Customer Reviews

Epson Stylus Photo RX700 Photo Printer

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

 

 

I needed to reduce the clutter/items in my bedroom (scanner, printer, fax), so I needed to get an all in one. I've had this baby for about 2 weeks now, and it is awesome. I've already gone through one set of ink cartridges testing all its features. I considered getting the AIO hp 7310 but decided the direct cd/dvd printing from this Epson was a must have. I'll just keep my original fax machine. My fil and I are always in competition for the latest gadgets and when I printed photos for him...he was amazed!! He owns a Sony 4x6 thermal dye printer and it was not even close to the way my Epson printed photos. He brought over 3 boxes of slides and I cannot believe the resolution for scanning slides. Unbelievable. When scanned using the restore faded slide/negatives feature, the output was incredible. It looks like I shot thes pictures yesterday, the colors are so vibrant. The preview screen is a great feature and beautiful. I rarely hook it up to my laptop, so it was great to see previews prior to printing. The Epson glossy photo paper works the best for photos. I've tried Kodak and HP papers and there is no comparison to the output on the Epson paper. Equivalent to a photo lab. For CD/DVD printing, I've used the Verbatim brand. They have less coasters and they look beautiful. My only peeve would be the cost of and finding replacement ink. It cost anywhere between $75-80 to replace all cartridges, 6 individual ink cartridges (so you only replace the color that runs out). If you are using this mainly for printing photos, then I would suggest getting a dedicated 4x6 printer. It's not cost effective to print on this one. But if you are looking for a great all around printer....then this is the one you want.

I have had the Epson RX700 for a few weeks and it is excellent in all ways. I've printed, copied, scanned (photos, slides and film), used the memory card feature... and this is the best. I purchased an HP 3310 and a Canon 760 before this and returned both. The quality overall of the Epson RX700 is far superior. I own an iMac G5 and it works fine with the latest Mac OS. I couldn't get the HP 3310 to work with the latest OS and I'm glad I didn't because this All-In-One is great for me. Faxing would be nice, but I'll take the quality of this All-In-One over the faxing feature. Photos come out beautiful! For the price you can't beat this one.

2/8/07 update. Lately I haven't been using my printer daily and I sometimes get a print that looks faded. I've had to use the Epson Printer Utility to clean the heads and it's back to normal. You need to print regularly on Epson printers to eliminate the nozzles clogging. So 4 1/2 stars I guess.

This is an excellent multi-function device. The ability to print on CDs and the film scanning options are nice pluses to already comprehensive package.

The print quality at all settings is superb. Text documents are very crisp and highly readable. Photos are glorious. The six-color process lends them a depth that is substantially better than four-color machines.

Scanning and copying are simple operations. Epson software for scanning is markedly improved over earlier versions.

Mechanically the machine is straight-forward. I've no problem with paper feeding, though I haven't tried heavy stocks yet.

Overall the only negative I have is the cost of Epson cartridges. That's how they make their profits I know, but still I wish they showed more mercy to the consumer. Ink consumption doesn't seem to be overly high, though I am wary of the inability to print once any cartride is empty.

On the whole, the RX700 is an excellent multi-function device and above all a truly wonderful color printer.

Jerry

I have no problems with the output for this printer, but it flies through the ink (like all Espons) and finding replacement ink has been a large problem for me. Not to mention that its going to set be back about $80 for a complete set. I hate to pay what I paid for this printer and then have to pay $80 for what was about 3 months of pretty light printing (less than 200 sheets, 5 CDs, and two photos). In contrast, my HP prints more for less, just not on CDs.

Why are they hard to find? I think the real problem is that the only printer that uses these ink cartridges is the RX700. Therefore, few people carry them. I ordered them from Staples, but the order has been screwed up twice now (not Epson's fault, but raises my level of frustration). I could have ordered them from somewhere else, but I would have had to pay for shipping, which makes the ink even more expensive.

I mainly purchased the printer for its ability to print on CDs and DVDs, which it does well, but it is an expensive printer to run.

I've had this printer since xmas 2005. all that time I've had no problems what so ever and really have enjoyed owning it. I would call my self a power user as I do everything with this printer, not just photos. It's the first all in one printer on the market to print cd's. it says it does double sided printing but thats a big joke. If you click that button to print on both sides, it just prints it on one side and tells you to reload the paper so it can print on the other side. Ya right, thats double sided printing.. Like you can't do that with any other printer... what ever.

I like the scanning on this printer, it seems to be the best quality scanning I've seen. mind you all epson scanners are known to be great.

I love to copy and print button just with the printer alone, works great for those quick just need a copy days.

All in all it works really well, but

Now for the bad news, as many reviews have pointed out the only down side to this printer is the cost of ink is crazy. Here in canada there is only one chain of stores that carry the ink. that big Drug Store chain that has a small computer department in it and guess what they want more money for the ink too then everyone else does.

