Epson CX8400 InkJet Printer Review

My husband bought the Epson Printer for 1 reason - we needed to print once in awhile.  We figured we didn't need anything fancy, and this was nice and cheap, so he picked up the Epson Stylus CX8400. 

Scanning
Even though I didn't think I needed a scanner, I've already used the scanner on this many many times!  It works great and is very easy so you don't even really have to know too much about scanning.  It recognizes where your picture is on the screen and automatically crops down to that size. 

Copying
I made a copy once by accident - that's how easy it was!  I put it on the thing, accidentally hit "copy" and it just started printing a copy, plain and simple.  I've since explored the other options and see the copy function has a lot of features, but I'd rather scan something so I could then print it from my computer and do anything I wanted to it.

Printing
Up until today, all we ever printed were things like coupons and maps.  We don't need to print much.  I'm not big on photo printers because I don't believe the pictures ever come out as nice as they do if you order prints from the drug store or a photo site.  However, today I wanted to print my own Christmas Cards to save money.  I had photos on my card and found they did come out pretty nice with my cards looking like I made them in a store.  Even so, I still don't think I'd start printing actual photos on this thing, but if I ever needed one really fast it seems like it would come out ok.

The paper is fed into the top and comes out the front which is ideal because there's no crossing of paper!  My old printer had the paper tray below the output tray which made it difficult at times to feed in paper if I found out in the middle of the job that I was running out.  The paper feed being on top really works great.

Ink
The one major flaw with this printer is the ink problem.  I thought it was just me but have since searched the net and found out it is not just a glitch, it's how the thing is supposed to work.  What happens is that when you run out of any one of the 4 cartridges, you can't print... you can't copy... you can't do anything.  Every other printer I've ever used would still print even if I was completely out of ink!  Today I printed 34.5 cards, and all I had left was the inside of 1 card.  When it told me it was out of magenta, I thought that was fine and I planned to just print the last part in black only... but the printer won't let me do that!  What a major rip off.  That means if we ever want to use this printer, we always have to have 4 ink cartridges, even if all we need is black.

Overall
Even with that issue, we aren't going to replace this printer anytime soon.  Since we only print for maps, coupons and Christmas Cards, we will deal with the ink issue for now.  We figure the ink won't cost us that much since we won't be replacing it that often.  The ink that came with the printer was pretty low so hopefully the replacement packs will last longer.

However, I don't think I'd recommend this to you UNLESS you are prepared to have backup ink all the time.  It was real cheap compared to the rest, and it does do a decent print job, so if you can manage having an extra set of ink all the time, then go for it.  Saving a few bucks is worth the hassle sometimes.  I still can't believe I have to go to work tomorrow and print the inside of ONE Christmas Card.  Oh well, at least I got 34.5 nice prints out of the deal.