Epson Stylus C62 Review

Overall Rating

NONE

Expensive to run Clogs easily and lack of support

The woe of Epson (C62):
My Epson C62 printer started to give me trouble about six months after purchasing it so I contacted Epson, after a few tests with their technical team and after wasting a vast amount of ink from their genuine ink tanks I was advised to take it to a local Epson dealer. "Print heads" said the dealer as though I had been printing on sandpaper....! He duly give me a replacement and literally threw the C62 straight into the nearest bin, I repeat "threw it", the replacement was of course minus the ink tanks and when I got home minus the guarantee and receipt of purchase documents.

The problem was black lines on picture with a yellow cast about 1" from the left hand side and along the bottom of the picture, as though in a frame. The normal black & white text consisted of either blue or red straight lines through the text - sometimes these were broken, the lines could not have been more straighter if a ruler had been used with a coloured pen. The higher the settings in the printer on-screen driver settings made matters more worse.

The replacement printer has started to produce exactly the same effects. I had to contact Epson several times before getting a response. I expect to get at least 12 months of trouble free service from a brand new purchase (excluding print head cleaning), certainly not the case here.

The printer is nothing but a "noisy ink guzzler", it consumes ink at an alarming rate - even if it is not being used, and regularly goes through a cleaning routine when powered up, when it is working correctly the print quality is acceptable as a general purpose all round printer. The cartridges are not exactly cheap either, the 'Intellichip' as I believe Epson calls it, to you and me the 'chipped cartridges' is a sales gimmick to boost the Epson cartridge sales - BE WARNED it does not monitor the amount of ink in the tanks BUT only ESTIMATES the amount of ink remaining by presumably counting down the number of times the heads are 'in operation' - there is no direct feedback or monitoring between the chip and the ink level (as in a petrol/oil/water level gauge as in a car).

To be honest, purchasing a set of cartridges for an Epson, one could purchase a Lexmark printer complete with cartridges every time you wanted a 'refill'. My advice when buying a printer is keep away from 'Chipped Cartridges' and Epson's peizo print heads, I am now beginning to think that 'long life peizo heads' is also another sales gimmick - basically like a crystal in an oscillator stage of a receiver or transmitter, the heads are vibrating to squirt the ink and crystals do crack when driven hard, if this is the actual fault I cannot say, another thing I suspect is the sealing around the head where it's clamped to the base unit (like that of a picture in a mounting frame).

The help I got from Epson was only on the first occasion, they did not want to know the second time around, why is it that two identical products developed the same faults ?

The local dealer has now stopped repairing Epson printers - this alone says a lot.

Goodbye Epson.... I will never buy ANY Epson products again !

I have just received a letter from Epson today, I quote.

'The ink cartridges are chipped because Epson printers contain a permanent piezo print head. If the print head runs dry. i.e if the cartridge runs out of ink, air bubbles will enter the print head and will permanently damage it'. UNQUOTE.

This to me say's for WHATEVER REASON air bubbles enter the head they will be DAMAGED.