Pros: Superb photo print quality on Epson's glossy paper; inexpensive
Cons: Jams with specialty paper; uses ink quickly; just average for text
The Bottom Line: Superb photo-quality prints on glossy paper but just average for other applications. High-quality prints are slow and a little expensive but the convenience is worth it.
pvreditor's Full Review: Epson Stylus Photo 780 InkJet Printer
I'm not going to explain all the details of the Epson Stylus Photo 780 printer, as that has been done very well by other reviewers. This will just be about some of my experience with this printer.
This little, inexpensive printer simply makes the best pictures that I have seen from an ink jet printer... if you use Epson's glossy photo paper. Fortunately, the local Costco sells 100 sheets (8.5 x 11 inch) for $20, making it just 20 cents per sheet. When you consider that four 3.5 x 5 inch snapshots fit on an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet, that's a nickel per print! (It takes perhaps 10 minutes to print a sheet of four prints, so be prepared for long print times.)
The quality of text documents is okay but nowhere near as good as the printer's specs (2880 x 720 dpi) would lead you to believe. The print quality claims to be 360 dpi on normal paper but a 300 dpi laser printer will make much better text documents. But the Epson Stylus Photo 780 will print legible text and it is good for the occasional letter. It should not be your only printer in a home office.
As others have pointed out, it is a fairly noisy printer and I often have to go through the nozzle-cleaning process several times to properly clean the ink jets. I am also not impressed with the construction quality... it seems like too many plastic bits are snapped together and it just feels cheap to me. It has not broken, however, although I use all my gear pretty gently.
The Epson Stylus Photo 780 seems a little off the beaten path among Epson printers. Replacement ink cartridges are a little hard to find and they are not carried by the Wal-marts and other mass merchants in my area. I can get them through Office Depot or Staples, but that's not quite as easy as running to Wal-mart at 11PM. The cartridges are a little pricey, but not too bad.
The printer feeds glossy photo paper and standard office paper with no problem. Feeding specialty paper, such as canvas or silk sheets that are prepared for ink jet use, is another issue. Because the input paper bin on the Epson is nearly vertical, these specialty "papers" curl at the edges and frequently jam. (What usually happens is that the paper simply doesn't feed but the printer thinks it has. It then sprays ink into the mechanism.) This is a shame, because an old-fashioned sepia-tone print looks terrific on canvas... it took me six tries to get this done a couple of days ago.
The printer goes through its color cartridge pretty quickly, perhaps after about 50 3.5 x 5 prints or so. This cartridge sells for a bit less than $20, so that's about 40 cents per print just for the color ink. The black ink is used more slowly -- perhaps it is used at the rate of five cents per print. Counting in the cost of the paper, that's about 50 cents per 3.5 x 5 inch print.
When you consider the convenience of making superb-quality prints at home, that's not bad. But I wouldn't want to have to churn out a lot of prints.
The software that comes with the computer is okay. I like the convenience of the included Film Factory software but its default image-correction processing is not always the best choice. (It is the best choice about 75 percent of the time.) I also struggle to get Film Factory to properly size my prints... just last night it ruined a 3.5 x 5 print when it sized it so that the extreme left and right of a shot were cut off. (It automatically adjusted the height of the shot to fit, moving the left and right extremes off the print.) Until you really learn the printing software, you will make many printing mistakes.
To wrap up, I love the photo print quality of the Epson Stylus Photo 780 and people are always amazed at the quality of the prints. It works best -- by far -- when you use glossy photo paper. Photo prints on office paper are nice, but not outstanding. Text printing is just average and I baby my unit due to its overall flimsy feel. It's not the cheapest way to get prints but it is a convenient way to make high-quality photo prints.
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