Customer Rating:
Summary: Ink cost will make you broke! No refills/generics allowed!
Comment: This is the worst printer I've ever owned. I actually got rid of it after just a few months and bought another brand! Three main reasons why I don't recommend this printer. 1) It gobbles up ink. 2) It is slow. 3) The ink is proprietary, non refillable, and expensive. I usually only print black and white documents and the printer uses up all my color ink too, even when I have "black ink only" in the print options. The color ink runs out the same time as the black ink does and I don't even print in color! This is because the printer has a wasteful nozzle cleaning session each time the printer is turned on. (The color cartridge must be installed even when just printing B&W or it won't operate) This is a long nozzle cleaning session which brings me to my next complaint. Let's say you want to print one or two pages of something. It takes the printer a long time to warm up and clean the nozzle (even if you didn't print anything the day before). 45-60 seconds for your first page. My prints jobs even get blotchy even when the ink tank is 1/4 full. The ink tank has a smart chip which prevents the printer from operating when the ink registers empty. This means you can not refill the ink tanks. (Unless you have some aftermarket electronic gizmo to reset/reprogram the ink tank.) The ink is expensive, so I bought a generic ink tank and the printer does not recognize it and won't print. Only uses expensive proprietary ink. Don't play the Epson game! To give Epson the benefit of the doubt; since this is called a photo printer, it might be possible for this printer to be a good printer for someone who mostly prints photos and has a large budget for ink.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: This printer wants your money
Comment: My old Canon Ink Jet broke down last month so I purchased an Epson Photo Stylus 820. First I noticed that it refused to print blank pages. I was trying to print a double sided document and the Epson kept skipping blank sheets so that page 12 was on the back of page 7.

But perhaps there is a way to fix that and I just couldn't find it. The fatal error is that it wants me to feed it money to continue printing.

I just got off the phone with Epson technical support who told me the printer cannot print unless you have a color cartridge and the printer thinks it has ink in it. Even if you only want to print text in black the printer demands a new color cartridge. My old Canon would let me print black only and would print well beyond what it thought was empty.

However, the Epson is too smart or too greedy to let me do that. The color cartridge still appears to have ink but the printer claims it doesn't and won't let me print.

This printer is headed for the trash can where it belongs.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: DON'T BUY THIS PRINTER!!
Comment: Hi - this printer is a piece of doo-doo. This is my first Epson printer, and will probably be my last. At *least* once a week the heads become clogged, and I have to use a ton on my GENUINE Epson ink to clean them. Yup...I'm using the stuff recommended by the people who built this clunker. Yes, when you get to print, photos are beautiful, but you're going to be buying so much ink it's not worth it in the least. Stay far away from this no-good machine.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: CONTINUOUSLY CLOGGED PRINT HEADS - BUY A CANON INSTEAD.
Comment: I bought the Epson 820 as my husband, daughter and sister have the Epson 600 and 640 and have been very happy with them. I wanted a printer to print photos, make cards etc. However, right from the start the 820 got clogged print heads and needs to be cleaned before it will print correctly. At first I thought it was because I was only using it every couple of weeks, but I found out this was not the case when I printed approximately 200 business cards (and of course it took me multiple cleanings before I could begin to print the business cards). All this should have cleaned out the print heads real good, but the next morning when I tried to print more business cards the color was all messed up (which wasted a whole sheet of my business card paper). I did a print nozzle check and the printer wasn't printing dark pink or light pink at all and the black was very streaked. After several print head cleanings and test patterns it finally started to print correctly again, but of course this wastes a lot of ink and should not be necessary to do. (You can buy generic cartridges on the Internet for a fraction of the name brand which helps with the cost, but the Epson still is an ink hog.) Also I have never owned a printer where each time I want to use it I have to print a test copy to make sure it isn't clogged rather than waste a sheet of photo paper, card paper, etc.

My business printer (CANON 6000) recently began to wear out so I didn't even consider buying another Epson printer. I purchased the CANON 1850. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THE CANON 1850 PRINTER!!! It is by far the quietest printer that I have witnessed, the quality of the print jobs is EXCELLENT, the print heads do not clog, and the ink cartridges are very large. (You can also buy generic ink cartridges for the Canon on the Internet for a fraction of the name brand.) The Canon 1850 uses separate ink cartridges and the cartridges are large.

I used to think that Epson was a very high quality brand of printer, but after my experience with the Epson 820 I will stick with Canon printers. I have always used Canon printers with my business computer and I am real sorry that I bought the Epson 820 to use with my play computer.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good at first. Ink clogs happen often. Waste ink!!
Comment: Like other users. It was fine at first then after awhile I had to run the cleaning cycle over and over again just to get decent results. DOnt get this printer stick with something else. Canons are great and the ink is very cheap.

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