Peripherals
Epson Artisan 700 and 800: Feature-Rich Printers on the Cheap
Posted by Mark Wilson at 3:30 AM on August 27, 2008
The Epson Artisan 700 and 800 are new all-in-one printers featuring, well, enough goodies to make use write about a generally dull topic. In addition to the standard scanners, memory card readers and LCDs, both units feature Wi-Fi and ethernet, fancy touch panel controls, direct to CD/DVD printing, and standard printing up to 38 pages per minute. Plus, each unit is only about 6-inches tall. Available for pre-order now, the 700 will run US$200 with the 800 costing US$300. For the specific, minor differences between the models, here's the full press release:
EPSON AMERICA INTRODUCES "ARTISAN" - NEW FLAGSHIP LINE OF PREMIUM INK JET ALL-IN-ONES THAT COMBINE POWER AND PERFORMANCE WITH SLEEK AND CHIC STYLING
The Artisan 800 and Artisan 700 are Advanced Yet Easy to Use All-in-Ones That Enable Users to Express Their Creativity in Virtually all of Their Printing TasksEpson America Inc. today introduced the Artisan 800 and Artisan 700, two new all-in-ones that are likely to become the envy of the industry based on their superb performance, highly sought-after features and stylish piano black finish. The Artisan series is perfect for the modern household where many users can share a single product and fits well in a living room or home office environment.
"The Artisan series basically gives users everything but the kitchen sink in terms of features
and performance," said Steve Semos, product manager, consumer ink jets, Epson America Inc.
"More importantly, these benefits enable users to express their creative side in ways never before
imagined. At Epson we've built our reputation on giving our customers the industry's best image
quality, and this flagship line is a key milestone in that tradition."Beyond its creative applications, the premium Artisan 800 features Wi-Fi, Fax, an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF), and Ultra Hi-Definition photos. Its elegant 7.8" smart touch panel and 3.5" LCD lights up only the buttons necessary that brings essential controls to users' fingertips for easy selecting, copying, enlarging, rotating, cropping, and printing photos all without a computer. The Artisan 800 also has the exclusive ability to turn photos or drawings into
personalised coloring book pages and make personal notepaper with a photo as a background.Epson provides additional value to Artisan customers with its new Epson Preferred
SM program, which includes a two-year limited warranty, toll-free telephone support, access to the
exclusive MyEpson.com Web site that features a series of online tutorial videos, and more Registered Artisan owners also receive, free lifetime phone support with no additional charges, even
beyond the warranty. Both the Artisan 800 and 700 feature six-colour Ultra Hi-Definition Claria ink to create
vivid, true-to-life photos with smudge, scratch and water resistance, as well as fade resistance up to
four times longer than photo lab printsWorking in tandem with Claria ink, the "smart nozzles" in Epson's exclusive MicroPiezo print head with DX5 technology deliver up to five ink droplet sizes, as small as 1.5 picoliters, producing smooth gradations, accurate skin tones and sharp, grain-free prints.
Both models feature Epson's auto photo correction technology. This intuitive feature allows
users to preview corrections on the built-in LCD to ensure the very best prints, rescuing photos that
they might have otherwise passed over or discarded. Users can also remove red eye from their
photos automatically.
Other useful features on the Artisan 800 and 700 include turning plain paper into college-
ruled, wide-ruled and graph school paper, and creating photo layouts with various size photos on a
single sheet of paper. Users can even print and copy images directly onto ink jet printable CDs and
DVDs.
