Epson Stylus Photo R1800 Inkjet Printer

I have had my printer for over 2 years, and I think I have cleaned the heads only once or twice. If you use the printer on a regular basis, not even that often, maybe once a month, you should never have a problem. The only legitimate reports I have heard of clogged heads are if you use cheap ink. But, why buy a $500 printer and use cheap ink? I have printed on almost every sized paper, including rolls and have always got GREAT prints.

I have had this printer since March 2005. Couldn't be happier. Prints are fabulous. Been through several sets of cartridges and have had printing problems twice (I turn the printer off when I'm not using and if I don't use for more than a month, some colors will clog -- don't run the print cleaning function, just take out each cartridge and shake and put back into the printer and voila, no problems). Judging by some of the critical reviews I have read in this forum, I surmise, (i) the reviewer is a shill for Canon or HP; (ii) the reviewer has no common sense, (iii) the reviewer is an idiot; (iv) OR the reviewer is just plain unlucky. Over four years of beautiful picture printing, with a little ingenuity when a problem arises is a testament to the quality of this printer. Epsons are the best.

This product has been really disappointing. We have had it for over a year, and at the beginning it was great. Photos looked really nice, colors were bright, etc. But after just a few photos, it started to print really streaky pictures...so you run the auto headcleaning utility and waste a quarter of the ink just to clean the printheads. Then it works for a few more pictures and becomes streaky again. Additionally, if you are just printing something that isn't a photo, only the expensive paper will load. It gives an error message for any other thin stock paper. So basically, if you spend a lot of money on paper and ink, you will get nice photos some of the time, but you will end up wasting half of the expensive ink cleaning the printheads. I would not recommend that anyone buy this printer.

This printer worked intermittently after I first got it, now doesn't work at all. It's out of warranty & I haven't tried getting it fixed.

I was hoping that the R1800 would be a nice step up from the older 1280. In some ways, it was. But the bottom line is that it is a piece of junk and has caused countless hours of frustration. The CD printer feature is nice, which is one reason I bought this printer. But I was hoping for good color, ease of use, and at least decent driver software. I have been overall utterly disappointed. It is finicky with media, the driver software always reverts to the most ink-sucking settings, and frankly, it just doesn't work right, period. Trying to get colors to print correctly has probably been the biggest source of frustration to the point where I've given up. And B&W printing is just abysmal. Although the older 1280 did not have the archival inks nor the wider color gamut, I got hundreds of nice prints with it. I have maybe gotten a dozen decent prints out of this thing. So, if you want an expensive printer to do your CDs, this may be the one. But don't expect to get anything else out of it. I probably will never buy another Epson printer again after this thing.