Epson Stylus C84 Inkjet Printer

The C84 supports a variety of paper types, including glossy, semigloss, double-sided matte, and inkjet transparencies, as well as large-format sizes up to 8.5 by 44 inches. For photos, DURABrite photo paper gives amazing prints with vibrant color, fine detail in high light and dark areas and smooth graduations. For everyday printing, you can enjoy the same exceptional quality on plain or recycled papers. Due to the special nature of EPSON DURABrite inks, you can print on both sides of the paper without fear of leak-through or page wrinkle, and you can handle the prints as soon as they're printed.

Convenient individual ink cartridges make ink replacement simple and cost-effective, and USB and parallel connectivity facilitates quick setups on both Windows and Macintosh computers. The C84 is backed with a one-year warranty that includes the Epson exchange program.

What's in the Box
Epson Stylus C84 ink jet printer, one cyan ink cartridge (T044220), one magenta ink cartridge (T044320), one yellow ink cartridge (T044420), one black ink cartridge (T043120), and printer documentation

Product Description
The Epson Stylus C84 has been designed to meet all the print needs of home, home office, and small office users, where the most commonly used media is plain or recycled paper. The Epson's second generation DURABrite inks, which continue to provide resistance to water, are smudge proof, and fade resistant for up to 80 years. The ink offers laser sharp text and vibrant color reproduction on plain paper, resulting in the Stylus C84 becoming an all-round document and photo printing solution.The EPSON Stylus C84 has been designed for the small and home office where running costs are very important; the printer has separate ink cartridges, and the user has the choice to use standard or high capacity ink cartridges. As well as the new DURABrite inks resulting in better print quality, especially when printing photographs, other photographic features include the ability to print border-free prints up to A4.

I think I made a great decision. The photos from this printer look fantastic. While it's true that you can't get >>super<< glossy prints from it, the prints on glossy photo paper aren't matte. I'd call them "semigloss", and I like them. I don't see any dithering problem, either. So far, I've used the C84 to print on Ritz Camera brand "Professional Photo Glossy Ink Jet Paper" (similar to Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper), "Epson Photo Quality Ink Jet Paper", plain paper, and the 2 sheets of "Epson DuraBrite Ink Glossy Photo Paper" included with the printer. Results are excellent on all these media - even plain paper. I haven't seen better results on plain paper. I even printed on the back side of the Epson Ink Jet Paper, and - I kid you not - it looks better there than on the front where you're supposed to print. The very slightly yellow back side adds warmth to the photo. There's no bleed through, so you can print on both sides of the Epson paper. I didn't try this on the plain copier paper because it was thinner, and you could see through the back too easily. I stuck a plain paper print under the water faucet and soaked it. As advertised, that had no effect on the ink. After drying, the paper was wrinkled, but the image looked fine.

I always put my best pictures in clear archival sheet protectors, and, behind such glossy plastic or glass, you'd never know the DuraBrite prints were not super glossy. Advertisements say the C84 can do border-free printing on "8x10" paper. I was pleased to discover that it can do so on 8-1/2"x11" photo paper as well. It can NOT print border-free on plain paper or ink jet paper - apparently, border-free printing requires thick paper - but it does get much closer to the edges than my old printer, leaving about 3/16" borders on the short edges and 1/8" borders on the long edges.

I'm a happy camper. Don't be afraid to buy this printer for photo-printing.


One of the best inkjets!   October 11, 2003
superman2k3 (On a sunny beach!)
35 out of 45 found this review helpful

Epson C84 comes with a high capacity (900 pages @ 5% coverage, but about 500 pages in real life) black ink and 3 color ink tanks but no printer cable. The size is compact, it looks cool, has good build quality and installation was quick.

The print quality for text is very good for an inkjet (slightly better than Canon i320) and speed is pretty fast 5-6 pages per min (faster than i320). Both the photos printed on the supplied paper sample were annoying skewed (even after we made sure paper was put in properly). The quality didn't look impressive for photos.

Printer and cartridges have smart chips in them (as do new hp's). This will ensure that you can't put in generic ink but pay Epson each time ink runs out. Also there are reports that the printer declares ink over well before it really is. To make things worse Epson seems to use different cartridge models for almost every printer it makes (Canon & hp use same cartidges in many printers).

One good thing about C84 is that its very silent, even while printing. I guess this is about as silent as you will get with printers. Also the text prints look better than on hp, significantly clearer & blacker.

In short, if you want a text only printer get a Samsung (ML-1710) or Minolta (PagePro 1250W) laser printer for similar price. For good photo printers look at the Canon line up or even better get prints at local stores. Epson C84 is recommended for medium text printing & occasional photo printing.


My Epson Experience   May 14, 2004
mark whitney (Hollywood, CA)
30 out of 44 found this review helpful

My Epson Experience

Let me begin by saying that I have over ten years of experience with all things computer related. During that period I have worked in almost every aspect of computer support. I have personally cleaned out countless numbers of inkjet printers with q-tips distilled water and alcohol. I kept my own Epson 740 going for 5 years without too much difficulty. I only got rid of it because I had a client that was desperate for a printer that would accept a Mac serial port. Boy due I miss that Epson 740.

I bought a C82 a little less than a year ago, after reading good reviews. I assumed it would be built at least as well as the Epson 740 I was using before.

