Customer Reviews

Kodak ESP 9 All-in-One Printer

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

First off, I ordered this printer on a home shopping network because I was so impressed with everything this printer offered. However, after I ordered it, I was really worried because of so many negative reviews, I was SO WORRIED in fact that I had just about decided that when my printer did arrive through UPS, I was going to send it back right away! Well, thank goodness I didn't do that, I decided I have 30 days to try it and if I don't like it, I can always send it back. When you first take your printer out of the box, there is alot of tape and styrofoam blocks that you have to take off and out of the printer, so make sure you get all of it, there are even some styrofoam blocks taped inside where the ink cartridges go.
Installing this printer was absolutely the easiest I have ever done on any printer. (took me less than 10 minutes!) My old HP printer took almost an hour to install! I connected my printer using my USB port first, then I also installed it using the wireless connection....everything went perfectly. Then came the printing!
I printed out 2 documents, one in color and the other in black and white, both came out perfectly. No errors in printing and the colors and blacks were perfect. I have had my printer for 3 days now and I am still printing photos, so far I have printed out about 12 4x6 color photos and about 40 black and white documents (front and back sides with the 2 sided printing option) My ink cartridges are now showing 60% full in color and 70% full in black. One thing you want to make sure of is that you use only KODAK paper because when I used my old HP photo paper, the colors were not as vivid as when I used the Kodak paper. (some of the customer complaints were about the reds not being very red and yellows not yellow) When I use my Kodak Premium Photo paper, the photos come out flawless, absolutely stunning in detail! Reds are just as red as can be!!! On my old HP paper, the photos still came out great but just not as vivid as on the Kodak paper.
One thing I did have to do is update the drivers on the Kodak website, because when I would go to print a 2 sided document (which you have to do all the necessary adjustments in the printers options menu) it would print the first side perfectly but when you turned your paper over, the text would be upside down! (hmmm!) AFTER I updated my drivers on the Kodak Website, it fixed that issue and now prints a 2 sided document like it is supposed to. The only other issue I had was when I used my "duplexer" after I updated my drivers, all of a sudden my duplexer started printing only in black and white. I tried to make the necessary adjustments in the printer menu but nothing worked. So I called tech support (which was very fast and courteous towards me, no waiting and very fast and knowledgeable about this printer) and the girl told me to go in and reset the printer to "default settings" under the configure settings menu, so I did and then the duplexer started printing in color and/or black and white like it is supposed to do!!!
Now everything is like it should be. The printer is not noisy at all while printing, it is however "a little noisy" while "spooling" or when you first turn your printer on and it performs it's usual setting up functions. Not so noisy that it bothers me in the least, but some people referred to the noise as being so terribly loud, mine is not that loud at all...yes it is a little louder than my old HP but not so loud that it is a concern. (I guess that is a big issue for some people)
The touchscreen is a very nice feature and works like a charm! The screen on the front is very clear and large and you can preview and edit your photos before you print them out directly from your printer!
Another thing that was a big complaint with alot of people is how the paper shoots out of this printer. WRONG! I don't think alot of those people even realized that when you pull out the paper catcher (which is located right above the paper drawers) there is a 3/4 inch lip or piece on the end that you have to slide up first. (I didn't even notice it there until yesterday!) It folds flat down on the paper catcher and it is hard to notice that piece at first but after I realized it folds UP and OUT, it catches ALOT of paper!!!! I printed out a bunch of documents and it caught everyone of them. Nothing flew out of my printer.
The paper drawers are really great, you can put regular printer paper in the bottom drawer and photo paper in the drawer just above it and the printer automatically knows what paper to use. The 2 sided printing is really great, it prints the first side of your paper, then sucks the paper back in and prints on the other side! (really neat feature!) It saves me alot on wasted paper too!!!
The camera card slots that are on the front of this printer is a nice feature too because as soon as you put in your SD card (or memory card) all your photos come up on the screen and you touch the arrows on the touchscreen to choose which picture you want to print and edit them if you wish and then print right off your memory card! You can even zoom in (or crop) your photos and the pictures come out really nice in your final prints! The scanner works really good - no problems at all scanning and printing, the copies come out perfectly for me!
I hope my review helps you in deciding whether or not you want to try this printer and if you have doubts, do like I did and try it first! (most stores allow you X amount of time to try it out and if you are not happy you can always return it) But truth be told, I know you will be impressed with this machine just as I am! I am so glad I tried this printer out first before relying on the negative reviews.
BUT TO BE ON THE SAFE SIDE... I have only had this printer for 3 days now so if I do encounter any problems, I will update my review and let you know about it but so far so good!!!! I am highly impressed with this printer!!! The ink cartridges are so very inexpensive ($10.00 for black and $15.00 for color) and this Kodak ESP-9 prints out breathtaking photos and texts!!!

I have owned all the previous 5000 Model Series and was happy with them. The ability to have very very low pricing on the ink cartridges was the reason I went to Kodak.

I moved up to the ESP 9 Series for one reason - WiFi - and it has worked perfectly without any problems. I have 5 different computers both portable and desktop hooked up to this one printer and they all work without a hitch.

