Entered CNET Catalog: 08/02/2001
SKU: C11C424001
Manufacturer: Epson
Manufacturer description
The EPSON Stylus C80 is a high-speed, 4-color printer for the advanced home and small business user. Combining a separate cartridge 4-color system and pigment inks for superior plain paper printing, documents are waterfast, lightfast and smudge proof as soon as they leave the printer. It also offers exceptional print quality - combining 2880 dpi, 3 pl Ultra MicroDot and Variable-Sized Droplet Technology - providing high-speed text, DTP and photo quality printing as standard. Combining ultra-fast true black and color print performance, with superb print quality from its enhanced 2880 dpi print technology and the EPSON Perfect Picture Imaging System, the Stylus C80 is the ideal printer for individual power-users at home or in the office, and for work-groups of networked users. The Stylus C80 uses an advanced version of EPSON's Micro Piezo print head incorporating Variable Size Droplet Technology combined with 3 picoliter Ultra MicroDot ink droplets. Featuring a brand new, wide print head design, the Stylus C80 is able to provide much greater coverage for each pass of the printhead over the paper. This, combined with advanced stepper motor design to allow high speed paper feeding, means the Stylus C80 can achieve very high speed black text printing. Four Intellidge ink cartridges are used and allow the individual colors to be replaced as and when they run out. In applications where long print runs of similar colored output are produced, this technology will allow significant cost savings. A major advance for the Stylus C80 is the use of a new pigment ink for both black and color inks. These have been developed specifically to offer laser sharp performance in black and color on plain paper. The quick drying inks are smudge proof, water proof and light fast allowing the output from a Stylus C80 to be used in a wide variety of applications where durable or archive quality output is required.User opinions
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User Rating: 
3/10
Disappointing
Pros: good speed; cheap
Cons: expensive ink, prone to breakdown
User Rating: 3/10
Print head mechanism suffers from faulty engineering
Pros: Not too many
Cons: Clogs, clogs, clogs
C86. Yeah, that'll happen...
User Rating: 3/10
Both a blessing and a curse!
Pros: brilliant , no-smudge color graphics
Cons: Print head clogs easily, especially with "compatible ink", The print head cleaning cycle cleans all cartridges whether they need it or not ... wasting much ink. Ink is expensive.
I used the printer attempting to generate about 2500 beautiful full-color school year book pages, but after about 500 prints the ink monitor program indicated that the printer was at the end of its service life. Further checking indicated that the waste ink absorbing pads were full and needed to be replaced, for the mere service cost of $75 plus parts, which is the cost of a new printer.
As an alternative, I purchased another C80 to continue the job, but the print head clogged seriously. Deciding that I could fix it myself, I checked into online resources and found www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/inkjet/26802#3, which was useful in locating three other sites. C80 service manuals are available for purchase at www.manualzone.com/ShowProductsForModel.do?model=M77171748.
Excellent information on simple dissembly and head cleaning was available at www.inkjetprinterhelp.us/c80.html. I purchased the head cleaning solution, but this failed to clean the head.
The best link I found was at www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml, where downloadable software is available for free that allows full control of the print cleaning cycle, the ability to:
1) Work directly with CSIC in Epson Stylus printers cartridges.
2) Freeze internal ink counters.
3) Reset internal ink counters even with empty cartridges.
4) Separate cleaning of color and black heads for all Epson inkjet printers, including a powerful cleaning mode.
5) Hot swapping of cartridges supported.
6) Resetting of protection counter (even then it is already full).
7) More then 60 different Epson printers supported (this software even works on my Epson Photo 1280, and I love it!!!) It should be noted that the software could not communicate with the printer once the printer had already indicated a fault, so contiunal monitoring was necessary before receiving an error notice.
Although I often attempt difficult repairs, when I tried to remove the good print head from one C80 to put into the C80 which had new ink pads I gave up in frustration. The assembly is too complex, with numerous interconnected parts that require extensive dissembly -- nearly impossible without a good service manual.
For the cost of shipping, I will be glad to send you both C80 printers, if you want to do the repairs yourself.
Obviously, this printer is not designed for large scale print jobs!!
User Rating: 3/10
Designed from the ground up to insure maximum ink consumption
Pros: Fast and beautiful output... when it works
Cons: Rediculous ink consumption and insulting printer logic
User Rating: 
10/10
Great product
Pros: Great product
Cons: Great product
User Rating: 
1/10
Very disappointing. Worse...Epson could not help.
Pros: None that I can think of.
Cons: Doesn't work!
At one point, I contacted Epson and merely asked them what solvent I should use to flush out the nozzles. They REFUSED to answer. This is an exact quote of their response: "It is not up to us to help you fix your printer."
I know exactly how to flush out the nozzles. It is no secret. I just wanted to know what solvent they recommend for doing that. It turns out that the inks are water-based so plain water will do the job. Other very good solvents for cleaning the nozzles on this printer are a mile alchohol/ammonia mixture and, believe it or not, ordinary over-the-couner Windex. Several companies even over kits that include everything needed to clean the nozzles but Epson insisted that it MUST be done by a "trained Epson technician." Sure! That would cost mroe than the cost of a new printer in the same class!
The printer finally just gave out and I don't even use it much. I installed brand new Epson cartridges (about $100!) and the Epson ink status monitor showed that they were down to 1/3rd full after only printing an alignment test! Within minutes, the status monitor said the brand new black cartridge was totally empty (it was totally full).
I am extremely disappointed with this printer and Epson. I will not buy another Epson product after this experience.
User Rating: 1/10
The unit replaced under the 1 yr warranty fried in 8 months
Pros: decent graphic printing for the money.
Cons: Clogs, prints text poorly, drops ink on the end of the page. Price of cartridges.
User Rating: 3/10
to an early grave
Pros: Easy set-up, fast printing, decent color graphics. Until . . .
Cons: It quits working. As so many have said, runs through ink fast, wastes a lot of ink (and time) when heads need cleaning, won't run if any cartidge is determined empty. After about 18 months, stopped printing. First cyan and yellow blanked out, so I did the
User Rating: 1/10
Short life
Pros: Small foot printor size, good when its working
Cons: Spent a lot of mony on ink, not a good after a year, I had two of them both suck ink and didn't last,
User Rating: 
5/10
Constantly clogs up on me?
Pros: 1. Got it for a price when first out. 2. Inks in separate cartages, so when one color runs out, you just pop that one out and replace. 3. USB 2.0 compatible.
Cons: 1. Ink head always clogging up, spent much time trying to clean the head with only temporary successes. 2. Replacement OEM ink cartages cost a kidney.
User Rating: 1/10
LOUSY GARBAGE SUCKS
Pros: the usual
Cons: Printer refused to print. Said all 3 color cartridges were empty simultaneously. After 5 - 10 color related print requests of which there were only a few small photos?!! Who are they kidding! I only wanted to print B&W Word doc, no color involved. You
User Rating: 
4/10
ink cartidges most foul
Pros: prints great, when it prints
Cons: one dead cartridge and you can't print. ink cartridges hold very little ink. ink cartridges go bad just sitting on desk.
User Rating: 
2/10
Clogged after 18 months!
Pros: When it worked, it worked great!
Cons: Needed to clean heads before each time I used it. Ran out of ink too fast. then if one cartridge is out, no print! A waste of money and time! At this time it is now DEAD!!
User Rating: 5/10
Poor Text prints lines missing
Pros: Not expensive. good for students.
Cons: Very bad printing. Lines missing. Can never get the alignment right. The lines started missing after 2nd ink cart. first 3 months good. later bad.
User Rating: 4/10
a.k.a. clog machine
Pros: Worked great until I needed to replace the ink cartridges
Cons: Ran out of ink, replaced the cartridge, wouldn't print anything, tried different cartridges, still wouldn't print, could never run a successful head cleaning
User Rating: 
7/10
Think: Vampire Sucking Out Your Dollars
Pros: Nothing else matters but this single salient fact: Epson is mugging you in an alley everytime you need ink, and that my friends, is so very often the case. Never, ever another Epson product of any description.
Cons: Nothing else matters but this single salient fact: Epson is mugging you in an alley everytime you need ink, and that my friends, is so very often the case. Never, ever another Epson product of any description.
User Rating: 3/10
Won't survive a move
Pros: Great when it worked. Cheapish, fast.
Cons: Must replace ink to print, even color ones to print black. And the killer, clogged up unrecoverably during a simple move.
User Rating: 4/10
Expensive to run!
Pros: Good print quality. DuraBrite Ink doesn't fade.
Cons: DuraBrite Ink is expensive. Printer seems to go through ink quickly.
User Rating: 1/10
Sucks ink. Constant print clog!
Pros: Exceptional quailty.
Cons: Often, does not print due to cloged heads. Requires wasting time cleaning heads - over and over - until the ink tank is empty. I will not even sell it on ebay. It is going into the trash after 7 months.
User Rating: 2/10
Epson C80 Sucks
Pros: Fairly good print quality
Cons: Ink Cartridges very expensive and Printer goes through them like crazy. I've spen about 3 times the price of the printer in cartridges and finally called it quits. When I purchased the printer the salesman stresse the fact that seperate color ink cartrid
User Rating: 1/10
If you love to"clean heads"
Pros: um, once I cleaned the heads multiple times, got a decent picture printed. Real fast bw printing (when it worked)
Cons: POOR print quality, cloggs,will not clean properly. Ink cartridges clog and dry up in between uses (a day or two apart). Very unhappy... Looking for a new printer and this one is less than two years old...
User Rating: 2/10
right out of the box into the trash
Pros: wait, wait I'm thinking.
Cons: Eats ink like a thirsty pig. Getting the heads aligned it an exercise in futility. When we called tech support (no product as simple as a printer should even need tech support) they told us it was our computer. We tried it on both an Imac and a PC with w
User Rating: 2/10
Ink SUCKER!
