Customer Reviews

Epson Stylus NX415 All-in-One Printer

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

I had abandoned Epson years ago and switched to Lexmark printers because of the great "deals" that could be had. I decided to give up on Lexmark because of all the problems I've encountered with their printers. You get what you pay for I suppose. I figured I'd give Epson a chance before going elsewhere and I'm glad I did!

Initially I was looking at the NX515 because of the Wifi capabilities, but decided the price bump wasn't worth it. I paid somewhere around $60.00 for this machine, and I feel it was worth every penny.

The first thing I noticed, which I couldn't find in other AIO printers in the same price range, is separate ink cartridges for each color. The printer takes 4 cartridges, one each for CMKY. Each replacement cartridge costs about $13. While not the cheapest, you still save money in the long run because you don't have to replace all 3 colors at once as you do with a single multi-color cartridge.

The scanner is AMAZING to say the least. You can scan up to 4800 DPI which is more than enough for most people. At the highest scan resolution you can see each individual fiber on a sheet of paper! Excellent for making high resolution photos out of regular 4x6 film photos. Print quality is very nice. Faster than most AIO's out there. Photo printing is nice with no graininess or streaks. Edges are crisp and well defined, saturation and color matching is good.

Navigational buttons are simple and easy to use. Menus are user friendly. The small LCD screen is a big help ( it adjusts to give a better viewing angle) and turns off after a few minutes of disuse to save energy. Memory card reader is simple to use once you figure out which way they're supposed to go in. You can crop, rotate, and print photos right from the printer and it's surprisingly easy.

My only complaint is that it only comes in black! In all it's a cheap printer with some wonderful features that's a perfect companion to any computer.

Inkjets have come a long way and the inks no longer fade as rapidly as in years past. The photo results can be beautiful. But most of the technology is in the print head cartridges and the business model of the makers is to sell as many of those as possible. Low cost printers like this one from Epson are viewed by their manufacturers as a loss leader whose main purpose is to addict you to buying their cartridges. To do this, they basically give away the printer. This Epson Stylus NX415 sells on Amazon for $69 including a full set of four colored ink cartridges. But when time comes to reload the cartridges - which will be sooner than you think - the replacement set costs $48! This is as if you bought some cool very low cost car for only $2,000 but then discovered it requires special fuel which costs $1,400 per tank!

Since the print cartridges are the real core of the function, you may ask what does it matter which printer you buy? It matters because the printer unit is what aligns everything to perfection and transports the media precisely - the mechanical stuff. Of course mechanical precision and robustness is exactly what you don't get with a very cheap printer. Since, exclusive of the cartridges, this entire printer with its internal computer, LCD and motors, and free shipping is being sold in effect for about ten bucks, you will not be surprised that it is constructed from very flimsy bits of plastic. Plastic gears, etc. It's not designed as a workhorse. Epson is subsidizing this to get you hooked on consumables, not unlike a cellphone contract. This is also why Epson engineers a few tricks into the mechanism to make sure you keep buying their own cartridges. Once you've removed an ink cartridge for example, it cannot be reinserted. The sole reason for this is to keep you from committing the sin of refilling the cartridge with third-party ink. Also, the printer is programmed to stop operating if any one of the four cartridges is low; you are not allowed to make your own decision whether to continue with black-only use for documents for example.

I don't know about you, but I find these marketing manipulations a bit offensive. The low initial price of the printer is misleading. Serious users of inkjet photos would be better off buying a better quality and more durable model. Over time, its higher cost is overshadowed by the cost of the ink anyway. Not only ink but high end photo paper is expensive; about a dollar per 8 ½ x 11 sheet. Taking into account that you may print a photo more than once to get it perfect, this is is not a cheap process. Better equipment saves paper from do-overs.

An inexpensive all-in-one inkjet like this is intended for households whose workload and usage are light. Also, inkjets - any inkjets - can't be left to sit unused for months, or the nozzles will clog up. So you must use it just the right amount, not too much but not too little. This is inconvenient and most people who do lots of printing don't use inkjets at all. For routine daily text document printing, a small laser printer is a better choice. And for photos, you will get more permanent, less expensive results in the long run by printing on real photo paper (Fuji Crystal) using online services such as Shutterfly, Ritz or even Costco - with no cost for capital equipment and paying just for little bits of materials as you use them. The NX415 is a good match for the home or home office user who needs occasional color photo printing, occasional document printing, occasional scanning, occasional copying, nothing to overstress the flimsy construction. Perhaps it would be placed with a computer you use only once a week. Here's a rule of thumb; if you replace the ink cartridges on this unit more than once a year, it is not such a good deal.

