Customer Reviews

Kodak ESP 3 All-in-One - Multifunction ( printer / copier / scanner ) - color - ink-jet - printing (up to): 30 ppm (mono) / 29 ppm (color) - 100 sheets - Hi-Speed USB, USB host (DE; FR; UK Version)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

*** Update February 22, 2009 ***

New rating: 1

(The Amazon site won't let me change the actual rating so the best I can do is put in this comment.)

After 9 months the printer started malfunctioning. With full ink cartridges it would print horribly as though it was out of ink. I had an extended warranty but was told they can't get parts to fix it. Fortunately I was allowed to exchange for a different make. Until now all of my comments below held true - but reliability with this unit seems to be a problem.

*** Original Review***

I have had the printer for about 2.5 months now and haven't had any problems. Had it set up and working in a matter of minutes.

Some other reviewers seem unhappy about its lack of bluetooth or that it doesn't have a USB cable in the box. This didn't bother me because I wasn't expecting it to be bluetooth compatible, and I knew it didn't have the USB cable in the box.

Pros:

- Easy set up. Installed drivers from CD, plugged in USB cable, worked like a charm.

- Prints fast

- I love having scanning and copying capabilities built in. Have used both and it worked just fine.

- Inexpensive ink

Cons:

- Louder than most printers (I have seen other reviewers comment on this as well)

- The paper tray design is a little weird. The output paper almost lies on top of the input paper. Seems to work fine for smaller print jobs but my guess is that it wouldn't for larger print jobs.

- Copying/scanning must be done one page at a time. But this is typical of most home printers.

- Would be nice to have automatic duplex printing. But most home printers don't.

So if you're looking for a high end professional office printer for high volume copying, duplex printing, etc., then this probably isn't the printer for you. If you need a decent home printer/scanner/copier it works great.

I don't like to be negative, but I despise this printer. I am an IT Professional and always look for the lower-end, cheapie printers for home. Then when they break I get a new one. However, I have certain expectations for them, especially when they are less than 2 months old.

The photo print quality was very good, especially when using Kodak brand paper. I expect that any other namebrand paper would also do well. I was relatively pleased until I hit a service problem. We tried to print directly from the SD card (which is a supported function). The paper jammed and I could never clear the messages on my PC. I expected that it was a software problem, so I hooked it up to my laptop and still could not get the message to clear.

I spent 2 weeks on the phone with customer service in another country. They replaced the printer THREE TIMES, and sent 3 sets of print heads and new cartridges. I finally placed one last call and told the gentleman that I need to speak with the highest level tech support available. He transferred me back to someone who was able to tell me, within 5 minutes, that I had experienced a known bug with the ESP-3s. Without question, he was going to send me an ESP-5 by next-day shipping because the combination of ESP-5 firmware + Kodak software do not have this same bug.

I estimate that Kodak has spent at least $1,500 trying to make me happy over a $125.00 printer. I am definitely a Kodak fan, especially the Kodak cartridges that are interchangeable in all their ESP printers. As a longtime IT person, I know that sometimes there are issues. I will post a review of the ESP5 when I have a little experience with it tomorrow.

If you have a Mac, don't buy Kodak printer/scanners. The scanning driver doesn't work well at all. It puts the computer in a state where you have to restart in order to scan again. It uses Apple's lousy Image Capture utility and it requires a very precise order of actions to take place to work. Deviate and it fails. Do yourself a favor.... don't buy this.

I bought this Kodak ESP3 printer in hopes of saving money on printer ink. I found that this printer goes through ink cartridges 3 times faster then the HP J6480 that I have and the countless Epson printers that I have owned.

Granted that Kodak's cartridges are 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of other printers, but if you have to replace them 3 times as often, where is the savings????

Having to go out and buy new Kodak ink every month is such a hassle! I used to replace ink cartridges every three months.

I have been in contact with Kodak ever since I had to replace the ink cartridges one month after buying this printer. They felt that maybe I had bad cartridges, so they sent me new ones. When I needed to replace them again after a month, they sent me a new print head. When I still had to replace the cartridges after a month, they sent me another print head and told me to update my firmware. When I had to replace the cartridges again after a month, they sent me a new(refurbished) printer. My ink just ran out again after a month, so I figure that

"KODAK LIED ABOUT THEIR PRINTERS SAVING YOU MONEY ON INK!!!"

YOU WILL NOT SAVE MONEY USING THIS ESP3 PRINTER!!!

