Customer Reviews

Epson Stylus Color 440 Inkjet Printer

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

 

 

I had a Epson model 440 for about a year and a half, and when I bought it, it was about a $150 machine. Now where I definately would know that this printer is not worth nearly that in todays ever advanceing photo printing market I will tell you that its a fairly good value for its current price.

The Epson 440 always produced nice images for me. The color photo printouts I would make on photo stock paper were very nice. The features on this printer are nice too, the software is very easy to use and helps a great deal with many projects. I also like the feature that lets you know when the ink is about to run out, that is a big help.

Here is the bad news though, first of all the Epson 440 is pretty slow compaired to many of the HP printers I have used. Even the HP printers near the same price point are faster. My Epson 440 sometimes apeared to be tempermental too, not running some more complex print jobs. I do not think this was my main computer because I have been running an AMD athlon 800 MGHZ with 256 MB of ram on the motherboard, so I am sure the printer was limited. I run some of the same jobs without a hitch on my HP 832C which I find to be a fantastic printer. Last but not least is the Epson 440 is the loudest thing on mother earth, the thing rattles hums and shakes every time it squezes a print out which makes it difficult to get along with. On contrast most HP printers are very Quiet.

So here is my final scoop, if you are short on cash and need a decent printer to get you by, try the Epson 440, but if you have the money spend it on a higher model HP printer.

Despite costing [little] and being able to print in very good text and graphics quality, this printer is a disaster in ink management. The ink head would get clogged if the printer hasn't been used for over a day, and it would require self-cleaning, which takes 2 minutes. If you don't use the printer at least once a day, expect to wait 2 minutes for the printer to self-clean itself every time you turn it on, which could annoy the hell out of you. Moreover, the cleaning uses so much ink that you could run out of ink at an alarming speed -- after printing as few as 70 pages. For the most casual home users this may be tolerable. But business users, beware. The frequent clogging, cleaning, ink replacements that would occur with this printer would seriously affect the work of ANY business user.

I've used Epson Stylus Color model 400, 440, and 600, and they all had this problem. Avoid this line of printers altogether (which also includes model 800, and others).

The reviews say that you won't get spectacular print quality with plain paper, but I'm quite impressed with the consistent sharp and bold prints. Also the cartridges are cheap compared to other brands such as Lexmark. It avg's about 5 cents ppg for B & W and about 11 cents ppg for Color prints. It's not going to roll out fast like those nice laser printers but you're not going to fork out a chunk of change when you purchase this. When you buy cartridges, don't buy the Epson brand ones. You can get these generic brand equivalents off the net for half what Epson charges. If you really want a good deal on this printer, I would buy it soon.

I've found the perfect printer for my two daughters who have learned to use my Epson 400 over the last 3 years. Quality is sweet, the ink dries and doesn't smear before the item is done printing and at a cost of 30% of what my 400 cost you can't beat it at the price or quality. If it was for me I would have spent the $$ for a 1440 dpi Stylus Photo printer but since Dad would have to buy the paper, I'm real sure they won't need that in 6th or 8th grade. Epson has been great for me and after using the new 440 for a few weeks now. I'm ready to buy #2 for daughter #2. Great Value.... Reliable and easy to use.

I bought this exact printer a little over six months ago and have had great results. For the average person, printing mainly text, I havent seen a better value. My print quality has been outstanding and I am very impressed at how mizerly it uses ink. I'm very happy with it and would recommend it to anyone.

I realize that not every printer will be as bad as mine, but I have had a plethora of problems. The on/off light burned out within 2 weeks. Practically every time I print something, I have to clean or realign the nozzles. For a while, the printer wouldn't work unless it was turned on before the computer. And if this is being miserly with ink, I'd hate to see what regular ink use is! You get what you pay for, I suppose.

This is one of the better inexpensive printers you can buy. This is not a "Winprinter" like the low-end HP's--that is, the Epson does its own thinking while the HP relies on your CPU to think. When I'm printing with the Epson, I can switch to other tasks without causing problems. A couple of cautions: the printhead is only rated for 10,000 pages (the printheads are permenant, when they go, you buy a new printer). The black ink tank is tiny, so you may want to consider refills. The black text is a little blurry, but the photo output is good on plain paper and excellent on photo paper. Coming up from a three-color printer, this is a great improvement.

This printer has only so-so quality on regular paper, but it's laser sharp on expensive inkjet paper. It's very slow, and tends to guzzle ink.

I bought mine a few months ago, and have had no trouble of any kind, even using a shoddy old cable I had around to connect it. Lovely photo printing (with photo quality paper, anyway) and not too much noise, considering the rock-bottom price.

I have had a great time with this unit, over 10,000 copies.
Now I`m on the 2nd. one, I`m now getting ready to buy the 3rd. one from egghead.com.
I want to be sure that there is a spare on hand when needed.
The color could be some what better, but overall I`m very happy with this product.