Now to the test. I set the printer up and performed some color and black-and-white copies; this does not require a computer. Results were good and color copying was surprisingly accurate, close to the original with only a bit less contrast. For example this would be just right for copying a few old photos from grandma's album to give to other family members. Scanning worked fine and the Epson scanning software for my MacBook with OS 10.6 operated smoothly. As an experiment, I tried scanning a small object - a steel ruler - at the highest resolution, 9600 dpi. This worked essentially as a microscope, giving a highly detailed magnified scan - quite fun and great for your kids' science projects!

Printing color digital images onto good quality Epson photo paper produced variable but sometimes lovely results with bright, soft colors and good skin tones. Overall the images lacked snap and contrast; they were not the very best I have seen from inkjets, but generally good. Also, I had trouble with banding. I adjusted the alignment and cleaned the nozzles in an attempt to eliminate the banding, but was not entirely successful, hence four stars. (Those plastic gears you know.) All of this playing around uses paper and ink.

Bottom line: Although it is probably not durable, and it is certainly high maintenance, I am giving this unit four stars because it does most of what it is advertised to do - printing, copying scanning - with pretty nice results for a price less than taking your girlfriend out to a good restaurant. But consider it a light duty, limited life unit. The consumables are very expensive - once you start replacing cartridges, you have fallen into Epson's marketing trap.

I have owned Epson printers for years & loved them! However, I have to say that I was very dissapointed with this particular model & I am in the process of sending it back to Amazon.

The first couple of pages printed great, then it went downhill from there. Everytime I wanted to print, I needed to do a head clean as there were lines all across the page. Unfortunately when you do a head clean, it uses a lot of ink, so after trying to use the printer for about 10 days, the ink went down by about two thirds in every cartridge.

I will be shopping around for a different printer & maybe I'll try Epson again, but we'll see :)

On the more positive side, It is very affordable at around $100, it is a very smart looking all in one & I do like the little digital screen so you can view the menu & your photos! It was very easy to install & didn't take long for me to figure out how to use it. It is also Energy Star rated, which is great!

This is a good printer for the home. I've read a few of the other reviews and while I do agree with what they say, I will tell you right now that there are ways around the problems.

I've had many printers over the years and basically they all behave similarly.

The companies behind these inkjet printers basically operate on the assumption of "deplete the ink as fast as possible to make money on ink". While the printer is cheap, you have to spend money on ink a lot and if you buy the original epson inks then your going to spend a lot. The way around this? well, there are two. Both ways are for people who don't care much about print quality and do not print many photos. If you are print photos that you want your family to have for years and years and years, please buy them at the store, order them from a professional photo center, their like 19-25 cents each and buy in bulk and you can save on shipping, you might even get free shipping in some places. Local pharmacies around me will do prints tax free for 24 cents each 4x6. If you still want to know, then read on. First you can try going to ebay and looking for refillable ink or continuous ink systems for this model printer. You hook the printer up to these large tubes of ink and afterwards just order the ink when the tubes are low. This can get rather messy and the inks are subpar. After a while you might find your printer is clogged or cleaning the heads just isn't enough anymore. But I've done it and it lasted a year or two before that happened. Saved me a lot of money. I would be approximately 6 ink cartrdges of each color, together for 30 bucks and would last quite a few months. The second is using alternative ink suppliers, like carrotink and buying their ink for around 8 bucks before shipping but they give out a lot of coupons so you can get 5 cartridges for around 25 bucks. carrotink is probably the best alternative ink I've found. You don't refill carrotink, you just order the cartridges each time you run out. For me they worked out well. Once their ink cartridge came almost empty but that was one cartridge in about 10 orders of 6 cartridges each. They quickly, i mean like 3 days quick, helped me get it replaced. It was pretty surprising how good their customer service is.

the rest? welll, in the beginning i had to do an align and head cleaning but the nozzle check comes back perfect everytime. The photos prints on 4x6 borderless for me and the quality is fine for the home, custom jobs, or sharing a photo quickly with family that comes over or holiday cards, etc. But like i said, if you want a quality, lifelong print, go to a professional shop and make them use their thousands of dollar printer. Having said that though, I do like the quality of the photo prints a lot. The color is pretty close to the monitor screen, I am pretty surprised at the output of such a cheap printer.