Even after ten months my C82 still appears in almost brand new shape inside and out. Heck, I've only used it about thirty times or so. I keep it inside of cabinet shielded from dust. Plus as a matter of standard practice, I turn off all inkjet printers as soon as I finish using them, and I always change ink cartridges as quickly as possible to prevent ink from drying out inside printers.

So was I ever surprised when my printer stopped working. It had worked fine with the first set of cartridges I had installed. However, as soon as I changed cartridges the printer stopped working. I tried cleaning it at least fifty times, but it did nothing to improve the situation. So I did the natural thing and googled my problem. I was shocked by the sheer number of search results.

After reading through the reviews at Amazon and the hundreds of messages at fixyourownprinter.com I've come to realize that Epson has built and continue to build a printer that is so poorly designed one must question their integrity as a company. To think that so many people would experience the same problem and that their only solution is to continue to send people refurbished printers until their warranty expires.

Oh, and the part that will really get you, is that they require you to purchase and install a new set of four Epson branded ink cartridges to insure that your currently installed cartridges are not what is defective. So before you can even have your printer replaced you must invest at least sixty dollars on ink. Of course they offer to send you new ink with the replacement printer. Still to ask me to sink my time, energy, and sixty dollars into having my printer replaced with another one, which will simply get me right back to where I began. I mean really, the nerve. Is this what our present day world has come to? Have we set ourselves up so that these large corporations can totally take advantage of us in this way? Is there no recourse? Are there no standards of business ethics that they can be held accountable for?

The experience has left me feeling unusually sad. Epson has made me realize just how much I am at the mercy of these large corporations. I mean, if you want to print, who else can you buy a printer from?
I know that even if Epson would own up to this, they would argue that they had to make the printers so cheaply to remain competitive. Without doing so they would go out of business tomorrow. We've heard all that before. Haven't we?

Still though, this printer is made by someone in a Chinese factory. I know I'm going out on a limb here, but I would guess that that person is not well paid. Perhaps they are even exploited to some extent or at the very least we could guess that they are taken advantage of to some extent. Then as they role off the Chinese production line, Epson sends these defective printers all over the globe, wrapped up in fancy magazine advertisements. People like me buy the printer, use the ink, put in new ink, discover it no longer works, call Epson, ship the printer back to Epson, get the refurbished printer in the mail, and . Once the warranty is up we move our broken printer into the garage for a year or so, and then throw it away. It all seems so pointless.

Don't think me a luddite either. I love computers, printers, and gadgets as much as the next person. It's just that it disgusts me that I am forced to deal with a corporation that is not held to any kind of moral or ethical principles. As long as they are making money and growing we think of them as a good thing, without worrying about who they are taking advantage of. What are we doing here? How can we let Epson get away with this? Really!

Well it's not difficult for me to say I will be boycotting all Epson products in the future. I mean I'm sort of doubtful of their quality anyways. Oh and I haven't even mentioned the very unhelpful tech support and customer service representatives that I called long distance at my own expense. What a waste! Really what a waste!

Sincerely,

- Mark Whitney -
Hollywood, CA

P.S. I know the solution is to buy myself a do-it-yourself printer cleaning kit. If you google it you'll see that many companies sell them specifically for the Epson C80/C82. However, if you try to buy one you'll soon discover that they are all sold out, as I mentioned before I'm not the only one with this problem.


Good Printer, but Watch the Ink Costs   March 14, 2004
21 out of 24 found this review helpful

Overall, this is a good printer. It was breeze to install and start using. The print quality of text documents and spreadsheets is great and can be improved by changing the settings at the expense of using more ink. And this--the use and cost of ink--is one of the most important factors to consider with this as well as other ink-jet printers.

Keep in mind that you are likely to spend much more on ink cartridges during the first year than the out of pocket cost of this printer. PC World (March 2004) estimated the black ink cost per page to be 6.4 cents. Assuming that you will print just 3 b/w pages per day, the ink will cost you $70.08 per year. If you also print high quality color photos, expect to spend even more.

I've had this printer for about 6 weeks and have already used up 75% of the "high capacity" black ink cartridge.

Please note that the USB cable is not included. This is not really an issue since you can buy it for only $6 also from amazon.com.

I would recommend this printer for those who need to print something occasionaly and are not heavy users.


Great While It Lasted!   January 31, 2004
Chapin Brooks (Tucson, AZ USA)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

I purchased my Epson C84 in September 2003. I was pleasantly surprised by the print quality - particularly the hi-res glossy photo paper color prints which truly were excellent! When it came time to replace the ink cartridges in December 2003 - three color and the single black - I went with generic (after-market cartridges) rather than Epson cartridges. Alas, now in January, I've started experiencing an apparently irreversible print-quality and page-coverage degradation; both color and black. I say 'apparently irreversible' because repeated print-head cleanings and alignments have made no impact on the print quality, and the printer essentially is now useless. I even installed the Epson driver on another computer and did some test prints, but could not solve the problem. I can't say for certain that the non-Epson cartridges are the culprit, or even a contributing factor, but the C84 worked perfectly before the generic ink-cartridge replacements. Fortunately, I kept my old, reliable Epson Stylus Color 980 which, after three years (including ALL-GENERIC ink cartridges!), still does a credible job. Bottom line: the Epson C84 is an excellent buy for the money; but, just to be on the safe side, stick with the recommended Epson-brand ink cartridges.