The new touch panel on the front of the ESP 9 is very easy to use and the new Black Finish on this model makes to look more professional in the office enviroment.

I use the Automatic Paper Feeder most of the time and to date it has worked again without a hitch.

The only thing about this printer and any of the Kodak Printers is that they do not give a deep color penetration on regular or inkjet paper. The colors are washed out slightly and the Red's are not deep. If you use the Kodak Color Photo Paper everything is perfect with the Red's being very deep. Most of us to not use for everyday use the Color Photo Paper so be prepared for lighter color on Inkjet paper.

I had read a lot of reviews about this all-in-one before purchasing it. I also read a lot of reviews on other all-in-one's as well. It really seemed like people either loved them or hated them. I, for one, love this machine. I was a little worried about some of the things that I had read, and yes, it does have a couple of little "glitches" but they are easily overlooked by the ease of use & the quality of the photos.

First, this machine was very easy to set up and almost magically found my wireless connection. It also prints quite easily from all of my computers. No muss, no fuss. Everything installed quickly and easily. The only computer that it won't work on is my ancient (10 years old) computer and it immediately let me know that the software was not compatible. That isn't a problem for me as it has had it's own printer for as many years.

I'm hugely impressed with it's ease of use. I haven't even had to download any instructions for this machine yet. Although I haven't tried the duplexer out as yet. I love it and hope to have it around for many years to come.

The "problems" that I've found are very minor. First, it does make some noise when it spools. A little more than I've been used to with my old HP. But still not bad enough for me to not purchase it. I have also had my computer tell me that it's not connected to the printer and then flawlessly print whatever I'd sent to the printer. So, I really can't complain about it at all. It also kind of "washes" the colors out on a printed document on plain paper. It's not horrible by any means, but if you are looking for something very crisp and professional, I would probably look at another machine.

Overall, this is a really super nice machine and I'm very glad to have purchased mine. They are a little pricey but I hope to use it so much that I eventually offset the cost of the printer with the cheaper ink. So far, we are off to a good start!

When I saw that the latest HP's all-in-one printers were going to different ink cartridges, I said, "Enough is enough," and began looking around for another company's printers. The Kodak ESP series struck me as a good one that had everything my Photosmart 6180 had, and it used just two ink cartridges, and they were priced less than half of what I was paying for the HP cartridges.

Everything started off OK with the Kodak. The WiFi was easy to hook-up, and I had it being used by the Mac and my Dell. Printing was OK from the Internet and word processor, but when I printed certain pictures (see uploaded photo) the reds were washed-out. I had read where using Kodak paper prevented this problem, so I bought some Kodak Ultra Photo Paper. Even making just copies gave the same poor color effect. This may be a problem inherent with the ink used or blend of colors.

Then, about two days into using the ESP 9, I started having problems printing. At first, I just passed-it off to my systems. But, after failing to get it to print what my Dell was sending, I connected it with a USB. That helped for a day, and then, everything stopped printing, again. I worked with it, off-and-on, for a week. Repairing and reinstalling the didn't work. If it had not worked from the get-go, I would have thought it might needed an update to the software, but that wasn't the case. Whatever was the problem(s), I returned it.

The printer has some nice features, but I cannot recommend it, as much as I really was hoping to do so as I have successfully used Kodak Easyshare software over the years.

Installation was fairly easy and trouble free.

I have Windows Vista Business Edition so I am not sure if my problems are "Vista only" problems or not but....

Printer will not recognize Avery address label paper. Attempted to print address labels using Avery 8160 labels. Printer would fail to print and display "incorrect paper size" message.

After an hour on the phone with Kodak support (which is not based in North America so prepare for heavy accents) it was determined this was a hardware issue with the printer. I actually had to wait while the tech support guy called another tech support person. His excuse was that "this is a new product so I am not very familiar with it". I find that rather unacceptable. Come on Kodak!

The printer apparently performs an optical scan of the paper prior to printing and did not like the Avery paper for some reason. No solution was offered but I was able to figure out a workaround to "fool" the printer into accepting the paper.

Wireless connectivity was very problematic. It connected to my network just fine but I have yet to be able to print via wireless using my laptop. Every attempt to print via wireless caused my laptop to immediately loose connection with the printer. NOT with the wireless network...just with the printer.

Kodak has issued a firmware update to address wireless connectivity issues but this did not fix this issue.

I also have experienced issues with the print quality of red colors.

