In two words: it sucks.
(FYI: I have had all kinds of printer, or working with all kinds of printer: dot-matrix, laser, inkjet, deskjet, all in mono and color variants, with original, fake, refilled, and continous-ink-system.)
Here’s why:
After very much printing with the Canon Pixma ip4500, which broke down due to power problem and exceeding its warranty period, I decided to take Epson as my next printer. It was not without much thinking and such. I considered HP, Canon, and Epson. But taking into account that:
- HP tends to skew-feed the paper: from the old 1990’s model until the 2006’s series, the HP printers always mis-aligned when feeding the paper. Having a skewed print out forced me to (re-)re-print stuffs: more paper wasted, more ink wasted, more money wasted.
- And that HP having a three-in-one cartridges means that if the cyan ran out, I need to buy a complete ink cartridge which is just plain waste of the currently remaining magenta and yellow. NOT friendly to my economical principal.
*not all HP printers are like this, but generally speaking, okay?
“Why not another Canon?”, I hear you asking
Well, Canon was okay and all that, but I was thinking to have an all-in-one: printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine. After looking here and there, comparing prices and functionalities, I chose, regretfully, the Epson Office BX600FW.
At first it was an okay printer. It prints (duh…), scans, copy, and send-receive faxes. Oh yeah, it also have ADF, automatic document feeder, which ease the faxing / scanning of multiple papers at once.
ANWYAYS… ANYWAYS…
after 6 months of usage: printing text documents, hardly any pictures, the black ink ain’t printing anymore. “Ah, maybe the ink is depleted”, fine, I changed the cartridge with a fresh one, despite that the printer monitor says differently.
Print. Nope… no black.
I hit the maintenance menu, cleaned the head three times, and try to print another random document. Still no black.
Et voila, a quick chat with the support center
Opened a chat session with (presumably) Epson representative over the web, which didn’t offer much help except marketing shit.
“Sir, your usage of the printer may also affects its life-span”
What the hell… I didn’t print like gigantic graphics or photos and such. Text documents, and that’s it. Did he trying to say that even printing a document is too much for this printer? For the sake of all g33ks all around the world, get a grip.
He recommended me to do the cleaning-routine up until 6 (SIX!) times. Has he gone mad? 6 times cleaning the head means that will be using like a very lot of the ink. Sure, marketing trick, so tomorrow I must spend another 4x€ 11.95 because the current cartridges are depleted because of the head cleaning. He even tried to sell me the other cartridge-set… WTF!
This Epson printer is was a good printer, but as for the ink-usage matters, it literally sucks you dry! (Which is just enough reason not to recycle it / give it to a friend)
I am buying another Canon Pixma. Screw Epson!
PS: If you’re from Epson, and/or you are thinking that I am wrong, I dare you to prove me otherwise!!
I’m out!
