Epson Stylus CX6600 Photo Printer, Copier, Scanner

Ive had this printer for about five years and never had any problems with it, but recently the black ink is coming out all blurry. Putting in a new cartridge does not fix the problem, so I guess I must have the dreaded clogged printhead issue that seems to be the source of much angst in these reviews. Im going to try one of those clog buster products, but Im not feeling real optimistic right now. Ill probably have to get a new printer from the sound of it. I really like this printer because I can get replacement remanufactured cartridges for ridiculously cheap which keeps the per page cost very low. The print quality used to be quite good (before the clog), even producing decent photos. Speed wasnt too bad either. I also like the copy and scan capabilities. This clog thing is bumming me out. Im giving it three stars in honor of several years of excellent service, but failing on me now. Maybe Im being too harsh.

If youre considering this printer, or any other candidates in the EPSON CX line, theres something you should know: they all suffer from the same fatal flaw: clogging print heads. Unlike HP or Canon printers, the print heads in the Epson are embedded within the printer itself (not the print cartridge). This means that, irrespective of use, sometime within 1-2 years after you purchase this printer, you WILL have a print head failure which will cost you more to fix than the original purchase price of the printer. Heres a sampling of reviews written on the CX5200 and CX5400 more bells and whistles than this model, but same internal print engine): (...) ******************************************************** Wish I Could Give It No Stars!, October 1, 2004 Reviewer: Brian D. Ratte dean60 (Sugar Land, TX) - See all my reviews My experience concurs exactly with those of many people here who have owned the printer over a year. If you do not frequently print in color it basically stops printing when you change the cartridges! I had an HP for 8 years and sold it to another person who is very happy with it. No more Epson for me!! I will be purchasing another HP product to replace this boat anchor! Did not live up to expectations, September 7, 2004 Reviewer: Cheer Mom cheermom (Lindenwold, NJ USA) - See all my reviews I purchased the Epson CX5200 All in One printer/scanner/copier about 2 years ago when I bought my Gateway computer. I recently purchased new print cartridges and installed them. Nothing happened - tried all the things Epson said to do - head alignment, nozzle cleaning, etc. Because my printer was no longer in warranty, they directed me to a local printer repair shop authorized to repair Epson printers. The repair shop told me that I would need to purchase a new print head at a cost of about $230 (you can buy a new printer for about $130!). I had just spent almost $75 on print cartridges - you know how expensive they are - plus $42 for the authorized deal to just look at my printer. I am appalled that this printer lasted less than two years. It got normal use - for school reports and printing photos. My old HP lasted for years. I would definitely not repurchase an Epson printer any time soon. Works until need to replace print cartridges, October 17, 2004 Reviewer: Suzanne L. Dodson (Harrisonburg, VA) - See all my reviews I just spent $50 on cartridges that dont work. Guess I should have read the other reviews before spending that $ and put it towards another printer instead. I will never buy Epson again! And it is funny, I traded my working HP printer for this one thinking the durabrite ink would be great! Ha! *******************************************************

I have owned this printer for more than 2 years and have used it for all sorts of projects. I am pleased with the camera card readers on the front of the CX6400 machine (very similar to CX6600) and I am also pleased with the quality of the different functions (scanning & copying accurately) and the print quality. The biggest problem I have had with it over the years is its massive consumption of ink! I print mostly black ink only text documents and noticed how fast the 3 seperate color ink cartidges were disappearing without hardly ever being used. Its set up to print black ink only, but it still seems to use all the color inks just as fast. I think it stores a little of each color ink in a ready-to-use chamber and when theyre not used after a short time they dry out, and so the chamber is recharged OFTEN thereby using up A LOT of ink that otherwise would have been saved. The printer also wont let you print anything until one of the 3 colored ink cartridges is replaced when empty even if youre only wanting to print with black ink only. Frustrating! I have been buying only Epson brand cartridges until now because it will VOID the warranty if you use anything other than their Epson brand Durabrite inks. I finally gave in after years of buying expensive ink cartidges that my printer was wasting due to recharging and bought a generic brand of ink cartridges compatible with my printer. Well now it wont print in anything but black and cyan (no yellow or magenta at all). There are now several large horizontal banded or blank areas on every printed page. Not good enough print quality for anything useful now. I used the nozzle check & head cleaning utilities many times, but the improvement was minimal. Since its warranty has ended I would have to send it out-of-state to have it repaired and that would be expensive! Im ready for a new one that will be more efficient with ink consumption! Im now left with a very good scanner and digital camera card reader that CANT PRINT ANYTHING whether copied or sent from the computer.

This worked well with Win 98 and now with Win 7. No problems with drivers or inks. Ive done a great deal of scanning of old photographs and other documents and happy with performance. This is one of the better buys Ive made over the years/

I would strongly urge anybody that is considering an Epson printer to be cautious. Although I certainly do not EXPECT your experience to be the same as mine, as an active consumer I wish to convey my frustrations with Epson care/service/support. About two years back I had an Epson Stylus Inkjet (forget which model now) that failed while still under warranty. I mean, the printer FROZE my computer and there were HUNDREDS of crossed out (RED) printer icons all over my screen. Then I began getting code imposed over my desktop screen with words like printer failed in the message. Yes, at the time I had an Apple computer, but thats of lesser relevance... I called Epson, as my printer was still under warranty for about 8 more weeks. They said they recognized this sounded bad and wanted me to send the printer in (at my expense, start the tab running $). I did. On the same call, they said they could either send me a new printer, or I could- under THE CIRCUMSTANCES I had- go buy one from a local store to have immediately and theyd reimburse me. I opted to buy locally. I bought ANOTHER same model while mine was in transit to Epson (tab $ increase). Then came the true frustration. Epson spent NEARLY 3 months in processing my return authorization. They acknowledged they had received it. They would NOT reimburse me for a new one. They claimed that they needed to determine if my printer was failing due to defect or negligence (I included SCREEN SHOTS in the return box of nasty printer icons covering my frozen computer, how can that be negligence?). After many, many calls to Epson service, they continued to say they could not yet reimburse me. At one point, they even tried to say that I should NOT have bought one locally as their standard procedure would be to send a warranty replacement from their warehouse. On this point they quickly withdrew, since I had phone records of who I had talked to. Needless to say, after several months go by, I was told with finality that: Epson would not repair nor replace my printer because it was no longer under warranty. Now, I had a relatively NEW printer from them (this one started having printer head alignment problems in the first few months) and they had held my returned inkjet printer from OVER A MONTH from BEFORE my warranty expired. Now, instead of being out only the original $250 for my original printer, I had patronized a company that had given me difficulty with ANOTHER $300, and also about $20 shipping, and about 50 hours of my time. Ive had a Canon i950 6-color inkjet with borderless printing that I am extremely happy with since then. Cheers.

There are two halves to this review. First, the quality of the print jobs and so on. Second, the deviousness of Epson in designing the machine. The printer produces fine output and the quality of photo prints is great; I was immediately impressed with this. The photos are quite good. It is also quite good at handling large print jobs. Ive used the copier a few times. It works fairly well and is very easy to use and figure out as well, but dont expect anything half as fast as your office copier; it moves at the speed of the scanner. (In fact, it really is just the scanner, but adapted in a certain way by the engineers to make it easier to copy). The scanner hasnt been used much; I own an Epson Perfection 2450, which is superior. On the bad side, sometimes the printer appears to get itself stuck trying to charge the ink. It screws around and wastes ink without printing anything, and you cannot predict when it will do this or how long it will take for it to stop doing it. Still, this only arises occasionally and for the most part the printer does a good job. What is truly evil about this printer however is this. It is built in the following way: 1. When it prints you must have non-empty cartridges of black and all three colors, or it will refuse to print. 2. When it prints, even if you choose black-ink only, it will always use some of your color ink. If you could remove the color cartridges or prevent it from using them, this would not be a problem. But as it is, I cannot print up even a simple Word document because my Cyan ink is out. What did it get used on? I dont know. Ive only printed one photograph since I got the cartridge. Everything else was black and white. As a result of this, you cannot help wasting your color ink no matter how rarely you print color. So you waste your money buying cartridges from Epson again and again that you dont even use, but are forced to waste. Now if you do a lot of color printing, this will not be a problem for you. But if you wish to print mostly in black and white and only occasionally print in color, Epson is going to be siphoning money out of your bank account and into their pockets. Whoever designed the machine was either (a) not thinking at all or (b) evil. Evil isnt a popular word to use today. But what other kind of person could design a machine that required you to buy things you never use simply to make the machine work? One can only hope it was (a).

I am pleased with the ease of use, scanner, and print quality. Also, the service rep I called for tech advice was absolutely terrific.

I was very surprised to see how low the user ratings are on Amazon. This is not by any means a perfect printer, but it works. It wastes ink and is prone to clogging. To clear a clog, the printer flushes the print heads with ink. Since I left college, I use it much less and I have wasted half my current ink tanks just cleaning it. I use the term tank because the printer has the print heads built into the itself, while other companies use print heads built into the cartridge. Also, I saw some man flip out on an Office Depot clerk because he couldnt get some discount by returning his empty Epsom tanks. Office Depot defines a cartridge as having print heads. I commonly hear it cleaning itself on its own. However, like I said it is still working 5 years later. I think much of this is my refusal to use refilled tanks. This is conflict with the advise of just about everyone else who refills their HP cartridges to save a buck. On the plus side, it prints really well and very seldomly suffers from a paper jams. The scanning software works alright, but I have had a hard time scanning my transcripts. I cant find a happy medium between file size and resolution. My 4 page transcripts produce a huge (>10 Mb) file that my email rejects. But this is also a function of the colleges and universities utilizing anti-copying paper.

Ive gotten my own Epson CX6600 around 8 months ago and it is working great. Im generally content BUT like any other printer, it isnt perfect. This printer is great for black and whites, but generally fine for color. If you print a lot in black and white, this is the printer for you. I apologize for the long review, but there are lots of useful details discussed to help you choose a printer for you =) ______COMPUTER: This printer uses A LOT OF MEMORY. I would estimate it uses around 1 GB from all the programs the install comes with. You have programs from the printer, scanner, and copier. Most of them I do not use. One useful program I do enjoy is ABBYY Fine Reader Tools. It helps to read the scanned documents clearly. ______INSTALLATION: Installations fairly easy. There are lots of directions but the instructions all have nice big pictures. You have to go through the CD install; you can not automatically plug and print. ______PRINTER: BLACK AND WHITE: The CX6600 is perfect for huge amounts of black and white printing. I print at least 10 pages each day in black and white. Also, this printer prints very quickly in draft mode, around 22 pages per minute. What pleases me the most about this printer are the 1) ink cartridge and the 2) printer settings. 1) Ink Cartridge Unlike the newer version CX7800, this printer has two black ink options, Standard Size (T044520) and High Capacity (T043120). The Standard Size cartridge is the same size as the color cartridges and prints around 450 pages. The High Capacity cartridge is almost double the size of the Standard Size and prints around 950 pages. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THE HIGH CAPACITY. The high capacity is generally around 10 dollars more than the standard size on Amazon.com AND you get almost double the ink amount. As stated before, the newer version CX7800 does not have the option. Only CX6600. 2) Printer Settings I can program the printer to print in draft, which saves me ink AND money. Although the quality of draft is less than normal, I can print more papers while saving ink AND money. COLOR: This printer is only fair on color. The pictures look brighter on my computer than the actual printed picture. The printed picture looks darker, which doesnt please most people because it doesnt capture the same brightness. Also, the color cartridges depletes very quickly when printing in normal. On this printer, printing in draft in color is fair. The colors are too light to make a good impression. In addition, The DURABrite ink does not stain when it is wet, which is a plus when it rains. ______SCANNER: I have to be honest; Im not that knowledgeable in scanners. 1) For me, the quality is wonderful for me. It is detailed enough for capture enough details for me. 2) The program is workable. You could either use the basic program or use the program called Epson Smart Panel. 3) The scanner might take a while to scan one picture. It scans it once to detect whether it is a picture, color object, or black and white object. The scanner does this to scan it more accurately the second time. ______COPIER: Im very content with the printer. Again, you have the option of normal, draft, and fine for copier. There isnt much to say about the copier, since it just copies. I mostly copy in black and white and it comes out a clear quality even in draft. Printing in color is okay. The colors look vivid but then again, it uses a lot of ink. ______PROBLEMS: Like other reviews, one HUGE problem is when only one ink cartridge is at 0%, you can not do ANYTHING. Secondly, if you use a compatible cartridge (which is cheaper), it damages the printer head. I used a compatible cartridge once with black ink and it did damage my printer head. Now I use only Epson. BUT now when I print, sometimes there are small lines missing. Thirdly, if you add in your own ink and use the Epson cartridge that will not work either. You insert the needle from the bottom of the cartridge, not the top. That is very risky because the ink might leak and permanently damage your printer! In conclusion, Im very pleased. I print massive amounts of black and white papers a time. Unfortunately, if you are a huge color printer, this is not the best printer for you. Scanner is a good quality, but it takes a while to scan color. Copier is fantastic, especially black and white. ::SEPT 11, 2007 UPDATE:: Ive noticed every time the printer starts up, the printer automatically cleans the print head. This function wastes a lot from the ink cartridges. I use the option Use Black Ink Only BUT my colors start to deplete slowly because of the automatically print head clean. So beware, this printer, like many newer Epson printers, drain colored inks when you do not even print with color! I hope this review will help you on your decision for a printer for you!

The CX6600 endured light home use for 6 years. Then it started printing streaks. Replaced ink cartridges with no effect. Even bought some of that print-head cleaning solution to try and unclog the print head, which only partially fixed the problem. Looked online for a replacement for the printhead, and saw prices ~$150, which is the price I paid for a brand new Canon all-in-one. The Epson was a good printer for 6 years, so I cant complain too much. But it was frustrating to have the failure of a single part render the whole unit economically dead. Glad to see that my new Canon printer has the print-head itself as a user-replaceable part.