Epson Stylus Photo R380 Inkjet Printer

The Epson R380 is an excellent printer! I bought it mostly to print on printable CDs/DVDs (sold by Amazon and which I have NOT tried yet), which alone makes it an outstanding purchase, but I am VERY impressed with it's quality overall. I've owned numerous printers, mostly Canons but also have a great HP 8700 professional. This is by far...BY FAR the best of them all. You can read about all the nice bells and whistles it offers, but I just wanted a great printer. It's really impossible to describe the level of detail and glorious colors that this printer provides. It ships with like $90. worth of inks, so they are pratically giving the printer away. It's like HD as compaired to standard television. It is really THAT good. The inks are fairly expensive and naturally the printer drinks them. But If you want totally professional quality...(Use the Epson Ultra Premium Glossy photo paper-sold by Amazon-, which is also the best high gloss inkjet paper that I've ever used). I'm using this for my business and print only the images that I'm selling, so their cost is justified. I've been into photography for a long time. I once printed my own photos in the lab. The idea that I'm achieving this level of quality in my office was once just an impossible dream. I just ordered a set of replacement ink cartridges (6) from the Epson website and opted for the larger ones, which reportedly contain 50% more ink for just a few dollars more per cartridge. I feel that this is a GIANT leap forward in home printing. THICK paper and excellent image. The dye based inks dry extremely quicking and are said to be waterproof. To me, there is no difference from what I'm getting from this printer and the finest photo labs that I've used. Other than the expensive inks, I recommend this printer without hesitation. If you want the best, this for me, is it... Don't let it's inexpensive price fool you. You will not be sorry for making this purchase. WOW!!!!! Added updated note: I received the set of larger capacity ink cartridges and as mentioned by another reviewer, they appear to be exactly the same size as the standard ones, so I don't know what's up with the 50% increase claim made by Epson. As he said, "we'll see"... But the expensive ink issue aside, this is an amazing printer!
UPDATE: I don't undersand just why, but the high capacity inks do last longer!

Before I start reviewing the actual printer, I'd like to point out a few things first: I have a pretty extensive knowledge in digital photography. I'm not a Pro, but I do know more than a regular consumer - working at Kodak in Digital Imaging department testing the software for professional digital cameras for a few years, and Xerox, where I did pretty much the same, but for high-end printers, helped me quite a bit to understand the basics of digital printing and photography, as well as learn more advanced techniques. However, only recently I got into the post processing aspect of it, i.e. dealing with RAW format, learning about color management, monitor calibration, printer profiling, etc. I never owned a personal photo printer prior to purchasing this one from Epson, but I do know and can tell the difference between various papers and colors, and most importantly, I can easily tell the difference between a good print and a bad print. Until now, for my printing needs, I used a variety of online places, such as WinkFlash, DotPhoto, and several other ones, as well as local stores, such as Walmart, Target, and Rite Aid. Well, the quality was always between "bad" to "not so bad" to "acceptable". Never ever I saw a good print that came out of any of those places. And after purchasing this Epson, NEVER EVER again I'm going back to any one of those places, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Now that I've given you somewhat of an introduction/background, I'm ready to review the actual printer. Once again, I think the easiest and most favorable review format is in form of Pros and Cons, so I'll do just that:

PROS (The GOOD things):
I'm actually going to start from the "end", and leave the best for last:

Price - Are you kidding me?! Epson is practically giving this printer away for free. I almost bought it from Amazon (love their return policy and customer service), but ended up getting it directly from Epson online store. I found a 10% coupon, and there was also a $40 rebate. The final price - 140 bucks. I think the replacement inks cost not much less than that.

Convenience - I used to collect at least 100 pictures before sending them out, uploading, or taking them directly to one of the online printing shops or local stores that I already mentioned. Why? Because it doesn't make sense to print one or two pictures at Walmart or Target - it'll cost you more, and there is also the "inconvenience" factor. Now, at my own leisure, I can print as many pictures as I want. I want one - I print one. I want more - I print more. I want a 4 x 6, or an 8 x 10 print - I print it. I want it on a glossy or matte paper - I choose the one I like better. CONVENIENCE - perhaps some people don't care about it, but for me it's important!

Features - I'm impressed - 3.5" LCD, which you can actually use not only for viewing pictures, but also for cropping, and removing red-eye; CD and DVD slot - YES, now your homemade DVD's can look just as good as the original ones; Memory Card slots - it takes anything from SD to those strange xD cards that only Fuji and Olympus cameras use; it even supports Bluetooth! Did I say that I'm impressed?! Indeed I am.

Picture Quality - As promised, I've saved the best for last. One might ask: How good can picture quality be on a $140 printer? The answer is Very Good. Or I should say Excellent. I was speechless, completely blown away when the first print came out and I held it in my hands. A lot of people spend hundreds of dollars on calibrating software, custom printer profiles, etc. to match up what they see on their monitors against the actual printer results. Well, I'm sorry to "disappoint" you here - I didn't get what I saw on my screen - I got BETTER results, without doing anything at all. I couldn't believe my eyes. The colors were vivid and natural at the same time. It was far beyond my wildest expectations. Since then (about a month now) I have printed numerous amount of prints, and they all came out great. Now, of course, the actual picture has to be good to begin with, so once in a while I might do some minor editing, like noise reduction, or adjusting brightness or sharpness. That's all. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be able to operate this printer and to get excellent results.

