Epson Artisan 800 All-in-One Inkjet Printer

I really enjoyed playing with the versatile Epson Artisan 800 all-in-one printer. It was easy to set up (including the wireless networking), its large and tiltable LCD made photo editing a snap while the touchscreen keeps the machine button-free, and the print quality--particularly for photos--was outstanding. All in all a best buy.

Epson has done a great job with the Artisan 800 all-in-one inkjet printer. It's an all-in-one that offers a host of features that make it a useful small-office printer as well as a great photo printer. It doesn't offer quite as much as the Epson Artisan 810 all-in-one inkjet printer--a favorite of mine and of many readers--but it comes quite close.

Warm-up time was at least 30 seconds, and once it was warmed up pages came out fast. A 10-page PDF took four minutes total, or around 23 seconds per page. Black-and-white print quality was excellent, with sharp blacks and little bleed.

Colors on graphics pages were warm and rich, and somehow the Claria inks used by the Artisan didn't overwhelm the cheap paper I tried (some inkjet inks saturate the page and make it limp). A 4x6 photo, printed on a sample of Epson's Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy, looked fantastic; the colors were vivid and nuanced, and the image was perfectly sharp. To be fair, if you're planning on printing a brochure, business document, or anything else that really needs to look its best, I certainly recommend that you invest in the right kind of paper. Paper that's made for inkjet printers won't give up and fall flat; and paper for laser printers will really help print jobs done on laser printers to shine.

The wired and wireless set-up of this Epson printer were quick and easy, though they're done via the software rather than on the machine itself, as with some of the Brother wireless printers. This isn't necessarily an inconvenience but you'll have to set up the function on every computer on your network. I wish the duplexer were built in rather than an option; the manual duplexing didn't work well (a warning message notes that it doesn't always function over a network) and left me with a mess of out-of-order pages.

I liked that Epson included a wide array of photo-imaging software including one utility that converts photos into line drawings, so images can be turned into coloring-book images. The printer also allows printing directly onto a CD or DVD. This utility was easy to use and images looked great. Keep in mind that you can't print onto just any CD or DVD; you need to look for these when you go shopping, or else you'll have a failed printing experience.

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