Epson Stylus C80 Inkjet Printer

by Epson

Product Details

Product Manual [787kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 22.1 x 17.8 x 11.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 18 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00005MJT7
• Item model number: C11C424001
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 15, 2001

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The Epson Stylus C80 delivers optimal plain-paper printing, for affordable, long-lasting results. Up to 2,880 x 720 dpi Perfect Picture printing produces ultrasharp text with no smudging or bleeding and clear vibrant color. Plus, this printer boasts extremely fast print speeds, including up to 20 pages per minute of black text printing.

Epson's innovative four-color, DuraBrite inks offer remarkable color, and they're resistant to water and fading, so your customers get durable prints. Because the ink particles remain near the surface, the printer is ideal for double-sided prints.

Revolutionary Resolution Performance Management (RPM) technology offers additional features, including variable size droplets as small as three picoliters for optimum accuracy. Plus, it includes an innovative print head design for bidirectional printing in all print modes. It even offers variable resolution printing for black and color inks. As an added benefit, RPM automatically smoothes the edges on low-resolution images, so Web printing will be a lot clearer.

Convenient and easy to use, the Epson Stylus C80 handles up to 150 sheets of paper. Quiet and unobtrusive, it's compatible with both Windows and Macintosh systems.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this printer!, March 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Epson Stylus C80 Inkjet Printer (Office Product)

I'm partial to Epson products anyway, but this is the fastest, highest-quality inkjet printer I've ever had. It's especially good for the price range.

I generally use a laser printer for my writing business, but I've purchased a few inkjet printers over the years because I need the color capability. This printer is faster than my HP LaserJet with more standard features (such as double-sided printing) and has a much cleaner text output than many other inkjets. You have to take a much closer look to know that it's not a laser printer. Using the color features and high-gloss paper, I created a complete marketing campaign for myself, and few people could tell that it wasn't professionally printed.

The C80 also seems to not eat as much ink as other models, with the added benefit of using separate ink cartridges for each color. It's also very quiet. I highly recommend it for anyone who needs a good but inexpensive inkjet printer!

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent four color photo printer for the money, October 19, 2001

By 

D. Conrad (Round Rock, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Epson Stylus C80 Inkjet Printer (Office Product)

I've been using Epson Stylus Color printers for awhile, originally the Stylus 740, and recently the 777i printer. Each has been impressive in the print quality, especially photos. I decided to make the leap and upgrade to the Stylus C80 printer, in part due to the $30 rebate offered.

Setup was very easy as is with most Epson printers. I use it with a USB cable to my Apple iBook computer and had no trouble with installing and using the printer drivers. As a matter of fact, these drivers are nearly identical to the ones used for the Stylus 777i. I have also used the Printer Sharing function built into the driver and now print wirelessly from my iBook to this printer - COOL!!!

The print quality is excellent and speeds are noticeably faster than my 777i printer. The best improvement was the reduced noise during printing, it is much more quiet! I did notice that there is a considerable difference in photo print appearance between the C80 and the 740/777i depending on the type of paper used.

Previously, I have used the Epson 4x6 photo paper with very good results- on the C80 however, the prints appears somewhat washed out and dull. Using Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper produces much better results as does Kodak Premium Picture Paper (for less $$$ than Epson). I was also perplexed at the limited paper sizes supported by the drivers, 4x6 print is missing and must be user defined. Mac OS X drivers are due out on Oct. 22 so I am looking forward to testing those as well.

I recommend this printer for fast, quiet photo quality printing for a budget price.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful prints, intermittent installation, December 10, 2001

By 

Marc C. Bush "mc_bush" (Morgan Hill, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Epson Stylus C80 Inkjet Printer (Office Product)

Just had this printer a couple weeks now, and finally completed making it so that it prints from my home PC via Parallel, and Laptop via USB.
Prints are great! So far I have only had the opportunity to burn up some Coated 8.5 x 11 sheets on pictures and some graphics, plus a plain paper envelope or two. No problem as long as the driver installed properly.

I was debating and debating between the C80 and the 785EPX for quite some time, and as an avid digital photo geek, it was a tough choice - archival with individual durable inks - or the 785EPX with the edge to edge, card support, 2 extra colors, and 4x6 rolls. Well I still feel that the extra two colors are unnecessary - just a way to sell more ink (the money's in the blades son). And I have no issue viewing my pictures on the computer prior to wasting more of that precious commodity. So I went for the C80, and I'm delighted with my decision. Who needs two extra colors and wet edges. For really special prints I go to shutterfly.com anyway.

So here's my driver advice:
My W98 (1'st edition) home PC installed without issue, and printed from the Parallel port without complaint.
On the other side, I was attempting to attach my work W2k laptop to the USB, and ran into difficulty. I believe the issue is that I needed to install "USB printer support" from my system prior to it allowing the Epson printer drivers. This issue was not listed in the instructions - neither the "read me first" nor the full documentation. It only needs to be done once, which explains why some see it and others do not. When it asks you to cancel the HW detection, don't cancel out of the "USB Printer Support" Hardware detection. Let it install the built-in Windows drivers for USB printers, then it goes on to install the actual printer - which you do from the CD (or downloaded drivers).

Other than that... One theory I have for so many drivers issues with the other users is that it is a good idea to uninstall any pervious Local Printers on the system. These programs tend to run in the background and "lock in" your LPT settings - like that little ink monitor and other icons that like to display in your sys-tray (on the bottom right of your screen). HP and Epson both seem to have these background programs. So if you had a HP previously, and didn't uninstall first, then it could still be hanging on to your port settings. My previous model was a Canon - BJC4300 which died when I had amassed over a hundred bucks on ink - always had to have some on hand, because it gave you no warning when it was going to start printing funny stripy pictures. But then again, it had no little TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident - don't you wish that your boss would say that to you?) program to foul up the Epson installation.

I've seen this type of driver issue repeatedly - one of my past lives involved troubleshooting people's computers. There once was a "Winnie the Pooh" doll that attached to the parallel printer so the kiddies could program it to read them stories. Well this one customer could only get Pooh to speak in tongues that sounded kind of like a modem - you should have seen what a sight it was to see Winnie moving his lips to the sound of "EEEEkakakaka". Anyway the issue was the LPT Port was "captured" by the Epson printer driver. The customer had deleted all the Epson printer files already so it was too late to uninstall. We had to re-install the Epson Driver - from the printer which was now returned back to the store - and then uninstall that driver.

Nice printer other than that. It's not a quiet as an HP, but it shouldn't jam up as much either. Sounds very "professional". Plus the "smoothness" of the 3 picoliter drops is better than HP. After maybe 8 pages of full color photo's the ink is still way over 90% - much better than the Canon would have been at this point.

Good luck with the drivers...
Marc
P.S. W2k uses the XP driver I believe.