Both Artisan models complete printing tasks faster than competitive printers in their class,
producing prints and copies in black and colour in up to 38 pages per minute (ppm), 4" x 6" photos in
as fast as 10 seconds,and an 8" x 10" in as fast as 50 secondsThe Artisan 800 adds full-featured, high-speed fax with a 30-page Automatic Document Feeder for copying, scanning and faxing stacks of documents effortlessly. Standing a mere 5.9" tall in a sleek, compact design with an easy-to-view tilt 2.5" LCD, the Artisan 700 offers outstanding features and functionality inherent in the series for everyday printing, copying and scanning, making it the ideal solution for a range of personal and creative needs that don't require faxing. Additional features and performance in the Artisan series include:
• Full-Featured Scanning and Copying: The Artisan 800 features 4800 dpi resolution (48-bit
colour) and the Artisan 700 features 2400 dpi resolution (48-bit color), for high quality scanning
of images and documents with brilliant clarity and accuracy. Both all-in-ones also offer
standalone, one-touch colour and black and white copying with a wide range of easy-to-useEpson Announces New Artisan Series options such as the ability to scan to a computer, memory card or USB flash drive, easy photo reprints and enlargements up to 400 percent, and a convenient fit-to-page printing feature. They even offer background removal for crisp, clean copies of text documents. Both models include
OCR software for converting documents into text users can edit.• Standalone Photo Capabilities: Both Artisan models have card slots that are compatible with
all popular memory card types for printing photos without a computer or transferring files to or
from a computer. Plus, users can print directly from a digital camera or mobile phone with the PictBridge connection. Additional photo printing options include print-by-date, custom picture
packages, photo index sheets, and passport and photo IDs.
• Restore Faded Photos: Both Artisan all-in-ones can easily restore colour to old, faded photos
with or without using a computer.
• Creativity Made Simple: Included software allows users to create and print personalized
CDs/DVDs, greeting cards, elegant invitations, beautiful photo calendars, photo books, and
more.
• Shared Use at Home: Wi-Fi and Ethernet networking are built in for sharing with all users in
the home. An optional Bluetooth photo print adaptor is also available for printing from cell
phones and other mobile devices.
• Flexible Paper Handling: Both models print borderless photos in popular sizes, including
4" x 6", 5" x 7", 8" x 10", and letter. They also feature a paper cassette with two paper trays
that eliminate the need to switch between plain and photo paper. In addition, two-sided printing
is built-in and can be automated with an optional duplexer
• Smart Ink System: The Artisan series feature convenient individual ink cartridges that can be
changed in as little as five seconds and replace only the colour needed. In addition, innovative
technology conveniently combines colour inks to produce black when black ink is low to extend
printing. Cartridges are available in two sizes to match users' printing needs.Artisan Series Pricing and Availability
With an estimated street price of $299.99 (Artisan 800) and $199.99 (Artisan 700), these
products offer an array of features, benefits and services that consumers have never before
experienced.

Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
craig
Posted 3:44 AM 27/8/08
"two-sided printing is built-in and can be automated with an optional duplexer"
Wha? huh? Does that mean that if you manually flip the paper over and send it back through that the printer won't object to printing on the reverse side?
And what about duplex scanning? That's what I love most about my Canon MP830, which has been rock solid now for 2+ years.
craig
TurboFool
Posted 4:23 AM 27/8/08
@craig: The machines, like all Epsons, have manual duplexing built-in through the drivers. Switch a radio button and it automatically prints all odd pages, then shows you on-screen how to flip it over and hit the button to print the other side. The irony is this is actually drastically faster than using the automatic duplexing in the HP models, as they have to dry between each page while the Epsons have no dry time. These models support an additional automatic duplexer, though, takes the manual flip out of the process. No duplex scanning, though.
Anyway, I had the privilege of playing with these new models over the weekend and they're simply incredible. Really sleek designs that close up smoothly, fantastic interfaces, and the features on them are amazing. They're really going to stand out in the stores. The new ink cartridges are a nice improvement in capacity and cost, too, resolving the only real complaints the previous generation had. I hope to get an Artisan 800 soon.
TurboFool
ninjamurf
Posted 4:15 AM 27/8/08
@craig: You don't "manually" need to do anything. That would be "manual" duplexing. The add on duplexer takes care of it for you. It will actually print the page, suck it back in, run it through the duplexer (which rolls it back and presents the unprinted side automatically) and print the other side.
ninjamurf
SBM_from_LA
Posted 4:50 AM 27/8/08
I"ve never owned an Epson printer before, but I hear people say they're great. I saw that these printers are already available for "Pre-order" thru Best Buy.