Remember not to turn off and turn on your printer extremely a lot, because every time you turn it on it does a head clean and this will suck up a lot of ink. Don't do a lot of head cleanings for that reason unless you see streaks on your prints. This is something a lot of people forget. Even if the cartridges are fresh a few turn on/offs and the ink is "mysteriously" gone. These are all reason why inkjet technology won't go away anytime soon. It works in the companies favor extremely well.

For "programmed" end of cycle in printers, please be aware of scams out there that try to "unlock" your printer. That software is usually dirty hacks and its not guaranteed to work. Make sure you look up reviews and sources from trusted sites because you try the hacks. Often times they just want your money and run. Just be careful.

For text, its fine. I can read what i print and its not blurry at all for me.

For graphics, when you print a complete 8x11, at first installation i got lines on the page but after i did the align and head cleaning its going good and strong. Knock on wood and hope for the best lol. Lets just say if you have to do a lot of graphic printing on plain paper, DO NOT BUY.
But for occasional graphic+text, its perfect.

Also if you want nice prints on 4x6, remember to please buy nice paper. The paper matters also, as well as the source material on the computer. Don't expect to get great prints from .5 megapixel photos, while they might be alright and acceptable don't get your hopes up by thinking its going to be the same as the store or what you saw on the box. Be realistic please.

If you want excellent photo prints your going to have to spend 100+ on a good photo printer. I still recommend the epson brand photo printers, i think they go by artisan epson now but expect to spend a lot of money on ink and please buy epson ink for highest quality. I really am being honest and from experience, the hi-def claria ink lol, (wtf is hi-def ink but thats what epson calls it) is actually pretty good. I've used it and compared it to 4 other types of ink and epson wins hands down for highest quality photo prints. But its expensive.

Summary:

Good printer for home use. Be aware of cost of ink and find alternatives. Not a replacement for a professional photo printer or even a high quality best print solution. Good for home, quick solution. sharing a photo or two at the sudden to a visitor or holiday gift card. Get ink on ebay or my recommendation of carrotink due to their great customer service and low prices. copier and scanner work as advertised, and the drivers are effortless. Copying and scanning are pretty automtatic, it can detect what kind of source material it is and give you a good result in .jpg, .pdf, perhaps more formats but i haven't checked. I only use jpg or pdf when it comes to scanning and copying.

I hope this helps some people out there. I wish more people knew how these printers/companies work so they could realize that there are simple ways to be budget wise and still enjoy a quick print at home.

I am very disappointed with my Epson NX415. I went to Staples to purchase ink to refill the cartridge. I saw that the replacement cartridges were upward of $70, so I decided to refill the current cartridges. By the way, If a single cartridge is low, the printer is programmed not to allow you to print. Apparently you cannot ever reuse a cartridge that has been depleted nor one that has reached a certain level and has been removed and replaced (Of course you wouldn't know this unless you read the manual, and since there is no hard copy, you probably wouldn't find this out until you download the disks. At this point the printer would probably not be returnable). If you are one who is on a budget or who does not like to throw away money, then DON'T BUY THIS PRINTER. HP and Lexmark would print for me, even if the colored ink was low or empty - but the Epson will not. Every time you print you are bombarded with an ink level display and an advertisement to purchase genuine Epson cartridges.

This printer works about as well as most others in print quality and image quality. Where it excels is in speed. The claim of color or b&w print speed of 34 pages per minute is realistic for real use. It just spits out pages fast. It's quite loud while it does so, but because it does it so fast it isn't loud for very long before it is done.

Now, a few words on ink. Epson puts small ink cartridges in the printer when you buy it. But you can get bigger cartridges when you buy new cartridges. It is always a good idea to get the biggest of these cartridges because it will have the lowest cost per page despite the cartridge costing more. This is because the bigger cartridge will print a LOT more pages.

The Epson Stylus NX415 will take black series 68, 69, or 88 ink (T068120, T069120, and T088120). They'll all print the same quality, but how long they last and the price/page are dramatically different.

