Epson Stylus Photo 830 Review

Good Points
None whatsoever

Bad Points
Heavy ink usage
Head cleaning useless

General Comments
I bought this Epson Stylus Photo 830 printer about 3 years ago when it first came out and it has never worked satisfactorily. Until now I thought I was alone, but from reading the other user reviews, it seems that this printer is a duff model and it isn't just my printer - like I've been led to believe by Epson customer service, who ask whether you're using genuine Epson ink cartridges right off. Presumably so that they can blame the problem on you if you are using 3rd party ones!



The printer has only worked properly about 10% of the time and guzzles ink as it constantly needs to be cleaned. Each and every use, even after 10+ cleaning cycles it still didn't improve - and often the print quality worsened! The really irritating thing is that even if you're only wishing to print using black ink, cleaning the print head uses the coloured ink also as the black and coloured ink share a print head - so watch your ink disappear fast! As a result of all this, I've never actually managed to print a single photo!



I wish I could say this is the only bad experience that I've had with an Epson printer, but my previous printer was an Epson Stylus Colour II and I had the exact same problem with that - although it did actually work for a while before the problems began.



Avoid this model at all costs, and seriously think twice before purchasing any Epson printer. I recently checked out several new printers and both the Epson R265 and DX6000 used about double the ink than comparative Canon and Lexmark models.