Epson Releases More HD Printers
At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Epson released two new “hi-definition” inkjet printers: the Stylus CX7000F and the Stylus Photo 1400.
The Stylus CX7000F looks to be a pretty standard all-in-one inkjet printer. It is rated at 27 ppm for black and color printing and it has a bunch of connectivity options. Other than that, the only unique feature seems to be that if the black cartridge runs out, it uses the color cartridges to make black so you can keep printing. Epson says that “the Epson Stylus CX7000F delivers all the versatility consumers demand, in addition to the superior output quality they have come to expect from Epson.” We don’t really see that. This printer should be available later this month and it will retail for $150.
The Stylus Photo 1400 is a wide-format printer that prints at up to 13 x 19. It uses a six-ink system and Epson’s MicroPiezo print head, which sounds fancy. It can print directly to CDs or DVDs and it can supposedly produce a high-quality 8 x 10 photo in one minute and 48 seconds. Epson makes a point of saying this is the time for a normal print and not a draft won, so they get points for that. The 1400 is replacing the Stylus Photo 1280, which in terms of printer technology is ancient. The 1280 has been on the market since at least 2003 and printers have changed a lot since then. But when it came out, the 1280 was pretty cutting edge due to the fact that it was a wide-format printer and because it used six different inks. Back in those days, they put the five colors all in one cartridge, something that probably seems a little ridiculous now. The Stylus Photo 1400 probably won’t be as popular as the 1280 due to increased competition, but it will probably be pretty popular with professionals. It’s going to cost $400 when it hits the streets, although Epson failed to mention when that will happen.
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November 4th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Bought a Stylus CX700F two months ago hoping quality control would be better than HP’s. No such luck. Not only do all print cartriges fail when one is empty requiring a new cartrige to even use black and white printing, but the unit has now malfunctioned and appears to need major servicing. It will not feed paper nor will the ink carriage move at all.
I have probably run 200 peices of paper through it. Printer manufacturers should be hung in effigy for this kind of crap product.
Of course I need it now not in a month or so nor can I even wait a couple weeks to get to a store to buy a new one. There is no troubleshooting for this just a call for service light.
We are all better off with a legal pad and a pen.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 am
I purchased a CX7000F - refurbished at Fry’s, and after printing about 6 black and white text pages, it showed that two of the color cartridges were low and the blue and black were about 2/3’s gone. Don’t buy this model.
I’m trying to work with Epson customer service on this. Initially they told me to reseat the cartridges, but that didn’t do anything. After reading the comments on here about other similar Epson models, I am surprised at their response. They had to know that this would do nothing to solve the problem. Maybe they thought I would just buy more cartridges and go away.
I wrote them back and received a non-answer, so I called them and they are sending me replacement cartridges.
I was thinking of purchasing a more advanced and expensive Epson down the line, but I will look at other brands now. At least I didn’t pay much for this one. Nice scanner, lousy ink hogging printer.