CONS (The BAD things):
The only, and I repeat myself here, the ONLY reason for a 4 star review is INK CONSUMPTION. This "sucker" is thirsty for ink. It drinks it like a man on a hot day in a desert. Replacement ink cartridges are not cheap, so this could be a decisive factor for some. BUT... If you calculate the price per print, it doesn't come out to be all that bad. I mean, it will definitely be more comparing to online print shops, probably about 2-3 times more, but it's well worth it in my opinion, because of the fine quality of the prints.

Note: Another reviewer mentioned "Larger" ink cartridges, and said that they have 50% more ink in them - NOT TRUE. Those High Capacity cartridges supposedly offer 50% more prints, not ink. BIG difference. I will definitely give them a try, but I sincerely doubt that they will increase the number of my prints by the advertised percentage. So, I don't think that the price increase there will be justified. We'll see.

SUMMARY:
An inexpensive, "convenient", feature-packed printer that produces excellent results. One drawback - ink consumption. Do I still think it's worth it? Absolutely. Highly recommended!

This year I decided to give 8x10 framed photographs as gifts. However, I knew I would want to play around with output and didn't want to incur the expense of $10 per print - at a pro print shop. The R380 has met my expectations and in just a few days, I've pumped out at least 30 prints! I'm super happy with both my Epson printer and scanner. Ink consumption - sure, it's thirsty but then again, my credit card isn't being charged per print... I'd have spent $300 on prints in two days. Instead, I spent half that - and I'm not half out of ink!

I was really looking for a printer that could print on DVDs, what I got was a lot more. The image quality on the photo prints are amazing, I do a lot of macro photography and the high-resolution prints from this inkjet are to say the least amazingly detailed even on low quality photo paper. If you want a printer that rocks, just buy this one. It's a little large but it's worth every inch of space on your desk.

The DVD print quality is again nothing less than amazing.


I will keep it short for y'all :)

The prints come out as advertised i.e. fast and very nice quality. The printing from the memory card works well. I did have two unexplained mishaps when printing from a card, who knows what happened there. The DVD printing works very nice. Just follow the instructions. So far the only bad thing is the pace at which the ink is consumed in the high quality mode. Given that the ink is expensive, this is a bit of a problem $$$ wise. I went ahead and ordered extra large cartridges from Epson for a few $ more to save a few, but still the cost of ink is not small. Because of the ink cost, this item get 4 stars

THE COST IS TO HIGH! The inks that came with printer went very quickly (6 inks), and replacements cost a lot. The paper choices are selective (new Epson paper) and it also cost a lot. I've own the R380 for printer less then a month and 've replaced all the inks once the yellow ink twice, and I am about to replace the black and two others. I haven't done as much printing as I've not done as printing as I've did with my other Epson printers. The other printers cost much, much less to print. So is this my last Epson?

Brand new Epson R380 printer.
Set it up following Start Here instructions.
Aligned print heads before printing.
I have 4 SD memory cards, all of which work perfectly in a Canon SD700 camera and in a card reader to transfer images to the Mac.
The Epson R380 will only recognize one of those four SD cards. It refuses to recognize the other three.
The pictures that it prints from the one card that it does recognize have black splatters in areas that should have shadows or dark areas. The splattered areas look like crackle paint.
Green walls have rosy red splotches.
Pictures were printed borderless and with borders, with enhancements and without enhancements, best quality and standard, on Kodak Premium High Gloss 4x6 paper.
Printer not connected yet to computer, software not even loaded, printing solely with memory cards.

Is this printer defective or can I salvage it?
It's a big pain to have to send it back to the Epson on-line store from which it was purchased 7 days ago.
I have left a question, detailing everything I wrote here, with the Epson Technical Service on-line site but they have not responded.

I bought this printer on 14th December. It is January 7th and already out of ink. I've printed less than 50 text pages and about 5 photos although the photos are excellent.
Everytime I print something it cleans the heads and the indicated tank level drops by about 10%. All six of the tanks have dropped by the same amount so its not from printing.
Do I spend $120 on the larger inks so that it has clean heads for a whole month or find a different printer?


Does a great job especially on printable CD's. Just wish the Ink Cartridges had more capacity. The cost of ink is a factor to be considered.

I like the printer's feature set a lot - nice LCD, can print on CDs, black text looks nice (if only they would include a duplexing capability!). So far, I've only printed two things (a CD, and then a page on plain paper of some color stripes) and color rendering on both appeared washed out (dark blue on the computer display printed as medium to light blue on the CD / paper). I'm hoping that the manual discusses how to fix these issues so I'm not too worried yet (hence 4 stars - if I were to discover this was not fixable then I'd lower it to 2 stars - after all, what is a printer for? To print :-) All the features in the world don't do much good if the output looks bad). The other negative is that it looks like it's going to cost $120 to refill the printer with ink (that's using the cartridges that are filled with a greater quantity of ink at $19.99 each from Epson). And so far I've not found anyone discounting these Claria inks. If other reviewers know of some 3rd party inks that work well, please comment in your review! Otherwise I'll be sending my pictures to a lab and using the printer only for the occasional "I have to have it now" prints.

