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I noticed this because I printed through a ton of paper and no photos and yet a new Gloss Optimizer, which in my setup, only is used for photos emptied itself (or at least said it was empty). Here are my impressions after owning/running an R800 for 3 years.The setup on Mac and PC is easy and straightforward. The cartridges have chips embedded into each one (so you can't use generic, much cheaper than gold by weight ink cartridges) and once the printer says its empty, it won't let you take it out and put it back in and use it more (I've had to throw away cartridges that I could shake and hear the ink sloshing around in them - by weight, I'd guess a 1/3 still in there). Regular printing works very well.
Epson doesn't come close to the ease of Canon's easy photo print software (where you can photo print borderless or with a border with just an easy click - on the Mac I get one choice by default).One additional item, the printer software warns you when an ink cartridge gets "low" (probably less than 1/2 full - just a guess), but will let you print until its empty (normally it seems to figure this out on printer startup - probably empties itself) - however, here's the catch, if you print a cartridge till its empty and there are other cartridges that are "low", it says that all those cartridges are now empty and you have to replace them all - this happens to me on the Mac. Photo Printing looks fantastic, the inks are pigment based so they should last a long time after printing (Canon's are typically dye based and aren't supposed to last as long, although I've never run into problems with either).While some people have had trouble with paper feeding, I never have, although I only keep about 20 sheets of paper in the tray at a time (I never drop 1/2 a paper reem in there etc).Now for the downsides I've observed. The printer uses ink each time you turn it on - consequently if you turn it on but don't print much, your ink levels and eventually your cartridges will empty themselves. This printer was Epson's high end 8 1/2 by 11 printer until recently and as such does a very good job, however it has its downsides as you can see through these reviews and those should be kept in mind when choosing a printer. If you plan on printing consistently (a page or two or more every day or so) and occasionally doing some photo's, the R800 will work for you as well (be sure to print off a photo now and then (or print a page or two telling the printer that its printing on Epson photo paper, so it uses the gloss optimizer and photo black cartridges, to keep the gloss optimizer nozzles clear).If you are going to print alot of paper (not photo's) and occasional photo's the R800 will work, but the ink (stuff sells for more than gold by weight) can get quite expensive (laser printers are where you want to go when printing large volumes - they're the cheapest by far). The ink cartridges can go pretty fast and aren't transparent making me wonder (when I haven't used them much over a long time period but they say their empty) are they really empty or am I just tripping the "time to buy more ink" from Epson revenue enhancement plan.
This occurs when I haven't printed much for extended periods, when I'm printing consistently I don't run into this issue. Canon's have the chips embedded in them as well, hard to get away from it nowadays.
If you aren't going to print much except occasionally (paper or photo's), then this isn't a good printer for you either as the nozzles will clog (sometimes permanently) rendering the printer useless for photo printing - and inexplicably the cartridges will announce themselves empty and ready for replacement even though you haven't printed much but did that over a long time. The CD/DVD cover printing feature works great (just have to get the "printable" kind of CD/DVD blanks) - supposedly Epson has the patent on this in the US and is why Canon doesn't offer it on their US printers but does in other markets.
The way to work this is to watch the ink levels in the epson software and replace the lowest one before it becomes "empty" - i.e. If you don't use the colors (or gloss optimizer) much for an extended period, the nozzles can clog (sometimes permanently) - i.e.
you need to use everything on a weekly or biweekly basis or risk clogging (this appears to occur with the Canon's as well). when its really low, but hasn't been really low for too long.So, If you are going to print alot of photo's consistently (alot of the time) then this is the printer you want - that's the perfect environment for it.
This last issue doesn't appear to be an R800 or Epson only issue (I see the same clogging and cartridge emptying issue in the Canon Pixma reviews as well) - my guess is that its an Epson/Canon revenue enhancement plan.All in all, a very good printer, but it has its limitations for the kind of job your going to use it for.
I have read a few reviews on Epson high-end printers where they say they are really reliable, but they also use them daily. We now just use it to print black and white docs.
Great pictures. Then the heads started clogging.
The printer worked well for about a year. The only problem is it took you a couple of hours and at least $50 of ink and paper.
It would take a few cycles of head cleaning that seemed to use up half a cartridge worth of ink (on all 7 of the cartridges). So it got to a point where printing 3 or 4 copies between each set of clianing cycles for a few times might give you a one good quality print out of 10 tries.
It does a great job at this because we print enough to keep the black heads clear. If we had put a full 8X10 color photo through this printer every day, maybe it would have ended up being OK.Another minor point: Epson has not got around to making available a 64-bit driver that can use the firewire port.
This is a serious, professional quality photo printer in 8.5x11 size - sized for a home desktop. That's something nobody else makes, and since the R800 went out of production nothing in this category is available anymore. This printer uses 8 pigment (not dye - pigment is better) inks with 200 year estimated life and the "gloss optimizer" for best quality glossy printing. These technologies are now reserved for the large, expensive 13x19 and larger printers.It blows away the current 8.5x11 photo printers (the Photosmarts, Artisans, Styluses, etc).
They will tell you to run the head cleaning routine at least three times, which uses up a ton of your expensive ink. Most manufacturers sell you a printer cheap and then they gig you on the ink cartridges. Then if that doesn't work they tell you to put in new cartridges and do it three more times. Epson charges you a lot for a printer that only does a fair job of printing photos then they raise the ink gigging to a high art form. It not only goes through ink like water goes over Niagara but heaven forbid the heads need cleaning or the jets get clogged. Only then, after you have gone through enough ink to buy a new printer, do they tell you to get it serviced.Do yourself a huge favor and buy a different printer. We have a HP PhotoSmart 2710 that does a much better job printing photos, does a good job scanning photos, is wireless, reasonable with ink and does a whole lot more besides.
This is my second R800 from Epson and I like the high quality prints but I am forever cleaning the print heads and buying more ink cartridges; very simply the printer should be free for you will buy it many times over in ink.
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