Hardware Geeks

I personally have never been excited about a printer, but when I was first introduced to the Artisan 800 by Epson this past July I immediately fell in love with it and when Epson finally announced it I knew I wanted one.

So when Epson told me they were sending me one for review, I was extremely excited in fact for the past 17 hours all I have done is play with the Artisan 800 non stop and I feel as if I know this Printer, Copier, Fax better than I know myself. The last time I was so excited about a product was when I bough my iBook 4 years ago, and I never would of thought I would get so excited about a printer.

But then again who wouldn’t be excited about the Epson Artisan 800? After all it features a 7.8 inch touchscreen panel with a 3.5 inch Color LCD display smack dab in the middle. Laser Quality Prints, up to 38 pages per minute, and if you wanted you can get an optional duplexer for automatic double sided printing and an optional bluetooth adapter. The Artisan 800 is literally the god of all printers, so if you aren’t excited about it then there is something wrong with you. Or maybe there is something wrong with me.

It is now 6:30 am Eastern Standard Time and I have not slept because the Artisan has taken control of me. Ok maybe not but I was anxious to get you guys some unboxing photos, a video and a quick review.

So yesterday at 12:22 PM FedEx knocked at my door with the Artisan 800, I was expecting it but it wasn’t due to arrive until today, so I was pleasantly surprised when it arrived yesterday. I had some errands to run so I was going to unbox it when I got back form doing what I had to do. But the box kept calling to me “Michael Open me please” so I did, and since I opened her I have not slept, because I have been consumed by the power of this machine.

The first thing I did was admire the box, and while checking out the box, I noticed on the top of it it had check list.

I thought to myself, they recommend a USB Cable but come on why not a Wi-Fi router? After all it is a Printer that is Wi-Fi enabled. Oh wells what can you do? After wondering about why no Wi-Fi router recommendation I grabbed my Swiss Army knife and cut open the box.

I open up the flaps and what do I see…

A reminder to check out the welcome pack for $50 dollars in savings. I appreciate that the reminder is there, because a lot of times computers, printers and other gadgets have these offers but you overlook them, and I think if you just spent a good chunk of change on something you should take advantage of any offers available to you.

So I get past the reminder and I am greeted by a thin rectangle box.

It said Open me first, so I did! Who am I to disobey an official looking box?

Inside the grey box was the Manual, the Special Offers I was reminded of earlier, Several Cartridges of Ink (Click here to See up Close), Power Cord, Ethernet Cord and Telephone Cord. The Artisan 800 comes with seven ink cartridges but it only uses 6. You get an extra black.

Now it was time to follow the instructions on the included manual, so I unfolded the manual placed it on m desk and followed it step by step by step.

The first step was unpack the Artisan 800, and unpacking a Printer or Television is always a task I do not enjoy, because it’s often the case where the product is wrapped in plastic surrounded by foam and you have to get both your arms in the box, grab what ever it is from the bottom and pull it up, and if you aren’t prepared or you aren’t standing properly you can hurt your self, I have a neighbor who threw her back out unbox a desktop PC.

Well Epson has made it easy for us to remove the Artisan 800 from its box, they put it in a plastic bag with handles, handles which were strong enough to withstand the weight of the Artisan 800 and the force of me pulling it up.

Little things like handles can make your life a whole lot easier.

So after removed the printer from the box, the instructions told me to raise the scanner and remove a transportation lock, that secures the system for transportation. There is a little slot you put it into so that you can store it for future use.

Then came the moment I have been waiting for, it was now time to plug in the Artisan 800 and press the power button.

So I connect the power cord, plug it into a surge protector and I press the power button.

As you can see from the above picture, nothing happened. I press it again and again and again and again, I pressed it 20 times maybe more, it wouldn’t power up. I turn it around make sure the cable is connected correctly. It was.

I take a moment look at the printer, I begin to pray for it to work I press the power button again and all I heard in my head was my self saying “Houston we have a Problem” I then began to curse to my self in languages I did not even know I could speak.

I take another moment and check the power connection again, and I discover the cause of my problem. I forgot to turn on my surge protector, after laughing at my self and breathing a sigh of relief, I hit the power button again.

The word English and Francais, never looked so appealing to me in my life, and I don’t think I have ever been so excited to see a settings menu.
After taking a moment to enjoy the fact the printer powered up, I proceeded to tap English and then continued on with setting the date and time on the printer, which led me to the next step. Installing the 6 Ink Cartridges.

While installing them was as easy as opening the packaging, ripping off a piece of plastic and pushing them into place.

It did take about 4 minutes for the ink to charge. I am not sure why they call it Ink Charging as all it does from what I understand is wets the printing head and mixes the ink.

After the ink charged, it was time to load the paper tray. The printer tray is hidden inside of the Artisan 800 at the bottom. It’s always nice to have the paper hidden inside the printer as the paper will not get as dusty and turn yellow if the paper tray is exposed.

After I loaded the paper tray the manual told me it was time to connect the phone cord to my phone jack, which I did and I quickly sent a fax to my sister.

Fax worked great, you can either place the fax in the scanner or use the automatic document feeder if you have more than one page to fax. You really don’t have to do anyhting but place the paper in the document feeder as it pretty much takes care of it self. Ofcourse you have to dial the number but that is really all you have to do. You can even set up a speed dial list.

I then had my sister send me a few faxes, and again it worked great, I haven’t experienced any problems with sending or receiving faxes on my Vonage line with it.

After I was done having my fun with the fax function it was time to decide how I wanted to connect the Artisan 800. Did I want to connect it via a USB port or via my wireless network. I of course wanted to connect it to my wireless network but was disappointed when I saw that the manual said I had to connect it to my router via an Ethernet cable and then later remove the cable.

That has been my biggest peeve with wi-fi printers, the fact that most of them you have to connect to a computer or a router first before you can use the wireless function. But ya know what I am hard headed and in typical Michael Reyes fashion I tossed the manual in the trash.

I did not and I was not going to connect the printer to any router or computer using any cable what so ever, in my opinion that defeats the purpose of it having wi-fi capabilities.

So I stood in front of the Artisan 800 and taped on the “Setup” icon, followed by the “right arrow” icon which led me to the “Wireless Lan Setup” option. After being warned that continuing would change my network settings and tapping on “Yes” I saw a “Wireless Manual Setup” option, which I quickly taped, told it to search for my wireless network which it found, I then selected the type of security the network had, and entered my WEP key.

I then went to my computer and installed the included Epson software, which detected the printer and installed it on my computer. So while the Manual said I needed to connect to my router using the included Ethernet cable, I did not have too and I am very happy about that.

After installing the printer, I did what any other sane human being would do. I began to print and print and print. It was amazing to me how fast the printer printed, it even printed pictures fast. So fast that the first time I printed an 8x10 photo I thought I dosed off and lost track of time, because when I looked at the printer it was done, and it felt as if I just turned my head away for a moment and I didn’t even hear it.

I was so impressed by the speed at which it printed pictures I made a video.

As you probably just saw, that was pretty damn fast and quiet, and while you just saw me print 5 pictures and a CD, I think I have printed almost every picture in my Pictures folder if you don’t believe me check out the ink levels on the Artisan 800 that I just received yesterday.

Yup you can access your Artisan 800 via a web browser and change settings, check the ink level, perform maintenance and even update it’s firmware. But that isn’t the only cool thing you can do.

Say you or your kids have some school work and you or they are short on paper and it’s 9 o’clock at night and your local Staples or Office Max is closed. Well you can print out School Paper on the Artisan 800. Be it Grid Paper or Loose Leaf paper you can print it out.

Another cool feature is called the coloring book feature. You scan a picture and you can print a black and white outline that you can color in. I think that’s great feature for keeping the kids out of your hair.

Overall the Artisan 800 is a FANTASTIC All in One, there is no other printer available that can compare to it, for that we award the Epson Artisan 800 our 5 Star Gold Editors Choice award and name it the best printer of the year. In fact it will probably also be the best printer in 2009, unless Epson out does it self with an updated version.

Just a little note, this review is far from done, I plan to run a bunch of text on the Artisan 800, I am going to see about buying the Duplexar when it is in stock, and push it to its limits.

The Artisan 800 is available now at Amazon.com for $299, and at Newegg for $289.

For more information on the Epson Artisan 800 visit: http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?oid=63075471

Update:
I recently recieved the Auto Duplexer for the Artisan 800 and made a quick video for you guys to see how fast it still is even when printing on both sides of the paper.

Post Tags: review  all in one  artisan 800  unboxing  epson  printer  copier  fax 

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