After much research and getting info. from my friends that have good printers; I purchased the R-380. I am well pleased and cannot believe the quality of the prints that I'm receiving. The printer was a snap to set up and is so very easy to learn and use. I would recommend this printer to anyone that wants a very good printer for less than $ 150.00.

Produces excellent photo prints when using Epson ink and paper. I just hope I can get near that quality with generics because it is pointless to spend so much on Epson's inks and paper when you can get your prints so much cheaper at a photo lab. If you've got plenty of money to burn, you'll be happy with the results you get from this printer. My advice, though, would be to find something that consumes less ink.

I had my previous printer for 5+ years but my grandson needed one so I purchased this Epson thinking I could start printing photos with it. I'm ready to trash the darn thing. It uses ink like it's drinking water. I'm going to try and return it to Amazon.

Was ready to buy the R380. Our Kingston SD card did not work in the display models at BestBuy and CompUSA.

The Pic demo did not work in either store.

The same SD card works fine in both our digital cameras, as well as my Dell SD slot. One sales person tried the SD card in a neighboring HP photo printer, and it worked fine there.

Although there are a lot of bad comments on ink usage, I found that the printer doesn't use THAT much ink. When you compare this Epson to a Hewlett-Packard, this one wins. I have owned two other Epson printers and tried a HP and let me tell you; HP is the one that'll get you with ink and printheads.The only thing I was disappointed with was that this product was reduced in price by 40 bucks the week after I bought it. :(
I've printed 2 CDs, with 2-sided covers (inserts) and 4 8x10 photos, the ink level check revealed a very slight dip in black and magenta (very slight). Still got lots to go. Buy it!

The Epson R380 is very easy to use. It prints a beautiful picture in just seconds. The editing is precise and clear. There are still several features I have not used but will soon.

Very impressed with the speed, quality, and functionality. I don't use the external memory card slots, but from what I have tested, it's nice. Great purchased for personal an business use.

I received the printer (as a great gift) on January 16th, I set it up and it wouldn't print - the ink cartridge holder seemed stuck in place. I called Epson who shipped me out a replacement with no charge or delay. I used that printer for two weeks and it quit. Same problem with the ink cartridge holder. Once again Epson customer service shipped me a new replacement printer. It worked for another two weeks and quit on me yesterday (same problem). So, I'll call Epson when they open tomorrow and try to upgrade to a new/different printer or try once again. The printing results are spectacular, especially when using Epson 4* glossy paper. Anyone else with problems??

I will never buy another Epson Product after my Epson Stylus Photo RX500 died exactly 3 years after purchase. This was a lightly used machine for household purposes only. I believe Epson pre-programs this obsolescence so that user is told "parts inside your printer have reached the end of their life..." There is no toll free number to call - No literature given at time of purchase deals with this event. Very very disappointed with this manufacturer.

This printer gulps down expensive ink at an alarming rate. I printed a dozen cd's and four 5 x 7 photos and it used about 75% of the ink that came in the cartridges that came with it. The ink is pricey, nearly $14 a cartridge. Yes it prints nicely but the cost of ink is prohibitive. Avoid this printer like the plague unless you enjoy wasting money,

I got one of these along with a Canon G7 for my wife for her birthday--she has been printing non-stop and the pics are amazing. Does it seem to work its way through ink? yeah, but there are no free lunches and I will deal with the ink consumption because of the quality and convenience. As a point of reference, my wife has printed approx 60 4x6 borderless prints and most of the ink cartridges are around 40%.

After careful research I just bought this printer. Returning to photography in the digital age after years in the darkroom as a kid. I printed on a generic HP printer but friends said I need to upgrade.

It is simple to set up and the first prints were amazing. Color saturation, clarity, detail are all amazing. More importantly, paper handling, an adventure on my old (2 years) printer, is a snap. Rich, detailed prints are now the expectation.

Have not tried the print to CD/DVD yet but I am looking forward to trying that as well. If you are a photographer, the output is as important as the equipment you use to take the picture. This was an excellent investment for me.

Great buy. Epson Co. selling the same printer for $ 20.00 more then Amazon sells it for. It works great and picture perfict.

When using the printer as a stand alone I can't change the color balance and it needs -2 magenta to print true colors. It must be used with a computer to correct this fault

yes.... these printers do use the ink. I also have a lexmark that is quite expensive to re-fill. Here is a solution. Only use the expensive ink on pictures you want to sell or show off. I use off brand ink for around 4 dollars a cartrige. 25 dollars to replace all cartridges. The cheaper ink seems to last forever and quality might not be the exact same but a little editing seems to take care of that.

Mine gave errors on all ink carts at once (my second of each cart, all real epson ink, all far from empty) after only 3 months of use (printing maybe 40 discs, 20 dvd jacket inserts, 50 pages of b/w text). The printer was on a table that swayed a bit as it printed so maybe that affected it.

Epson sent a refurb (not new) r380 as a replacement. We'll see how that one does.

Oh yeah it also guzzles ink if you print lots of full color CDs/Inserts. But the printouts are nice looking for good non-glossy papers (never tried glossy stuff).