The best place to buy the ink from is directly from Epson canada, I'd order from amazon but they don't ship it here. plus that dollar thing i'd have to deal with. Plus they have free shipping.

one other down side to this printer is it will not print just black and white. true black and white. I mean, even if you click that grayscale button, it still uses color ink, like it or not. I notice this because I ordered two black ink cardridges as I do a lot of black and white printing and the other color inks started going down as I printed the black colors. also if the ink heads are not clean, you can see some color in your black and white prints. so your using Color ink like it or not.

Plus if you run out of ink when your printing and just want to print black and white tell you get more color ink cartridges. your out of luck. because you can't print on Empty cartridges need them or not.

First, the good. This printer has a lot of really nice features, like being able to print from 35mm film, being able to scan images to flash media, being able to print CD labels, dual paper trays, really high resolution and high quality photos, 6 individual ink cartridges (so you only replace the color that runs out), lower ink/copy cost than HP, etc.

Then the bad. I have three machines at home: A Linux server, a Mac OS X desktop, and a Windows laptop. Currently, this printer is too new to be supported by the "Gutenprint" driver for Linux (though this is likely to change very soon; see: http://gimp-print.sf.net/; also, scanning worked flawlessly..) - so I was left with using the vendor-supplied drivers for Windows and Mac. I plugged the printer into my Linux box, and was able to print from Windows using a local driver; however, the supplied driver for Mac OS X did not allow printing over the network (only if the printer is directly connected via USB). Also, due to various bugs (perhaps in OSX, perhaps in Windows, or perhaps in the Epson driver for either), I was not able to connect the printer to my Mac and print from Windows. I returned the printer for this reason.

Also, beware that it does not have fax capabilities. It seems the only Epson All-in-One Ink printer with fax capabilities is the new CX5800, which is somewhat more lacking in photo features (like not having the 35mm film support that this RX700 does..)

The RX700 is a terrific printer in so many ways, and I can see why there are so many good reviews about it. It could have been a five star review, but I had to ding it due to the driver. More on that later. This RX700 is a replacement for a two-year old RX600 which needed a new LCD screen and would have cost more to repair than to buy the new printer. Pros: fast, easy, great print quality, CD/DVD printer. Cons: a bit noisier than the RX600, and somewhat confusing to install the software. But even more of a problem is that the driver software will not save any customizations that involve your print path settings. So where you will see in the print window a drop down for "presets," you won't find that its parameters have actually been stored. For instance, I created a preset for DVD printing that instructs the printer to use the CD/DVD tray and CD/DVD media print quality settings. Even though I select that preset, all I actually get are the standard settings. Same goes for another preset that calls for the back tray. I have high quality photo paper in that tray, leaving the bottom tray for plain bond. And I've saved a preset that calls for high quality printing on glossy photo paper. But instead, the print driver uses the bottom tray with the standard bond. I spent many hours uninstalling and reinstalling and resetting my print settings and even more time on the phone with Epson tech support - levels one and two. Epson finally confirmed that there is a problem, although the tech rep I spoke with strongly indicated that the problem has more to do with the way Apple wrote the latest OS X. Let me be very clear - you CAN make terrific looking prints on CDs and photo paper, etc. You just need to remember to always choose the paper path and quality settings every time you print or change from one media to another. This is an unfortunate fault and I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention. I should also point out that I'm using a power-PC based G5 and I don't know what if any difference there would be on an intel-based G5, which has a more recent driver posted on the Epson site.

This All- in- one product was bought to be my home office scanner and copier and was doing fine until it ran low on one color ink cartridge. Wow...this shut down the entire machine.
I could no longer scan or do a BW copy...nothing!

I contacted Epson, and was told they had determined the primary function of this product was a printer and designed "safeguards" to shut the machine down if the ink got low.

When I stated my point that it's the customer's decision what the primary function would be, Epson responded by telling me that I could purchase another brand if I was unhappy with their product. I was, and I did.

Epson charges almost $100.00 for replacement ink sets. Another Epson rip off, in my opinion.

This is a fantastic printer for anyone that wants excellant quality photo prints up to 8 1/2 x 11. Yes, the ink is expensive, but the quality is amazing, and I have never had a problem with using non-Epson inks at 1/2 the cost. I will never understand why Epson only kept this printer on the market for about a year. I only regret that I didn't get in on their closeout at a couple of hundred dollars, as a spare would be nice.

The printer arrived completely ruined. It was packed in a flimsy box in circa 35 lb. of finely shredded paper without any plastic bag or any other wrapping around the printer. Every compartment of the printer was full of shredded paper and tiny paper particles and dust. Incomprehensible how any human being could ship an electronic item like that. I really needed the printer.
Instead, even with the refund of my money, I am out of [...] for returning shipping charges.The seller really needs to pay that.
Since there is no zero rating, I had to five the item a one star. Sorry about that.