Pages per cartridge (black):
T068120: 370 pages
T069120: 245 pages
T088120: 170 pages

Prices per page (black) based on current Amazon prices (including shipping)
T068120: 5.9 cents/page
T069120: 6.8 cents/page
T088120: 7.5 cents/page

I tested the Epson NX415 on both an iMac 24" running OSX 10.5.8 and on an HP laptop running Vista Premium. It seems lately that I'm reading a lot of misplaced reviews. That gets confusing. Seeing the actual product number mentioned in the review assures the reader that everyone is on the same page. First off, I have yet to find the perfect printer. And what one considers a PRO might be another's CON, so I'll lump them all together. The finish on the NX415 is glossy black plastic. Its snazzy, contemporary styling shows off every smudge and fingerprint like a lighted display counter in a jewelry store. The recessed USB cable connection is a pain. I've done hundreds on past jobs. Even using a headlamp and correct positioning, it took a full minute to get it seated. The power cord plugs directly into the wall outlet. There is no bulky, in-line transformer as with most other printers. I like that. The control Panel is easy to use. I like it better than the Cannon or HP. The petite ink carts are easy to install, however, they are half the size of most Canon and HP ink carts which leads me to suspect a short ink life. I did a side-by-side comparison using like paper with a Canon Pixma 480 and an HP Photo Smart printer. The Epson was as quiet as the HP and 5 times quieter than the Canon. My Canon prints great but sounds like a raccoon trapped in a utility closet. There is a slight difference in hue between Epson, Canon and HP ink carts with the major difference being in the reds. This could be attributed to the generic ink carts we use. It was equal in definition quality to the Canon and HP. Scanning, printing and running photos from either a PC or Mac is a breeze. No problems. Here's where I'm confused: Other reviews state that copying is fast. Copying is a stand-alone function. The type of computer the printer is cabled to is irrelevant. When copying in the color mode, I had time to shower, wash the car and have a cup of coffee. I'm talking up to five minutes. Even a page with only 3 lines of print takes the same amount of time. The printer head traverses and reads every micro-mm of the blank white page at the same speed as it does a fully printed page. B&W is a bit faster but still slower than the Canon and HP. Everyone knows that the manufacturers make their money off the ink, not off the printers. They offer the printers at a bargain and then charge a fortune for the ink. Before buying any printer, I always research the generic ink cost and availability, especially the volume discounts offered by 3rd parties on Amazon.Com. I have had excellent results doing this with both Canon and HP and have saved a bundle on ink. The Epson NX415 was acquired via Vine Voice and I've not yet purchased any generic ink carts, however, there are bulk offers on Amazon.Com for as low as $3.58 per cart including shipping. If the quality is less than or equal to the HP generic ink carts, my wife says she'll keep the Epson in place of the HP because most of her copying is done on the Canon. I willingly accept her decision knowing that a woman has the inalienable right to change her mind at any time.

Although I did not buy this from Amazon, and picked it up for a great price, I guess you get what you pay for. A huge disappointment in this printer. I've had Epson and HP printers and will go back to HP with the next paycheck. This Epson does print a good quality photo print -- but if you're wanting an easy, reliable machine for all your other general printing, this isn't the machine for you. It jams easily, won't let you print to the edge on plain paper setting, you can not print on transparencies, and often will not let me input instructions for which it is suppose to be able to do. The scan is OK, the copy part of the machine is fine. Using the #69 ink cart. I printed out 50 pictures and ran out of ink with fresh cartridges. That was about 72 cents a photo (and poor quality to boot) -- I can do better at a photo shop.

BEWARE!!! If ANY, that's right, ANY!!!!! ink cartridge is empty, you can't print PERIOD!!!!!!!!!!!

So if any of your color cartridges go empty, you can't even print in black and white/grayscale! What a scam!!!

I have to say I was surprised at how rickety this printer was. It's got a very cheap feel. You put the paper in and think it's going to jam as it hems and haws, grabbing the paper and releasing it, doing all kinds of things before it actually feeds (and many times it does jam). Plus, it constantly thinks something is wrong with the printer cartridges. Well, they're the ones that came with the printer, and they're brand new, so I just keep messing with things until it recognizes them and prints. Very annoying though. Copying is easy. I haven't tried scanning yet. It is a little slow, but print quality is fine. For the money, it does function, but I also think that in the same price range you might be able to get something a little less flimsy. Don't forget to get a USB cord if you don't have one; I forgot, and was lucky I had my old printer to "steal" it from.