to spend the extra money.
I have to 2nd what Betsy says, I have a R800 and have had it for a few years now and it makes me work for good prints too, but I still love it. It just drives me nuts that I never know what I’ll get some days! I also have the small PictureMate, carry every where……not a problem, not one! I believe Epson makes an excellent product, it just drives me nuts that the high end, EXPENSIVE printers can be so temperamental! I use an old HP laser for all my document printing, my Epson printers are just photo printers. It’s cheaper to send them off to Shutterfly!
We just bought another new printer and this one is only marginally better than the last one.
Cheers
When I first got the Artisan 800, I was very impressed, but now that I have had it for a while, I’m not so sure.
I have both Macs and a Windows computer on my network. These days, when a print job is sent to the Artisan 800, it makes all kinds of mechanical noises for a couple of minutes and then prints. The wait is annoying.
Most annoying, however, is the ink usage. I complained earlier to Epson support that the printer was using color ink at far too high a rate. The printer is in an office environment where most of the work is black ink on white paper. Epson support wrote back that I may have installed the cartridges improperly.
OK. It’s possible . . . but unlikely. I recently installed new cartridges and have been monitoring the ink usage. To date, I have only printed black text on white paper yet the ink monitor shows ALL the colors being used at the same rate.
It’s quite possible that the printer may be too expensive to operate efficiently. Too bad. I like the scanner and faxing functions.
Please tell me where I can find instructions for addressing envelopes. I have a new Epson Artisan 800. I’m still learning about it and, so far, I haven’t been able to find information on this subject. The manual says, “refer to the on-screen information center,” however I haven’t had any luck so far.