Epson RX680 Photo All-in-One Printer
Company: Epson
Price: $199
www.epson.com
For the last several years, the Epson Photo R200 inkjet printer has been a little work horse for my business related projects. I mainly purchased it because it was among the first printers back in 2004 that could print directly onto printable CDs and DVDs. I’ve rarely had any problems with the R200, but my printing needs have grown a little over time.
So being able to attend Macworld again this year, I was afforded the opportunity to check out many of the recent Epson printer models on the market. While I certainly had my eyes on the large format printers, my practical needs called for an all-in-one model, like the Epson CX5200 that conked out on me a few years ago.
At the Epson Macworld booth, the options were varied, but the salesman drew my attention to the Epson RX680 All-in-One printer. The sample prints of course looked very good and the price tag (including 20% off) was equally appealing. But what sealed the deal for me was when the salesman told me about the Auto Duplex printer feature, i.e. auto double side printing. I have what is probably bad tendency to print out articles and other documents that I are too long to read online. So at least every other day, I do some sort of double-sided printing. Well, I’m happy to report that the Auto Duplex feature is seriously handy, time saving feature on the RX680.
Configuring the printer preset for this feature is fairly easy, but if you’re like me you’ll probably want to use the Economy setting for Print Quality in order to save ink for this type of printing. The Economy quality prints in a light sepia tone rather than a usual greyscale tone, or at least that’s how it prints on my computer.
The double-sided printing may sound clunky during the printing process, but out of the 50+ documents I’ve printed so far, there’s been very little problem.
RX680 also sports rear and front-end printing trays. I was looking forward to putting 3-hole punched blank paper in the front tray and regular inkjet paper in the rear tray, but the 3-hole paper gets jammed in the Auto duplexer on the back of the printer. That’s a big disappointment. So basically, I now have one tray set up for plain printing paper, and the other for matt and glossy stock. Effectively using these presets can save you ink, time, and frustration.
Because the RX680 is an all-in-one printer, it comes, of course, with probably more features than most people might use. In addition to the double-sided printing, other features include:
• Photo previewing on a 2.5" tilt LCD screen before printing
• Viewing, selecting, cropping, rotating and enlarging on the LCD screen
• Memory card slots to print photos PC-free
• Direct printing onto ink jet printable CDs/DVDs
• Restore old, faded color photos – PC-free
• Scanning to PDF for e-mailing or archiving – PC-Free
• Six individual ink cartridges
If you need to make prints outside the use of image software like iPhoto or Photoshop, the RX680 provides the option to print directly from your camera or SD or Compact Format media card.
Photo Printing
The RX680 seems to handle 4×6 prints very well. Though there are many factors beyond the printer that affect photo printing quality, I got equally good prints at the largest 8.5×11 print size. However, mistakenly using the wrong printing presets, Photo Quality Inkjet instead the correct Ultra Premium Photo Paper preset, resulted in some funky inky spots on two prints. So make sure you set up for the correct paper stock, and for the most part use only Epson paper for your photo printing.
Prints take on average about 30-40 seconds once they get started. The colors are crisp and match pretty well to what you see on your computer. For better results, however, you’ll want to learn about color calibrating your monitor. Photo printing is a skill in and of itself, and though Epson and image software makers like Apple and Adobe provide lots of help in this area, you still must know what you’re doing in order to get good quality prints. It does help that the RX680 uses six individual color cartridges instead of four which provides a wider color range.
And speaking of ink cartridges, it’s also nice that this printer actually displays the levels of ink remaining for each cartridge each time you make a print. Though there’s no option to have the print level window appear behind other application windows, it’s still great to know when ink levels are low. When you’re nearly out of ink for a particular cartridge, a window pops whereby you can order an ink cartridge replacement. There’s no way however to turn this option off.
The direct print to CD/DVD is also very good. I use The Print Shop 2 (https://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=2647) for DVD printing layouts. This application comes installed with all the iDVD theme designs, which is great way to have DVD prints match your iDVD themes. The process for this direct printing on the DVD is not as straight forward as on the R200, but the print quality is just as good. Not laser print good, but very nice, clear colors. And again, a CD/DVD preset can be used for this type of printing.
The RX680 as a Copier
The copier feature was also another reason I chose to purchase the RX680. The CX5600 handled black-and-white copies very well, but I can’t say I’m pleased with the copier results of the RX680. First off, the instructions and navigation for making copies are simply confusing. Even after writing Epson to get some clarity, I still could not produce a simple, nice copy of a document. The results of the copies are not very strong, and there’s no simple way that I could discover to make simple copies without having to fool around with the menu selections. The copy process should be a single click process. Pure and simple.
Scanning
The scanning features seem pretty good. They’re not that different from the CX5600. I find the settings pretty easy to manage and the scans are okay for an all-in-one image copier. If you’re looking for more precise controls for scanning, you probably should look for a stand-alone unit.
Lack of Documentation
My biggest gripe with this unit is the lack of good documentation. Yes, there’s the obligatory large, foldout quick start guide that gets you up and running, and you can also download a PDF instructional guide, but I think a useful guide should come with the printer. Epson should also by now have video tutorials posted on their site so that customers can maximize the use their printers.
The unit is 17.6 x 19.9 x 9.3 inches, and weighs 35 pounds, so it’s not unobtrusive in any form or fashion. The large size makes you wish that the printer came installed with a WiFi connection feature so you can place the computer somewhere else besides your desk.
Lastly, Epson needs an ink cartridge recycling program. I looked for one on their site and couldn’t find it. With other printer companies like HP, you can drop empty cartridges at a local Staples or other office supply stores and receive a discount on ink cartridges purchases. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Epson.
I’m not sure if or how long it will be before this printer conks out like the Epson CS5200, but overall I’m satisfied with the RX680’s abilities and features in general. It’s great for small, home office use, and the price is decent, considering how much you’ll pay for ink cartridges.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.