Got my printer the day after I ordered it. Amazing! Printer works well so far and output looks good. 2 cautions. First, do not use installation disk without first going to Epson website to download a Vista driver (it's not on the disk and the driver on there will not work). Second, and even more important, do not load all the software on the disk. The ArcSoft program is totally non-essential and it WILL disable your DVD/CD ROM drive. The Epson website will tell you to choose the "custom" installation on the disk and only load one of the programs. I can tell you that ArcSoft is the culprit.

Good luck.

Over the years I have had 5 Epson printers. All have been great print quality, this one is no exception. It is the noisiest, maybe the noisiest ink jet printer I have ever seen...or heard. It is BIG. Bigger then some "all in one' printers. And the worst thing is the ink cost. I'm sure it uses the same amount of ink to do the job, but the cartridges are smaller then most and cost a more. The printer price wasn't bad, but for the cost of the ink I think Epson would make more money if they gave you the printer. Maybe my next printer will be a Canon

I have had my R380 for several months now. The print quality is excellent. I did a 50th anniversary project with it that turned out great. However it drank ink like a drunken sailor drinks booze on shore leave. I just cannot decide wether the quality offsets the cost of ink.

The first unit I received did not work at all. It would not start correctly to allow the ink to be installed. After several calls to Epson tech support they decided to send me an exchange unit. A week later the replacement unit showed up. It didn't work either but in a different way. This unit would not allow the CD tray to be inserted. Something was blocking it. After several more calls to Epson tech support they decided to sent me ANOTHER replacement unit. A week later I finally received a unit that worked. So far, so good.

I wouldn't buy a R380 again.

This was the last Epson I'll ever buy. You'll spend more on ink than on the printer in no time, even if you try off brand ink (which it has trouble recognizing). Not recommended.

This printer, like most other Epsons is an ink hog. Moderate amounts of printing drains the ink cartridge and you'll be constantly buying and stocking spares. When you look at the costs of this, its far cheaper and better to have photos printed by professional photo processors than to deal with printing them yourself.

Of course, Epson wants you to use lots of ink - that's where they make their money...

You're better off buying an HP - they seem to use much less ink for a similar print quality.

Approve>>
Great print quality
Price
Easy of use
CD Tray works Great(Make sure you have printable CD or DVD's)

Disapprove>>
Speed a little slow on high quality.
Maybe ink usage might be high. I haven't printed that much and have went thru 1/2 my ink cartridges. I am hoping that because the machine had to prime itself.

Overall>>
I would make the purchase again.

This is one great photo printer. I owned an Epson C80 previously, and it was also a very good printer. I have printed some 8x10 photos, and they came out with exceptional quality. This printer was reviewed at Consumer Reports, and it was given a very good review.

This printer does suck up the ink beyond what I would have expected. Still I can't fault the quality of the photo's printing to DVD's or photo paper. The image is far superior to what I expected.

We're looking at some "compatible" printer ink's with this printer. Epson really needs to bring the price of the ink down a bit. I know they need to make money but geez people :-)

The 1 star rating I am giving to this printer has nothing to do with the actual printer performance, which I have not tested yet, as I am unpacking it right now. The reason for the poor rating? Printer comes with no USB cable! I find this extremely rude from Epson. Why in the world are they leaving out such a vital component? Should I connect the printer to my computer through telepathy or what? Even if they didn't want to spent a few dollars (or cents, as they buy cables in bulk from their suppliers) in a cable, they should estate very upfront it is not included. And Amazon.com (a store that I LOVE) should offer the cable as an add on. It is not nice to unpack your printer just to find you can't use it!! I have no problem paying for a cable. My problem is this: the frustration of not being able to use the printer immediately. After all, not everybody keeps spare USB cables in the kitchen! When I use the printer I'll post a review about it's performance. In the meanwhile, just make sure you order a USB cable together with your Epson Stylus Photo R380.

fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. so with out sugar coating it. over the past 6 years i have been using epson printers for my home based printing needs, i am not a professional however i am a broadcast and recording engineer with an a+ computer certification so i do know my way around computers and their peripherals better than most. the R300 is the third epson i have had die on me after 18 months of LIGHT operation. convienently the warranty is only 12 months. once, coincidence, twice, bad luck but three times....
sorry epson it will NEVER happen again

Just as stated previously, conviently after the 12 month warranty runs out, my Epson R300 dies after 18 months of owning. The prints were nice at first, I may have messed up the settings ???, but after about 8 months of printing, my prints were coming out at a very poor quality.

Another problem was turning the power on, for the past 6 months every time I tried to power up, I had to press the power button so hard that it litterally hurt my finger. And I had to hold the power button down for atleast 10 seconds.

A few days ago, holding the power button down for nearly 30 seconds, finger turning white, I find that its time for a new printer. And don't even get me started about the ink costs! The ink heads would dry out constantly, and cleaning the heads drained the ink seriously bad.

I am not a happy Epson consumer. I also have a Epson scanner, which died on me after only having for about 14 months, go figure?!?!

I am here now purchasing a Canon All in One printer/scanner which is showered with tons of great reviews, and a Consumer Reports favorite. I feel very confident about THIS purchase. I will not make the same mistake three times...don't make the same mistake as I & others have made.

The Epson R380 is an excellent printer! I bought it mostly to print on printable CDs/DVDs (sold by Amazon and which I have NOT tried yet), which alone makes it an outstanding purchase, but I am VERY impressed with it's quality overall. I've owned numerous printers, mostly Canons but also have a great HP 8700 professional. This is by far...BY FAR the best of them all. You can read about all the nice bells and whistles it offers, but I just wanted a great printer. It's really impossible to describe the level of detail and glorious colors that this printer provides. It ships with like $90. worth of inks, so they are pratically giving the printer away. It's like HD as compaired to standard television. It is really THAT good. The inks are fairly expensive and naturally the printer drinks them. But If you want totally professional quality...(Use the Epson Ultra Premium Glossy photo paper-sold by Amazon-, which is also the best high gloss inkjet paper that I've ever used). I'm using this for my business and print only the images that I'm selling, so their cost is justified. I've been into photography for a long time. I once printed my own photos in the lab. The idea that I'm achieving this level of quality in my office was once just an impossible dream. I just ordered a set of replacement ink cartridges (6) from the Epson website and opted for the larger ones, which reportedly contain 50% more ink for just a few dollars more per cartridge. I feel that this is a GIANT leap forward in home printing. THICK paper and excellent image. The dye based inks dry extremely quicking and are said to be waterproof. To me, there is no difference from what I'm getting from this printer and the finest photo labs that I've used. Other than the expensive inks, I recommend this printer without hesitation. If you want the best, this for me, is it... Don't let it's inexpensive price fool you. You will not be sorry for making this purchase. WOW!!!!! Added updated note: I received the set of larger capacity ink cartridges and as mentioned by another reviewer, they appear to be exactly the same size as the standard ones, so I don't know what's up with the 50% increase claim made by Epson. As he said, "we'll see"... But the expensive ink issue aside, this is an amazing printer!
UPDATE: I don't undersand just why, but the high capacity inks do last longer!

This year I decided to give 8x10 framed photographs as gifts. However, I knew I would want to play around with output and didn't want to incur the expense of $10 per print - at a pro print shop. The R380 has met my expectations and in just a few days, I've pumped out at least 30 prints! I'm super happy with both my Epson printer and scanner. Ink consumption - sure, it's thirsty but then again, my credit card isn't being charged per print... I'd have spent $300 on prints in two days. Instead, I spent half that - and I'm not half out of ink!

Before I start reviewing the actual printer, I'd like to point out a few things first: I have a pretty extensive knowledge in digital photography. I'm not a Pro, but I do know more than a regular consumer - working at Kodak in Digital Imaging department testing the software for professional digital cameras for a few years, and Xerox, where I did pretty much the same, but for high-end printers, helped me quite a bit to understand the basics of digital printing and photography, as well as learn more advanced techniques. However, only recently I got into the post processing aspect of it, i.e. dealing with RAW format, learning about color management, monitor calibration, printer profiling, etc. I never owned a personal photo printer prior to purchasing this one from Epson, but I do know and can tell the difference between various papers and colors, and most importantly, I can easily tell the difference between a good print and a bad print. Until now, for my printing needs, I used a variety of online places, such as WinkFlash, DotPhoto, and several other ones, as well as local stores, such as Walmart, Target, and Rite Aid. Well, the quality was always between "bad" to "not so bad" to "acceptable". Never ever I saw a good print that came out of any of those places. And after purchasing this Epson, NEVER EVER again I'm going back to any one of those places, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Now that I've given you somewhat of an introduction/background, I'm ready to review the actual printer. Once again, I think the easiest and most favorable review format is in form of Pros and Cons, so I'll do just that:

PROS (The GOOD things):
I'm actually going to start from the "end", and leave the best for last:

Price - Are you kidding me?! Epson is practically giving this printer away for free. I almost bought it from Amazon (love their return policy and customer service), but ended up getting it directly from Epson online store. I found a 10% coupon, and there was also a $40 rebate. The final price - 140 bucks. I think the replacement inks cost not much less than that.

Convenience - I used to collect at least 100 pictures before sending them out, uploading, or taking them directly to one of the online printing shops or local stores that I already mentioned. Why? Because it doesn't make sense to print one or two pictures at Walmart or Target - it'll cost you more, and there is also the "inconvenience" factor. Now, at my own leisure, I can print as many pictures as I want. I want one - I print one. I want more - I print more. I want a 4 x 6, or an 8 x 10 print - I print it. I want it on a glossy or matte paper - I choose the one I like better. CONVENIENCE - perhaps some people don't care about it, but for me it's important!

Features - I'm impressed - 3.5" LCD, which you can actually use not only for viewing pictures, but also for cropping, and removing red-eye; CD and DVD slot - YES, now your homemade DVD's can look just as good as the original ones; Memory Card slots - it takes anything from SD to those strange xD cards that only Fuji and Olympus cameras use; it even supports Bluetooth! Did I say that I'm impressed?! Indeed I am.

Picture Quality - As promised, I've saved the best for last. One might ask: How good can picture quality be on a $140 printer? The answer is Very Good. Or I should say Excellent. I was speechless, completely blown away when the first print came out and I held it in my hands. A lot of people spend hundreds of dollars on calibrating software, custom printer profiles, etc. to match up what they see on their monitors against the actual printer results. Well, I'm sorry to "disappoint" you here - I didn't get what I saw on my screen - I got BETTER results, without doing anything at all. I couldn't believe my eyes. The colors were vivid and natural at the same time. It was far beyond my wildest expectations. Since then (about a month now) I have printed numerous amount of prints, and they all came out great. Now, of course, the actual picture has to be good to begin with, so once in a while I might do some minor editing, like noise reduction, or adjusting brightness or sharpness. That's all. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be able to operate this printer and to get excellent results.

CONS (The BAD things):
The only, and I repeat myself here, the ONLY reason for a 4 star review is INK CONSUMPTION. This "sucker" is thirsty for ink. It drinks it like a man on a hot day in a desert. Replacement ink cartridges are not cheap, so this could be a decisive factor for some. BUT... If you calculate the price per print, it doesn't come out to be all that bad. I mean, it will definitely be more comparing to online print shops, probably about 2-3 times more, but it's well worth it in my opinion, because of the fine quality of the prints.

Note: Another reviewer mentioned "Larger" ink cartridges, and said that they have 50% more ink in them - NOT TRUE. Those High Capacity cartridges supposedly offer 50% more prints, not ink. BIG difference. I will definitely give them a try, but I sincerely doubt that they will increase the number of my prints by the advertised percentage. So, I don't think that the price increase there will be justified. We'll see.

SUMMARY:
An inexpensive, "convenient", feature-packed printer that produces excellent results. One drawback - ink consumption. Do I still think it's worth it? Absolutely. Highly recommended!

THE COST IS TO HIGH! The inks that came with printer went very quickly (6 inks), and replacements cost a lot. The paper choices are selective (new Epson paper) and it also cost a lot. I've own the R380 for printer less then a month and 've replaced all the inks once the yellow ink twice, and I am about to replace the black and two others. I haven't done as much printing as I've not done as printing as I've did with my other Epson printers. The other printers cost much, much less to print. So is this my last Epson?

I will keep it short for y'all :)

The prints come out as advertised i.e. fast and very nice quality. The printing from the memory card works well. I did have two unexplained mishaps when printing from a card, who knows what happened there. The DVD printing works very nice. Just follow the instructions. So far the only bad thing is the pace at which the ink is consumed in the high quality mode. Given that the ink is expensive, this is a bit of a problem $$$ wise. I went ahead and ordered extra large cartridges from Epson for a few $ more to save a few, but still the cost of ink is not small. Because of the ink cost, this item get 4 stars

I was really looking for a printer that could print on DVDs, what I got was a lot more. The image quality on the photo prints are amazing, I do a lot of macro photography and the high-resolution prints from this inkjet are to say the least amazingly detailed even on low quality photo paper. If you want a printer that rocks, just buy this one. It's a little large but it's worth every inch of space on your desk.

The DVD print quality is again nothing less than amazing.


I bought this printer on 14th December. It is January 7th and already out of ink. I've printed less than 50 text pages and about 5 photos although the photos are excellent.
Everytime I print something it cleans the heads and the indicated tank level drops by about 10%. All six of the tanks have dropped by the same amount so its not from printing.
Do I spend $120 on the larger inks so that it has clean heads for a whole month or find a different printer?


Brand new Epson R380 printer.
Set it up following Start Here instructions.
Aligned print heads before printing.
I have 4 SD memory cards, all of which work perfectly in a Canon SD700 camera and in a card reader to transfer images to the Mac.
The Epson R380 will only recognize one of those four SD cards. It refuses to recognize the other three.
The pictures that it prints from the one card that it does recognize have black splatters in areas that should have shadows or dark areas. The splattered areas look like crackle paint.
Green walls have rosy red splotches.
Pictures were printed borderless and with borders, with enhancements and without enhancements, best quality and standard, on Kodak Premium High Gloss 4x6 paper.
Printer not connected yet to computer, software not even loaded, printing solely with memory cards.

Is this printer defective or can I salvage it?
It's a big pain to have to send it back to the Epson on-line store from which it was purchased 7 days ago.
I have left a question, detailing everything I wrote here, with the Epson Technical Service on-line site but they have not responded.

Does a great job especially on printable CD's. Just wish the Ink Cartridges had more capacity. The cost of ink is a factor to be considered.

I like the printer's feature set a lot - nice LCD, can print on CDs, black text looks nice (if only they would include a duplexing capability!). So far, I've only printed two things (a CD, and then a page on plain paper of some color stripes) and color rendering on both appeared washed out (dark blue on the computer display printed as medium to light blue on the CD / paper). I'm hoping that the manual discusses how to fix these issues so I'm not too worried yet (hence 4 stars - if I were to discover this was not fixable then I'd lower it to 2 stars - after all, what is a printer for? To print :-) All the features in the world don't do much good if the output looks bad). The other negative is that it looks like it's going to cost $120 to refill the printer with ink (that's using the cartridges that are filled with a greater quantity of ink at $19.99 each from Epson). And so far I've not found anyone discounting these Claria inks. If other reviewers know of some 3rd party inks that work well, please comment in your review! Otherwise I'll be sending my pictures to a lab and using the printer only for the occasional "I have to have it now" prints.

