A great printer in this price range. (Epson Stylus C70)

Member Name: antsss

Product:	Epson Stylus C70
Date:	07/01/03 (728 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice design, Fantastic quality, Good all-rounder

Disadvantages: No printer cables included, Bad out-tray design, Ink is expensive

Having struggled with an old Oki laser printer for far too long, I made a trip to a computer store on a whim to look at their mid-priced inkjet printers. I'd used Canon inkjets before and was well aware of the creaks and groans they emit while printing, and since the Canon I looked at and the Epson C70 were basically the same price, I decided to give the Epson a go. It's USB and parallel-port compatible, so it's suited to new and old machines - we have it running over a network with no problems.

I'd heard good things about Epson's print quality, and the C70 is no exception. It's not labelled a "photo printer", but despite only having four colours to work with, the results are flawless. Of course, what you get depends on the quality of your photos and the paper you use, but I printed a fantastic A5 print of a digital camera picture on glossy photo-quality paper, and time and again people asked me where I got my enlargements done! The only difference is the texture of the finished photo - unprinted white areas appear glossy, whereas printed or heavily-coloured areas appear matt, but in a frame, it's very hard to tell the two apart. For this alone I would rate this printer above most of the others in its price range.

However, as with all inkjets, ink is very expensive. There is a slight up-side, in that this printer takes four separate tanks - so say goodbye to replacing a 4-in-1 colour cartridge when only one colour has run out! But the three coloured tanks cost around £11 each, and the black costs around £25. Granted, the black is twice as big, but you'll use it up three times as fast! And you can't use the printer when one cartridge has run out - all four have to be installed and working. So occasionally I go through a month printer-less until I can afford to splash out on more ink. Non-Epson ink is available, but I have found the printer struggles with it, often spitting out fuzzy, banded pictures. Ali
gning the print heads is also pretty tough with these cheap cartridges. Sticking with the geniune ink, I have no problems at all... so I can only suggest that if you want to print photos, you're gonna have to dig deep, but if the printer is for the kids to print pictures, you might be able to get away with the cheaper stuff and be prepared to clean the print heads more often.

Ink change is amazingly easy... the on-screen monitor tells you how full each cartridge is (more on that in a moment!), and even if the computer isn't on, you just press one button and the print head moves to indicate which one needs to be changed! Just pull out the cartridge and insert a new one - totally fool proof.

Incidentally, it's always frustrating to take out a so-called empty cartridge to hear ink sloshing around inside. C70 cartridges have Intellichips which tell the computer how full they are... this also means they register as empty permanently, and that prevents you from re-filling them yourself - no amount of sloshing residue will change that. You can buy some equipment to reprogram the chips, against Epson's advice of course, but I expect this would be prohibitively expensive for most people.

Apart from the ink issues, the printer is very well designed. It does shake the shelf a bit, but isn't greatly noisy, not like a Canon anyway. I have had no paper jams during normal operation, and the print speed is quick and smooth. Genuine Epson ink yields crisp, almost laser quality black printout at anything from 8-points upwards. And as I've already mentioned, it handles thick gloss paper and other novelties (t-shirt transfers, tattoo paper) without a complaint.

The only possible problem is the fold-down flap at the front. When not in use, this little flap neatly clicks into place and significantly reduces the space the printer takes up (it also makes the Epson fantastic for small rooms - you can sit it on a shelf without piec
es jutting out everywhere). But! If you forget to unfold the flap before you start printing, DISASTER! The printer has no way of knowing! It merrily continues to spit out paper, causing torn paper, paper reeled back inside the printer, and a big mess. Not a big deal, because you're only going to forget occasionally, but it's a pain when it happens.

Having said that, this printer really does come highly recommended. It's a fantastic all-rounder and handles text, graphics and photos equally well. Make sure you pick up a printer cable, though, because as with most lasers, accessories are not included!

Summary: