Epson Artisan 835 All-in-One Printer

The Epson Artisan 835 color printer is the next level above the Artisan 810. Like the 810, it prints quickly with good results; photos in particular come out excellent. It features built-in wireless, an automatic duplexer, and has a great, large (7.8-inch), tiltable touchscreen that makes it very easy to use. With six ink cartridges to replace, its cost of ownership will likely be high. Still, the results are excellent.

There's one major drawback to the Artisan 835: I can't tell how it differs from the excellent (and $100 cheaper) Artisan 810. Till I figure that out, the 810 remains the better choice.

While the Epson Artisan 835 all-in-one printer does excellent work, I liked it better when it was the Artisan 810 and $100 cheaper. That is, I can't really see how the two printers are different, except price and possibly speed--and the Artisan 810 was faster as well as cheaper.

Like the Artisan 810, the Artisan 835 has a handy, tiltable 7.5-inch touchscreen. Print speeds across a wireless network were not as good as with the Artisan 810. A three-page Word document printed using the built-in duplexer took the 810 about 45 seconds to print; the 835 took 10 seconds more to print the same document. Like the 810,text was sharp and clear. However, Epson's Claria ink leaves cheap copy paper saturated, so if you need to print on both sides of a page, use better paper.

The Artisan 835 printed a 4x5 photo in about 30 seconds, the same as the 810. And there's no question about it--the results are similarly amazing, with a very wide range of colors and delicate nuances. So Epson not only prints photos faster than most other manufacturers; it can also compete head-to-head with anyone for quality. The printer offers PC-free printing, meaning you can print directly from a memory card or USB drive. That's where the large touchscreen and LCD really shines. I did run into a strange issue when printing from a memory card, however. I was unable to make the prints come out properly--the look as if the printer is stuck in "coloring book" mode (it really offers such a mode). No amount of fiddling with the controls could change this, and there was nothing in the manual to offer assistance. I'll update the review if I find how to change the settings properly.

The printer offers a built-in CD tray that can print (some) CDs; again, there was no information in the instruction manual about this process (though there are good instructions via the online manual). It took about a minute to print a good-looking image on a CD.

Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.