After much research and getting info. from my friends that have good printers; I purchased the R-380. I am well pleased and cannot believe the quality of the prints that I'm receiving. The printer was a snap to set up and is so very easy to learn and use. I would recommend this printer to anyone that wants a very good printer for less than $ 150.00.

I had my previous printer for 5+ years but my grandson needed one so I purchased this Epson thinking I could start printing photos with it. I'm ready to trash the darn thing. It uses ink like it's drinking water. I'm going to try and return it to Amazon.

Produces excellent photo prints when using Epson ink and paper. I just hope I can get near that quality with generics because it is pointless to spend so much on Epson's inks and paper when you can get your prints so much cheaper at a photo lab. If you've got plenty of money to burn, you'll be happy with the results you get from this printer. My advice, though, would be to find something that consumes less ink.

The Epson R380 is very easy to use. It prints a beautiful picture in just seconds. The editing is precise and clear. There are still several features I have not used but will soon.

Very impressed with the speed, quality, and functionality. I don't use the external memory card slots, but from what I have tested, it's nice. Great purchased for personal an business use.

Although there are a lot of bad comments on ink usage, I found that the printer doesn't use THAT much ink. When you compare this Epson to a Hewlett-Packard, this one wins. I have owned two other Epson printers and tried a HP and let me tell you; HP is the one that'll get you with ink and printheads.The only thing I was disappointed with was that this product was reduced in price by 40 bucks the week after I bought it. :(
I've printed 2 CDs, with 2-sided covers (inserts) and 4 8x10 photos, the ink level check revealed a very slight dip in black and magenta (very slight). Still got lots to go. Buy it!

Was ready to buy the R380. Our Kingston SD card did not work in the display models at BestBuy and CompUSA.

The Pic demo did not work in either store.

The same SD card works fine in both our digital cameras, as well as my Dell SD slot. One sales person tried the SD card in a neighboring HP photo printer, and it worked fine there.

I received the printer (as a great gift) on January 16th, I set it up and it wouldn't print - the ink cartridge holder seemed stuck in place. I called Epson who shipped me out a replacement with no charge or delay. I used that printer for two weeks and it quit. Same problem with the ink cartridge holder. Once again Epson customer service shipped me a new replacement printer. It worked for another two weeks and quit on me yesterday (same problem). So, I'll call Epson when they open tomorrow and try to upgrade to a new/different printer or try once again. The printing results are spectacular, especially when using Epson 4* glossy paper. Anyone else with problems??

I will never buy another Epson Product after my Epson Stylus Photo RX500 died exactly 3 years after purchase. This was a lightly used machine for household purposes only. I believe Epson pre-programs this obsolescence so that user is told "parts inside your printer have reached the end of their life..." There is no toll free number to call - No literature given at time of purchase deals with this event. Very very disappointed with this manufacturer.

I got one of these along with a Canon G7 for my wife for her birthday--she has been printing non-stop and the pics are amazing. Does it seem to work its way through ink? yeah, but there are no free lunches and I will deal with the ink consumption because of the quality and convenience. As a point of reference, my wife has printed approx 60 4x6 borderless prints and most of the ink cartridges are around 40%.

This printer gulps down expensive ink at an alarming rate. I printed a dozen cd's and four 5 x 7 photos and it used about 75% of the ink that came in the cartridges that came with it. The ink is pricey, nearly $14 a cartridge. Yes it prints nicely but the cost of ink is prohibitive. Avoid this printer like the plague unless you enjoy wasting money,

Great buy. Epson Co. selling the same printer for $ 20.00 more then Amazon sells it for. It works great and picture perfict.

After careful research I just bought this printer. Returning to photography in the digital age after years in the darkroom as a kid. I printed on a generic HP printer but friends said I need to upgrade.

It is simple to set up and the first prints were amazing. Color saturation, clarity, detail are all amazing. More importantly, paper handling, an adventure on my old (2 years) printer, is a snap. Rich, detailed prints are now the expectation.

Have not tried the print to CD/DVD yet but I am looking forward to trying that as well. If you are a photographer, the output is as important as the equipment you use to take the picture. This was an excellent investment for me.

When using the printer as a stand alone I can't change the color balance and it needs -2 magenta to print true colors. It must be used with a computer to correct this fault

yes.... these printers do use the ink. I also have a lexmark that is quite expensive to re-fill. Here is a solution. Only use the expensive ink on pictures you want to sell or show off. I use off brand ink for around 4 dollars a cartrige. 25 dollars to replace all cartridges. The cheaper ink seems to last forever and quality might not be the exact same but a little editing seems to take care of that.

Got my printer the day after I ordered it. Amazing! Printer works well so far and output looks good. 2 cautions. First, do not use installation disk without first going to Epson website to download a Vista driver (it's not on the disk and the driver on there will not work). Second, and even more important, do not load all the software on the disk. The ArcSoft program is totally non-essential and it WILL disable your DVD/CD ROM drive. The Epson website will tell you to choose the "custom" installation on the disk and only load one of the programs. I can tell you that ArcSoft is the culprit.

Good luck.