Pros: Good quality photo prints
Cons: IT SUCKS MORE INK THAN A PORN STAR, Ink cartridges are costly, there are four ink cartridges to purchase, printer won't let you print if one cartridge is low on ink, A MUST NOT BUY!
User Rating: 2/10
replaced mine 4 times in the first year and now it won't print at all
Pros: Guess I'm lucky I got two years out of this last one.
Cons: I have 4 new cartridges worth over $60 and my printer can't even use them. They are opened from trying to clean the heads with new cartridges like Epson says to do so I can't even sell them on Ebay. :(
User Rating: 5/10
Clogs every time, black spills onto yellow.
Pros: Speedy and Sharp
Cons: I always have to clean this beast wasting the expensive ink every day...
User Rating: 
6/10
Prints quality photos on quality paper!
Pros: This printer was a great value when we bought it. It prints great photos, as long as you use quality photo paper (Kodak Ultra photo paper my personal favorite). I bought this printer because I didn't want to overpay for a home deskjet just because it sa
Cons: Needs to be re-calibrated quite often, at least once a week with normal use. Epson's cartridges are not a good value per page, but 3rd-party manufacturers make decent replacements at a fraction of the cost! As long as you don't mind re-calibrating the p
User Rating: 2/10
Ink Jet Cartridge Head and nozzles
Pros: The printer worked fine for a total of 20 months. Then the trouble started.
Cons: The head and nozzles were always getting clogged and the black color would eject ink on the platform where the paper was printed also the edge of the paper had pure ink ran out on the sides. The colors did not print true colors, the blue was green, the
User Rating: 1/10
True to popular opinion a one year printer
Pros: Print quality was excellent the first year.
Cons: Clogged print heads and expensive cartridges. My confidence in Epson is completely shot.
User Rating: 3/10
Nope!
Pros: Good print quality.
Cons: Software is lacking coherence in execution. I use XP and in the print job window you will view "dummy printing" entries. There are software issue and I can find NO updated drivers for the XP platform. I would stay away. The printing is very top notch but
User Rating: 1/10
Obviously poor quality control at Epson
Pros: When it works, print quality is very good. Like the idea of seperate in cartridges.
Cons: Poor customer support. Printer will not print if it thinks ink is out. Ink has shelf life of 6 months at best. Software lousy. Unit gets printing errors 40% of time. Not easy to fix. I guess you get what you pay for. Overall, my experience has been
User Rating: 5/10
Great prints... until clogged shut!
Pros: Acceptable print quality color, so-so text, good/bordering on very good photo printing.
Cons: Very expencive ink (goes fast, real fast) and EXTREMELY unreliable ink delivery system that clogges shut, and no soaking or tweaking will save the sucker. Too bad! :(
User Rating: 1/10
don't turn your back when printing something important!
Pros:
Cons: I can't count how many times I've had to run the nozzle check/clean. I just wasted 50 important non-replaceable postcards because I had the audacity to assume that the printer would work. I'm online looking for another one.
User Rating: 2/10
Don't waste your money on this POS
Pros: One year and the printer clogged up. Epson tech support told me to do what the manual says to clean the printer heads. Brand new $35 black ink cartridge, after 10 attempts to clean the printer heads the cartridge was empty! Don't by anything from Epson. T
Cons: Forget it, buy something else and save your money. This thing is headed to the trash bin after I take a 3 pound sledge hammer to it.
User Rating: 1/10
not acceptable
Pros: The black ink prints better than the color.
Cons: Cartridge costs are outrageous and the printer stopped working just after the warranty ran out. I did not get any help from their servcie (and they wanted to charge $9.95 just for talking with me on my dime). Even after buying only the expensive Epson car
User Rating: 
8/10
Good Value, Easy to Use, Good Output
Pros: Individual Ink cartridges, MAC and Windows compatible, USB and LPT connections. Quiet and quick. Reliable printer with good monitoring software.
Cons: Ink collects on left side in collection well, needs to be cleaned with Q-Tips. We moved the printer between MAC and PCs, the USB connection broke, the LPT port still works. Printer is two years old.
User Rating: 3/10
Fancy Printer, Broken Printer, Broken Wallet
Pros: Fast, yes extremely fast text printing once it gets started. Text and colors were clear, in the first few months...Drivers were simple enough to install with no XP hassles. A ink level monitor (which actually isn't that great as you will see in the cons).
Cons: #1 Big #2 Expensive catridges! #3 Say you've ran out of magenta ink, but you just want to print a black text essay for something due tomorrow morning. Too bad! The printer will NOT print at all if any one of the cartridges are empty. #5 ink gets used up v
User Rating: 4/10
Excellent Text and Graphic prints...until it clogged (twice)
Pros:
Cons:
User Rating: 3/10
Driver crashes XP
Pros:
Cons:
User Rating: 6/10
Broken in 15 months
Pros:
Cons:
User Rating: 4/10
Great Printer for 1st year only
Pros:
Cons:
