Rating: 
Summary: Excellent printer
Review: I did a lot of research before I decided to go with this one. A big part of my decision was the reviews at Amazon. To put it simply, printing out pictures was easy and the colors and clarity are extraordinary. I was very impressed. Set up quickly and easily. I know some people said they had problems with the roller or never used it, but that was the first thing I tried and it was GREAT! I am extremely pleased that I bought it (for picture printing mainly). It DOES use up ink quickly tho! One more feature that I liked is that you can go all the way up to that 13" size and that the ink is somewhat archival (they say up to 25 years under normal conditions before fading occurs...I also saw a review in a scrapbooking magazine which gave it high marks as well, and also featuring a water resistant/non-streaking feature), which is very important to me, and which you cannot find on a printer of this price. I did go out and buy the $[money] HP Appollo printer for every day use (GREAT deal, really good everyday printer). Def buy it!
Rating:
Summary: I think it's great...
Review: I don't want to belittle any of the other brand names that are out there, but, trust me, this particular printer, in combination with the epson 1640su photo scanner really does everything you'd want -- the options available; the results of printing whether on glossy or matte paper; whatever...everything you've probably let some professional do in the past, you can definitely do yourself -- and what could be more rewarding than doing something yourself -- go for it.
Rating:
Summary: Great printer
Review: I found that the roll paper is much easier for printing multiple prints. There is the well remarked upon curl, but it is conveniant. To remove curl just roll the paper backwards and then place something heavy and flat on top of the pictures for a while. The printer comes with a flattener, which I have found semi-effective at removing the curl. The hardest part about roll paper is removing the curl, and loading. With premium glossy photo paper the prints are indistinguishable from standard prints IF your pic has the proper resolution (I limit my 2048x1536 pics to an 8.5x11 pic). I haven'n tried printing any panoramas. This printer has been avalible for a few years, per my info, and has been replaced with the Epson stylus photo 2200, but this printer may be more economical for text, but I can't say, as I haven't tried the 2200. The 2200 has seperate cartrages for each colour, unlike this one, which has one colour and one black, but unless you print a lot of colour this printer will do nicely. It seems that the 2200 was really designed for photos only, an assumption based of second-hand info.The biggest annoyence I have had has dissapeared, and was the in the begining the printer was printing about 1/8" to the side on roll paper, cutting off the top, and leaving white space at the bottom and ink on the foam pad under the ink nozzles. This only occured when printing borderless, and has dissappeared. The thing I find most annoying is the process of making sure that the correct settings are selected. I have created some "custom" settings to make this easier.
Also, printing borderless is only avalable for certain paper types, and you must select the correct paper type for the best printing. I think that this is purely software, but sometimes it would be useful to print borderless on plain paper. These things having been said, I will say that there aren't many ways I can think of to improve this printer. Tor
Rating:
Summary: Epson Stylus 1280 is a fantastic printer
Review: I have both the 1270 at home and the 1280 at work. Pretty much the same printer. I can print fantastic images on almost any size paper, roll photo paper, 11x17, envelopes. Easy to use and quiet. It is rather large, so make sure you have enough space, but, it's got to be large to do all the things it can do! I've had 8 different printers, and the 1280 is the best.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Printer
Review: I have had my printer for only a short time, I had reviewed several brands but what really cought my eye was the fact that you aren't limited to 8.5 X 11.0 inches, I do a lot of graphic work and the photo's I print on this printer are the best I've seen anywhere, no , not even the slightest streaking, it is a wonderful printer and I highly recommend it to anyone that needs high quality photo printing.... Jim
Rating: 
Summary: faded prints
Review: I have had the Epson 1280 for about 6 months now. Very good prints except for it really uses the ink. The ink for my HP 960 lasted longer and had good images.
A photo that I had printed after getting the new Epson of all the teachers at my daughters school faded horribly. It was hanging in a room with no direct sunlight on it. The only thing I could think caused this was the flourescent lights. It was printed with the Epson 1280, Epson inks, on Epson paper. I was very shocked and concerned.
Rating:
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST EPSON PRINTERS EVER MADE
Review: I have owned my Epson Stylus 1280 for over a year and a half now and have never once experienced any type of problem with this unit what so ever! I only use aftermarket Abacus Ink and have yet to have a glogged printhead issue. I use this printer to print images taken from my Olympus C 8080 widezoom at 8 megs.
The printouts are perfect! Epson has just released a new driver for XP which can be downloaded at the Epson site to bring this 1280's resolutions all the way up to 5620 x 720!
Rating:
Summary: Pleased
Review: I have owned the Epson 1280 for about three months now. I use it often to print photos I take with my Olympus E-10. For the money, I don't think you can beat this printer. I have tried others, Lexmark and H.P. and they don't compare. It prints very very high resolution photos but it does use lots of ink at the highest resolution. You will get fantastic prints using photo film but if you are looking for something more archival, I recommend only matte photo paper. Epson states in this format the archival life is about 20 years but I think 8 is probably closer to being correct. There are better printers, but you would have to look in the professional range such as the Epson 5500 with the same resolution and archival qualities. It's also [much more]. For the money, ... I think without question this is the best photo printer on the market.
Rating:
Summary: Epson 1280
Review: I have recently purchased the 1280 and have printed some 50 prints, mostly 8x10s (including borderless) but also a few 13x19s. The results are simply stunning! The blacks are true blacks which are hard to get from inkjets; on glossy paper, they're as good as a Cibachrome print. The reds jump off the page. The yellows are very good to excellent. The blues/cyans are a bit less stunning. I have printed mostly underwater images, and those with a lot of blue water in the background are not the best. However, I may need to play with them more since one particular image with more cyan-colored water than deep blue was very pleasing.
Most of my prints were made with the Epson Heavyweight Matte, which I used for the longer longevity (my prints haven't been around long enough to tell if the claims are really true for 20+ years). The results are very good to excellent. I've also used Epson's Borderless Premium Glossy Photo Paper (rated to only 10-15 years I believe)...the results equal photofinishing processes on glossy paper. These glossy prints are astounding coming off an inkjet print. Many of my friends and colleagues have been equally impressed. I've looked at other printers' output and checked a number of websites critiquing this and other printers. The bang for the buck is definitely worth it. It does take a little effort getting your monitor and printer working in synch, but the results are well worth the time. I was up and running with only about 10-12 test prints using different printer settings to sufficiently match my monitor.
Downsides are that the printer is relatively slow for a print (15-20 minutes for an 8x10); but then its a LOT faster and easier than a real home darkroom setup. You can start fussing with the next image while its printing out. See also my comments on the blues above, but they are definitely very acceptable--I haven't printed any blue-sky images yet. I do wish the printer could take up to 16" width paper (a standard, fairly large photo format), rather than only 13" wide paper. These minor criticisms aside, this is one outstanding printer for the money. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Printer for Your Money
Review: I highly recommend this printer. The quality is excellent. The set up is quite easy. At 1400dpi you can get an exceptional photo output. Even though the printer can print at 2800dpi, I would not recommend you choose this option. With the naked eyes, you can not make out the difference between 1400dpi and 2800dpi. You will waste a lot of ink and time at 2800dpi.
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