Mine gave errors on all ink carts at once (my second of each cart, all real epson ink, all far from empty) after only 3 months of use (printing maybe 40 discs, 20 dvd jacket inserts, 50 pages of b/w text). The printer was on a table that swayed a bit as it printed so maybe that affected it.

Epson sent a refurb (not new) r380 as a replacement. We'll see how that one does.

Oh yeah it also guzzles ink if you print lots of full color CDs/Inserts. But the printouts are nice looking for good non-glossy papers (never tried glossy stuff).

Over the years I have had 5 Epson printers. All have been great print quality, this one is no exception. It is the noisiest, maybe the noisiest ink jet printer I have ever seen...or heard. It is BIG. Bigger then some "all in one' printers. And the worst thing is the ink cost. I'm sure it uses the same amount of ink to do the job, but the cartridges are smaller then most and cost a more. The printer price wasn't bad, but for the cost of the ink I think Epson would make more money if they gave you the printer. Maybe my next printer will be a Canon

This was the last Epson I'll ever buy. You'll spend more on ink than on the printer in no time, even if you try off brand ink (which it has trouble recognizing). Not recommended.

This printer, like most other Epsons is an ink hog. Moderate amounts of printing drains the ink cartridge and you'll be constantly buying and stocking spares. When you look at the costs of this, its far cheaper and better to have photos printed by professional photo processors than to deal with printing them yourself.

Of course, Epson wants you to use lots of ink - that's where they make their money...

You're better off buying an HP - they seem to use much less ink for a similar print quality.

Approve>>
Great print quality
Price
Easy of use
CD Tray works Great(Make sure you have printable CD or DVD's)

Disapprove>>
Speed a little slow on high quality.
Maybe ink usage might be high. I haven't printed that much and have went thru 1/2 my ink cartridges. I am hoping that because the machine had to prime itself.

Overall>>
I would make the purchase again.

I have had my R380 for several months now. The print quality is excellent. I did a 50th anniversary project with it that turned out great. However it drank ink like a drunken sailor drinks booze on shore leave. I just cannot decide wether the quality offsets the cost of ink.

The first unit I received did not work at all. It would not start correctly to allow the ink to be installed. After several calls to Epson tech support they decided to send me an exchange unit. A week later the replacement unit showed up. It didn't work either but in a different way. This unit would not allow the CD tray to be inserted. Something was blocking it. After several more calls to Epson tech support they decided to sent me ANOTHER replacement unit. A week later I finally received a unit that worked. So far, so good.

I wouldn't buy a R380 again.

This printer does suck up the ink beyond what I would have expected. Still I can't fault the quality of the photo's printing to DVD's or photo paper. The image is far superior to what I expected.

We're looking at some "compatible" printer ink's with this printer. Epson really needs to bring the price of the ink down a bit. I know they need to make money but geez people :-)

This is one great photo printer. I owned an Epson C80 previously, and it was also a very good printer. I have printed some 8x10 photos, and they came out with exceptional quality. This printer was reviewed at Consumer Reports, and it was given a very good review.

The 1 star rating I am giving to this printer has nothing to do with the actual printer performance, which I have not tested yet, as I am unpacking it right now. The reason for the poor rating? Printer comes with no USB cable! I find this extremely rude from Epson. Why in the world are they leaving out such a vital component? Should I connect the printer to my computer through telepathy or what? Even if they didn't want to spent a few dollars (or cents, as they buy cables in bulk from their suppliers) in a cable, they should estate very upfront it is not included. And Amazon.com (a store that I LOVE) should offer the cable as an add on. It is not nice to unpack your printer just to find you can't use it!! I have no problem paying for a cable. My problem is this: the frustration of not being able to use the printer immediately. After all, not everybody keeps spare USB cables in the kitchen! When I use the printer I'll post a review about it's performance. In the meanwhile, just make sure you order a USB cable together with your Epson Stylus Photo R380.

fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. so with out sugar coating it. over the past 6 years i have been using epson printers for my home based printing needs, i am not a professional however i am a broadcast and recording engineer with an a+ computer certification so i do know my way around computers and their peripherals better than most. the R300 is the third epson i have had die on me after 18 months of LIGHT operation. convienently the warranty is only 12 months. once, coincidence, twice, bad luck but three times....
sorry epson it will NEVER happen again

Just as stated previously, conviently after the 12 month warranty runs out, my Epson R300 dies after 18 months of owning. The prints were nice at first, I may have messed up the settings ???, but after about 8 months of printing, my prints were coming out at a very poor quality.

Another problem was turning the power on, for the past 6 months every time I tried to power up, I had to press the power button so hard that it litterally hurt my finger. And I had to hold the power button down for atleast 10 seconds.

A few days ago, holding the power button down for nearly 30 seconds, finger turning white, I find that its time for a new printer. And don't even get me started about the ink costs! The ink heads would dry out constantly, and cleaning the heads drained the ink seriously bad.

I am not a happy Epson consumer. I also have a Epson scanner, which died on me after only having for about 14 months, go figure?!?!

I am here now purchasing a Canon All in One printer/scanner which is showered with tons of great reviews, and a Consumer Reports favorite. I feel very confident about THIS purchase. I will not make the same mistake three times...don't make the same mistake as I & others have made.