Day 1: Used the software to install to 3 wireless computers. Wouldn't recognize/detect my laptop & complete the setup even though I made all the recommended firewall changes-but I was still able to send a test print job and it printed. It did detect my 2 desktop units so I thought life was good. Day 2 did a sample scan to check color- med turquise blue came out to be a violet-blueish color, not even close. Photo prints (on Kodak paper) were very washed out-my 10 year old HP does much better! then the software crashed on one of the desktops. So I re-installed it and this time it wouldn't detect that computer even though it had the previous day. Day 3: it started printing blank pages. I would send the print job, out came a blank page. Continued to do this, then on about the 5th try-a little bit of ink, 6th try more ink, 7th try recognizable document minus about an inch on the right side, 8th try same as 7th, 9th and 10th try back to COMPLETELY BLANK! Not the results you would expect for this kind of money. Another example: My son printed an English paper, the top 1/2 of every 5th line was missing. He got disgusted, put the file on his flash drive and said he'd just print at school. Half an hour later my other son printed a school paper and it came out perfectly other than the fact that the 1st 2 letters of the first word were missing both times he printed so he filled it in the old fashioned way (with a pen) and called it good. We rarely got a completely perfect print job (if any print at all) so one week later, BACK IT WENT!!! I bought an HP6450 for $80 LESS. It has all the same features that I was after in the Kodak, namely, wi-fi, ink is a lot less $$ than my old HP, duplex printing, auto doc-feed. The HP holds way more paper than the Kodak, much easier to load paper, QUIET (that KODAK could wake a sleeping teenage boy-and did!)much better color reproduction than the Kodak, the lid closes straight-not on the Kodak, I could go on and on... My advice don't even mess with the kodak!

We had purchased this on the recommendation of our computer serviceman, based on the features of wi-fi, printer, scanner, copier, fax & ink cost. We had an 8-year old hp deskjet that was around $100 at the time of purchase & were still extremely pleased at the quality of its printing. (We send all of our pictures out to be printed, and that was not a factor in the decision to purchase the Kodak ESP 9.) You have to understand that we are not the most computer-saavy people, so this is sheerly from a novice's perspective. Installation was easy. Color was exceptionally drab (even in comparison to our low-on-ink deskjet). Paper was difficult to insert and either jammed or said there was no paper more often than it printed. It made an atrocious sound when feeding, much like the printers I recall from the late 1980s. Very slow to print. I found this to have exceptionally poor performance for the cost.

This is, by far, the worst printer I have ever owned. I decided to stray from the HP lineup and the Kodak ESP9 had all I was looking for: Wired Network, Duplexing, and Scan/Fax capabilities. I wasn't specifically looking for the 'cheap ink' option but what the heck - bonus.

First off, I've burned through more ink in a few days than weeks with the old HP (5550) so there's no saving there - yeah, the cartridges may be cheaper but you require many more - so it's a wash.

The scanner works "sometimes". It will say "scanning" and simply sit there so it's 50/50 whether it will scan directly from the unit or using the software - never both reliably.

As far as printing photos, I continually need to run "clean print head" and "nozzle correction" utilities to get a reasonable looking photo - otherwise, it's typically washed out in blue. When it does work, the pictures look good.

Updating firmware is a joke. You can only update with USB cable and simply connecting it does not work. You must disconnect and delete the printer from within Windows, reinstall drivers as USB printer, then cross your fingers. After updating to the latest firmware, Kodak's Network Discovery service that allows you to connect via Ethernet no longer works (after several reboots) so still cannot re-connect the printer.

Another fun feature is that having duplexing on while printing a photo (from the 4x6 photo tray even!), the printer complains that photo paper cannot be used for double-sided printing - I'm not trying to. The photo fits on 1 page and it should not even be attempting to duplex.

The fax seems to send and receive good - however that's not enough to warrant anything other than 1 start for this "all in one".

I have been troubleshooting for some time now and am not writing to whine - just to warn others of these issues.


Update 8/19/2008:

Got the printer reconnected shortly after the above review. I must, however, add how much ink this garbage eats up. Referring back to a cheap HP 5550, I would print at the same volume and go MONTHS and MONTHS without ever needing to replace the print cartridge. This Kodak junk barely lasts a couple of weeks - and I leave the default on draft mode. My above comment of "it's a wash" is incorrect - the ESP9 ends up way more expensive.

We use this printer in a college environment, and track the cost/page carefully. We are averaging 3.5 cents/page for ink.

While this may sound good, and indeed the cartridges are cheap, in fact it is far more expensive then the Brother all-in-one which we replaced after 4 years of usage. The Brother was averaging 1.5 cents/page.

Yes, the Kodak is over twice as expensive. Neat advertising campaign - looks like the ink is cheaper because the cartridges are cheap, except that a single cartridge doesn't print many pages.

We print primarily black copies only, but the printer uses a full color cartridge in almost the same number of pages (around 600) as a full black cartridge.

The Brother used only the black cartridge for black copies, and averaged around 1000 pages per cartridge.

My husband said that if we bought this printer we would not only save money on ink but be able to print from my laptop since it's wi-fi--a huge challenge with our 7 year old HP. However, both my son's and my laptop lose the network or the printer network loses us... so we can't print. It could be a firewall problem but we're tired of having to get my husband fix it every other day. We've had the printer four months and are on our second set of ink cartridges and we have to run maintenance every time we want to print to get all the colors to show up or even get the black ink to work. I'm about to go out to the garage, dig the old HP out of the Goodwill box, and hook it up to my laptop. Somehow, some way, some of us must be able to print consistently! Even considering printing a photograph? FORGEDDABOUTIT!