IT WILL COST YOU THE SAME OR MORE THEN OTHER PRINTERS!!!

BUT YOU WILL HAVE TO REPLACE THE CARTRIDGES 3 TIMES AS OFTEN!!!!

DON'T BUY THIS PRINTER OR ANY OTHER KODAK PRINTER!!!!!

One more thing, after receiving the refurbished printer, I can't get the scanning software to work anymore. I have tried everything!!

What a waste of time and money!!

I'm not the kind of person who really pays attention to user reviews so after reading the horrible reviews that this printer received, I went ahead and purchased the printer, thinking that it couldn't possibly be that bad...

After using the printer the second time, I ran back to the store and got my money back. The software kept giving me error messages when I tried to print, telling me that I was using the wrong paper size and not loading it correctly, when that was not the case. THEN it would stop printing halfway and the paper would just sit there, jammed into the printer. I had to physically pull it out to get it out. Other times it printed perfectly and spit the paper out quickly. I decided that for $90 I could definitely do better than this and I didn't want to deal with the hassle, even though the ink is cheaper than normal.

I purchased an HP Photosmart C4680 and up till now I'm happy with it. The ink isn't all that much more than the Kodak and it prints quickly and beautifully, without the unnecessary hassle.

I gave the Kodak printer two stars, only because when printing correctly, it did print fast and very clearly. Overall, I do not recommend this printer to anyone. It is not worth the trouble.

I have had this printer for about 4 months now. It is ****! The printer itself, as far as quality is good, i think, or at least it was. but now, my b/w printing is not crips and the color no longer works, dispite the cartride being half-full, it all only orange hued now. everything else is awful. Nearly ever single time i use it, i have trouble with the software freezing up, then i have to redo everything i started, when it decides to finally work again, but in able for it to do that, i need to restart windows and the error window keeps coming up. so i just give up and reinstall the software. i have reinstalled the software so many times already, thinking maybe windows vista was just acting up, because we all know how reliable that program is....lol. this printer software and the printer itself has a few bugs for sure that need to be worked out. i also would like to contact customer service [...], i was expecting something RELIABLE...i thought that it would be becauseof previous kodak products i have bought this most certainly is not their best product, sadly i do not have the reciept because of my recent fallen "faith" in kodak. or i would return it for a full refund, and buy a cheap $30 one instead, because that will be as reliable as this one has been but i would have an extra hundred bucks.

This is our first multifunction printer and it works alright for what we use it for; printing, copying and scanning. We haven't tried printing a picture but I'm sure it does that alright too. The only complaint that I have is the original printhead malfunctioned but Kodak was very quick to replace it free of charge. It does take a while to warm up before printing but once it starts it prints quickly.

So, the selling points for this printer are 'all-in-one' and 'cheap ink'. These are correct, technically. However, what good is a scanner if the printer part does not print well. It worked just fine for about a year, then it decided to pick and chose what it wanted to print. It would print half the page, and leave the rest blank or print bad quality even on the best setting. And when I say 'bad quality' I don't mean a little fuzzy, I mean unreadable. Printing photos--the color was always a little off, but it did OK at first. The best I expected an at home photo printer to do. Now it won't even print a black and white document. It prints as though the ink is low, but they are new cartridges. And speaking of ink cartridges, it will only print if you have black AND color ink. If you run out of color ink but want to print something in black, it refuses to print. So the whole 'cheaper ink' thing is really not true because you have to buy both black and color every time. Please do not let yourself be sold on advertisement and selling points. It is not worth the money, time, or aggravation.

My ESP 3 AIO can print some fabulous photos. But honestly, I don't see the claimed savings on ink. It seems to drink it like a sailor.

I am also finding that the Scan button does not work at all as a standalone function. I have no choice but to fire up a program to get anything scanned. Pressing the scan button is supposed to start a chosen program. It just blinks the lights.

You cannot use the scanner at all unless you have sufficient ink cartridges installed. If the print portion will not get to a ready state, you will not be scanning either.

I give this printer a grade of D-. It didn't get an F because it can do some things. Just not very intuitively, ant not very inexpensively.

Pic's are not great. Printing fades after you print ten or so pic's in a row. I bought five sets of cartridges and some singles all to print less than one hundered pictures and seventy five paper sheets. I've spent fourty dollars more in ink than the printer cost. The ink evaporates in the machine even when you don't use it. Next time I'll spend more time reviewing a printer over the cost of ink.