Customer Reviews

Epson Stylus C64 Inkjet Printer

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This is a versatile little printer for the home. It produces excellent photo quality (you don't have to use "best" setting to get it , either). The Durabright inks are indeed water resistant, but very expensive. On the plus side, the cartridges seem to last a long time. But it is expensive to fill this thing with ink, almost as much as what the thing costs. I'm not impressed with the text quality. It looks very jagged. I bought it primarily for text, so it is a disapointment. At this price, the machine has to be considered as disposable as the ink cartridges. Buy it, use it until it dies, buy another, fill up the landfills. Epson seems to come out with a new model (and new ways to sell more expensive cartridges) every month.
I had an Epson 880 before this unit, and it produced equal results on photos, better results on text, with ink costs much lower. Epson is clearly interested in making its money on the ink. The 880 died after two years (started producing blurry text on certain WP programs), and so it's been retired to the Internet computer, where it still does a superior job to this guy.
Overall the C64 is a cheap, decent printer that will cost you its weight in ink.

The ink will kill you, especially the black. Generic ink? Forget it. It clogs the nozzles and you'll waste more than you will use cleaning the nozzles. This thing does give a good print-out, but it's not worth the high price of ownership. I had an 880 and loved it. I hate this.

This little printer was no trouble to set up and start using. It's a bit slow. Even just a black & white page takes quite a while. A full-color photo takes a couple minutes. The "draft" mode comes out verrrrry faint, but is really fast, and obviously uses a lot less ink (an important point, as you will see).

This printer uses a special type of ink, called "Durabrite", which is MUCH longer-lasting than normal inkjet ink. (It's a pigment-based ink rather than a dye-based ink.) Your printouts will not fade away like a normal cheap inkjet's will. The downside to this super-duper ink is that the ink is darned expensive. The good news is that the four colors are separate cartridges, so at least you only have to replace the one color you've run out of. The black ink, however, is the MOST expensive inkjet cartridge you'll see in the store. It's about twice the price of a normal black cartridge. Yes, your printouts will last some 70 years on plain paper, instead of vanishing within 2 years like the cheapo inkjets do. Three of those $25 black cartridges later, and you've just spent more on ink than the printer itself!

Strangely, the other color cartridges (cyan, magenta, and yellow) are only half the price of the black cartridge. Don't ask me why, I have no idea. Too bad the black is the one you'll be buying most often.

I should point out that this printer will try to con you into replacing the ink cartridges long before they actually run dry (it gives you all sorts of dire warnings about low ink levels). Don't fall for it. It will actually STOP printing when it's truly run dry, so just keep printing until it stops, and only then replace the cartridge that's empty.

So, should you get this printer? It depends on what you'll be using it for. If you want a cheap printer for making quick printouts that you'll be tossing in the trash within a couple years, get a different printer. If you want printouts that will still be legible 50 years from now, get this one. If you're an artist or photographer and want to make decent prints of your art that won't fade too quickly, this is a good starter printer for you.

I purchased this printer specifically for color printing, since I have a trusty 11-year-old Panasonic KX-P4110 laser printer for my regular printing. I use my Epson printer just for making fancy cards, colored labels, business cards, and color letterhead stationery. I've found that the quality of printing is leagues ahead of my old color printer, a 6-year-old Bubblejet. The cards that I've made with the Epson have a very sharp appearance, and they are much less susceptible to water and moisture damage than the prints from the Bubblejet.

On the other hand, the ink cartridges seem to last even less time than the Bubblejet cartridges, and they are quite expensive to replace. I would never even consider printing a simple black-and-white job on the Epson- -I route all black-and-white jobs to the laser printer for fast and cheap copies. And when I design my cards, I find myself thinking about ink usage as a primary factor in the design, which limits my creativity somewhat, but helps my budget. After lofty plans for cards with retouched photos and fancy borders, I usually end up going with simple line-drawings and no borders. And the text for the cards has to be in color because the black ink seems to disappear so quickly. When I write a letter on my company letterhead, I first print the letter text on my laser printer without the letterhead logo. Then I put the already completed letter into the Epson to add the colored logo. Using the two printers in tandem for a single document is time consuming, but the ink savings make it worthwhile and necessary. In short, this printer will most likely satisfy your occasional color printing needs, but when you use it, you will constantly be thinking of your ink.

The printer itself is a great product, especially for the price. The print-outs are of excellent quality and it prints fairly fast. However, it goes through ink SO FAST! I don't use it extremely often and I go through one black cartridge every month and a half.

THIS PRINTER IS A MONSTER.
IT SUCKS INK
WHEN ONE INK GOES DRY - IT WILL NOT LET YOU PRINT WITH THE OTHER INKS. EVERYTHING STOPS TELL YOU GO SPEND A FORTUNE ON INK CARTRIDGES. EVEN WITH TEXT PRINTING THE THING SUCKS INK.
IF YOU ONLY PRINT A LITTLE BEWARE- THE INK SEEMS TO DRY UP.
THE FREE PRINTER I GOT FOR SIGNING UP FOR THE INTERNET DID A BETTER JOB AND LASTED LONGER.
ITS CHEAPER TO PRINT YOUR PHOTO'S AT A STORE.
EPSON IS USING THIS PRINTER LIKE THE CREDIT CARD COMPANIES GIVING IT TO YOU CHEAP AND STICKING IT TO YOU IN THE CARTRIDGE END.
TURN AND RUN STAY AWAY FIND A DIFFERENT ROUTE

The first Epson printer I owned (The Color Stylus Pro) ran like a champ and it sipped ink. Based on that record, I bought the Epson C64 to replace the Epson Color Stylus Pro after it died 8 years later.

The C64 lasted only two years before the black nozzled clogged up forever. And before that happened, the C64 used to run out of ink faster than I ran out of clean underwear. The print quality was decent, but it cost me a fortune in ink supplies. I paid more for ink supplies than I did for the printer.

I purchased this printer because of it's separate ink cartridges, thinking it would save money in the long run. No such luck! If you change one cartridge, it goes thru the cleaning cycle and sucks another dry. Then if you don't use it for a while, you might as well throw it out, because you'll go thru a full set of cartridges trying to clear the clogged nozzle. And Epson just says 'take it to a service center' Cheaper to buy a new printer, just wish I had figured that out before blowing thru all that ink... Oh, and even when the cartridge is still half full, if the little counter chip says it's empty, you get to throw it out.
This is the second Epson printer I've had die from this problem, so I'm not falling for the hype again.

I bought this printer 8 months ago. It worked well for the first few prints. After that, I used up about 80% of my first cartridge cleaning the print heads, which never seemed to work very well. Each head cleaning seems to use up about 5% of the ink in the cartridges. After the black cartridge ran out I spent $22 on a new one from Amazon, only to discover the printer had stopped printing entirely after installing it. I will never buy another Epson product after owning this.

This printer seems to be incapable of printing labels (however I do accept that it may be possible that I have a faulty unit). The Label begins to feed, then the printer dog ears the corner and pulls the label off the backing and jams itself to death. This is using A4 Avery labels which have on other printers seemed infallible.

It is a real shame as it can perform well if you only need to print a few photo's.

Beware being tempted by the price of this unit, you may be better stepping up to a higher modem Epson.