SBM_from_LA
TurboFool
Posted 5:08 AM 27/8/08
@geoelectric: This one's not designed to compete on cpp, although it is an improvement over previous generations. The black gets somewhere between 550 and 600 pages of black text and the colors get around 550 each (don't have the exact figures in front of me). If you're doing high-volume office printing, this isn't your machine. If you're doing home-office work and want a machine that covers that plus creative, better-than-lab-quality photo needs, and family use, though, this is your machine from what I've seen. There's nothing like it. I think it competes mainly against the HP C7280 and that's being generous to the HP.
TurboFool
davekaybsc
Posted 5:06 AM 27/8/08
I wonder how long it will take the nozzles to gunk up like in previous Epsons? Two weeks? Three?
davekaybsc
geoelectric
Posted 5:02 AM 27/8/08
Nice. Looks like it probably blows my HP L7680 out of the water, particularly in the area of photo printing.
Wonder what the per-page costs look like--that's the other area where the 7680 excels. Its per-page costs are almost in the same range as laser.
geoelectric
TurboFool
Posted 4:59 AM 27/8/08
@SBM_from_LA: Yeah, especially if you're looking for photos, they're unbeatable (although their new WorkForce printers look like they might challenge the other brands on documents, too). I checked Best Buy's pre-order and saw they're selling it on sale for $284.99. I guess it's some sort of pre-sale deal. So with free shipping it's a better buy than Amazon.com's pre-order, although Amazon seems to already have the ink cartridges for pretty cheap.
TurboFool
DisposableInterloper
Posted 5:28 AM 27/8/08
The design reminds me of Logitech's high-end peripherals, and a bit of Apple's latest designs. This would definitely look sexy next to an iMac with a DiNovo Edge and MX Air.
DisposableInterloper
TurboFool
Posted 6:57 AM 27/8/08
Re-reading the article, I notice an error: Both models do not feature a touchscreen. The 700 features a 2.5-inch color LCD and standard button control interface, while the 800 features the 7.8-inch touch panel with 3.5-inch LCD color preview screen. As well, the differences between the two aren't that minor. Fax, ADF, and double the scanner resolution are rather significant differences. The minor differences are the 800's ability to make coloring book pages from a scanned photograph, or the ability to print stills from videos.
TurboFool
airbornejerm
Posted 6:51 AM 27/8/08
@ninjamurf: "two-sided printing is built-in and CAN be automated..." i think craig was referring to, w/o the automation of the duplexer, that it would have to be done manually.
@craig: manual duplexing basically means the printer expects you to feed the page back in (usually through a manual feed slot) instead of having to try and play games with the paper tray and only loading 1 sheet at a time....
airbornejerm
airbornejerm
Posted 7:09 AM 27/8/08
errr.. that's what I get for not reloading the page for a few hours.
airbornejerm
BrianaCrispinus
Posted 6:27 AM 27/8/08
That's great, but what is the software like? Will I have to install a huge bundle of crapware? I've never used an Epson before, but the software required for an HP all-in-one on Mac OS X is a sin against God.
BrianaCrispinus
Schmooz
Posted 1:03 AM 31/8/08
@airbornejerm: @TurboFool: The Artisan 800 looks like it would be my perfect multifunction if it had a legal size platen. Before I order it, I want to make certain that you can put legal size paper into the paper tray, run a legal size document through the document feeder and have it print full size, without either shrinking or cutting off the the lower part of the document. Since you have already seen the 800, can you let me know if I will be ok on this?
Also - The ink cartridges are "out of stock" at the Epson Online Store. Do you think that these cartridges will be readily available at stores like Office Depot, Staples and OfficeMax OR do you think that we will most likely always be ordering cartridges online? Thx.
Schmooz
Schmooz
Posted 12:47 AM 31/8/08
This would be my perfect Multifunction if it had a legal platen. I have not purchased it yet and I want to make certain that I can put legal paper into the paper tray, run a legal paper document through the document feeder and have it print full-size onto the legal paper, without either shrinking or cutting off the document. Am I OK on this?
Also - the ink cartridges are "out of stock" in the on-line Epson Store and I cannot find them listed for Office Depot, Staples or OfficeMax. I assume this must be because this is a brand new offering. Will these ink cartridges be readily available at these types of stores in the near future?
Schmooz