Compare Prices on Epson Epson RX595 Photo All In One Printer
I recently bought a new laptop with Vista. When I bought my laptop, I took advantage of a promotion to receive a free Epson printer and bought the CX5000 which was free after the 79.99 rebate.
I gave my husband my old RX500 and used the new CX5000. Mistake. The CX5000 did not print pictures near as nice as my old RX500 and the pictures had a matte finish even when printed on glossy paper. I also noticed that the CX5000 used ink like crazy! I told my husband to bring my old printer home and gave him the CX5000. He only uses it for text copies anyway. However, I could not get my old RX500 to work with Vista and set out to find a new all in one that I would like as much as my old one. I’m very picky and expected this to be a hard task.
Before looking for a new printer, I did find out that the CX series only has 4 cartridges. The RX series has 6 cartridges. I read about this printer on Epson’s site and read reviews of a few other Epson printers on Amazon and decided to give the RX595 a shot. It was on sale at Comp USA for $99 which is a pretty reasonable price. I took my SD card and some paper and went to try it out. I was extremely impressed with the quality of the prints straight from my card. The color was great, the picture did not look like it had a flat matte finish and they printed relatively fast and very quite too! I bought it and hoped that I would be just as satisfied once I got it home and unpacked.
I have not been disappointed. I find myself looking for things to print just so I can see how nice they look. I have also used the burn feature for printing labels to CD/DVD’s a few times and am pleased with those results as well. My ink levels are still almost full and I’ve printed at least 20 4×6’s and 2 8×10’s plus printed a few text pages.
This is a really great printer! It’s quite, fast, and prints beautiful pictures. The ability to burn a label on a CD/DVD is nice too. The only slight complaint that I have is that there does not seem to be a place to store the insert used to place the CD/DVD in when burning a label. Other than that, I could not be happier with this printer. It’s the best replacement I could have picked for “Old Faithful” my RX500.
This is my third printer from this line, and the reason I had to buy it says a lot about what you should expect: the other two up and died after two years for one and nine months for the other.
A quick history: Look for my detailed reviews of the Epson Stylus R200 Photo Printer and the Epson Stylus Photo 260 Inkjet Printer to see some basics about this line. I’ve owned a couple of other Epson printers prior to buying these for DVD printing — the ONLY reason to buy one.
Like its predecessors, the RX595 gives very good results on photographs, disappointing results on documents, and exceptional results on discs. The scanner works well, but it’s nothing spectacular.
Other than the scanner and ability to handle memory cards, this unit is almost identical to the R260. Because an interface was necessary to print photos from memory cards, there is a little window and a couple of buttons not found on the simpler printers. These are welcome, especially the more sophisticated and less annoying low ink indicator (which tells right in the window which colors are about to run out).
The printer cannot handle SmartMedia, which is a disappointment, but it does have the ability to plug in a generic USB card reader which does serve as a kludgy work-around.
Like the other printers in this line, there are several distinct drawbacks to this model:
1. Ink is expensive and cartridges drain fast. There are new high-capacity cartridges available, but I have found them to last only slightly longer than the standard kind. I haven’t measured it, but my gut tells me it’s probably not worth the extra money.
2. Ink handling remains crude. For example, you cannot clean the nozzles if even one color is running low. You still cannot print at all if even one color is empty. Colored inks are drained even when you print only in black. Powering on requires a lot of ink. It’s better to leave the power on all the time and let it go into sleep mode.
3. The printer is remarkably noisy. It’s mostly hollow, and that acts like a big drum, amplifying every little movement inside.
4. Flipping the disc feeder down causes some sort of reset inside the printer which takes 10 seconds or so to clear, during which time you better not try to insert the disc tray or it will get sucked in (and not in a good way)…
5. The software has all of the same quirks of previous models, including seemingly random reset cycles which can run from one to five minutes. This is most annoying. To get the least annoying experience, turn off the print monitor software which is included (and installs automatically). You lose the ability to see ink status, but you also rid yourself of the annoying status window which jumps in front of everything and sits there until the printing is complete.
The only reason I have this is to print on discs. And it does that remarkably well. Unfortunately, the included software is a rather crude tool, and hasn’t been upgraded at all for almost three years. This is inexcusable. Still, it works just well enough if you can live with its quirks.
This printer is just OK. Even with all its drawbacks, it’s still the best solution around for printing on discs, but for everything else you can do better.
UPDATE 10/20/09
10 months later and this printer is still functioning quite well.
I’ve discovered one other major drawback which I neglected to mention above. This printer MUST be used regularly (every day is best, at least once a week is the bare minimum) or the nozzles will dry out and be hopelessly clogged. The nozzle cleaning utility will restore partial operation, but it takes quite a few printed pages to get all the nozzles working again.
If you go more than a week between printing (on any type of media), you will be disappointed and frustrated by this printer.
We LOVE this printer!! I have not seen an inkjet printer yet that performs like this one. We have had 2 HPs and one Lexmark over the past 5 years, and had just bought a Canon MX700 that we returned within 30 days due to poor print quality and issues with the fax. This Epson printer far exceeded our expectations and blew us away. The photo prints are beautiful and are as good as professional prints, it is truly lightning fast, comes with software that doesn’t crash or bog down your computer (pay attention, HP), is easy to install, robust, and intuitive to use. We are actually having a lot of fun with this and learning new things about it every day.
I recommend getting the Epson paper. We tried the Canon 4×6 glossy paper for photos and although it was OK, the Epson paper was noticibly better. We bought glossy and ultra-glossy 4 x 6 paper, and in the printer box they throw in some full size 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of Epson glossy. It may be that it is manufactured to optimize their particular printers, but it really does make a difference. The photos retain a really glossy, professional look to them.
There is a new kind of ink for this printer (Claria ink). It creates beautiful prints, dries immediately, and best of all, lasts a lot longer than the last generation of Epson ink (we also have a CX9400 with fax, which is also great, but it has the DuraBrite ink which does not last as long).
In addition to printing, it has great scanning software that allows you to scan to pdf, among other things. There is also a web-to-page print software feature you can install that lets you print web pages without getting the right border and bottom cut off, which frequently happens.
Tips: Turn off anti-virus software before installing it. The first few prints/photos will not have the best quality while the printer is being primed. We saw some faint banding streaks on the first photos. However after cleaning the nozzles and running through another 8 – 10 prints, everything looked great.
Exceptionally impressive printer for this price, and a great value. I don’t think there’s anything else out there that compares with this.
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