Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

SETUP: Although it took me over an hour to set this up, the setup for the printer itself (not the software on your computer) is very clearly defined and described and it can all be done within the printer without going into your computer, following the Quick Start instruction sheet that comes with the printer. And all of it is done, using the printers LCD screen, with step by step prompts on screen. Nothing ambiguous or confusing. There is a CD that comes with this that contains the actual software for your PC. I have a CD drive on my PC (using Windows 8.1), but could not get the CD to auto-launch so I went into Windows Explorer to navigate to my CD/DVD drive and was unable to get the CD to open. So the CD was worthless. Instead I installed the utilities and drivers from Epson's website. You can choose to install all or just some of the drivers and utilities, since there may be features you will not use or do not wish to use. I recommend skipping the CD and download drivers and utilities from Epson. INK WELLS: Filling the ink wells initially was very simple and the one thing Epson did was make it IDIOT PROOF, since I am sure there are those out there who might absentmindedly try to put the wrong ink color into the wrong well, which would be a disaster when going to print. Each ink well is color coded and each bottle is matched with bold color on the label. But here is where the idiot proof comes into play. Epson has a different shaped orifice on each ink well filling port, so it is impossible to insert the wrong color ink bottle into the wrong color ink well. The ink bottles have a plunger inside of the valve at the top of the bottle, like the valve stem on your car tire for inflating. The ink will not flow out of the bottle until you insert the bottle into its proper well for filling, at which point it engages a plunger to open the flow into the well. But you are cautioned to never squeeze the bottle unless you want ink to leak and you are not to shake the bottles (probably to avoid creating bubbles in the liquid which might affect ink in the reservoirs). Ink does not come out with the bottle upside down, until it is fully seated in the ink well. PREPPING THE PRINT HEAD (AUTOMATIC): When you first fill the ink reservoirs, everything is automatic. The ink flow into the well will stop automatically when the well is full. And on the initial fill to charge the system, about 80% of the ink will be drawn from each bottle. The reason is this. After all wells are filled the first time, you are prompted to go through a couple steps, in which the printer launches a charging mode (inking the print heads from the ink wells) which takes about 5-7 minutes. Once the ink in the wells have properly charged the print heads, you will notice that the ink well levels have gone down about 15% (you can see ink levels through transparent windows on the front of each well), at which point you are prompted to re-insert the almost empty bottles to draw out most of what was left in them. Which I did, refilling the ink wells to maximum and ready for use. But, don't throw away those mostly empty bottles because there is still some visible ink in the bottles, which you can use in the near future, to top off the wells after printing some documents or photos, thus not wasting any ink. GOODBYE EXPENSIVE CARTRIDGES: This purports to be a great solution to rid yourself of the exorbitant prices of traditional inkjet cartridges and being held hostage to OEM ink cartridges. In this case you are paying a very high front end cost for the printer, in hopes that in the long run, that this system might yield lower cost per page to print. Epson claims that this system with 2 year's worth of ink, included, will print up to 14,000 pages in black and white and 9,000 pages of 4x6 photos in color. Having just received the printer there is now way to know how valid their claims are, at this early date of use. So the economics remain to be seen, quite a ways down the road.. WHAT IS THAT MYSTERIOUS LITTLE BLACK BOX: One thing that Epson does not tell you and does not include any reference to, or instructions for its use, is the presence in this printer of a maintenance box. I have never had one in any of the 5 different inkjet printers that I have had, over the years, including HP (2 different models over time), Canon (worst ink hog on the planet), Brother, Epson XP-820 (also an ink hog, considering that I never print in color, and yet this printer exhausts all of the XP-820's color cartridges just by going through regular print head cleaning cycles even though I print exclusively in black/gray scale, by deselecting "color" when I print). So, with me printing "black only" from the BK cartridge, and never using the Photo Black (PB cartridge on the color side of the carrier), when one of the "never called on" color cartridges runs out, I am eventually forced by Epson's machine programming to purchase any color cartridges that ran out, since the printer will no longer print anything if any of their 5 cartridges runs out. Pretty devious, and typical of all inkjet printer brands. Anyway, back to the 7700. THE LITTLE BLACK BOX: I didn't even know what a maintenance box was, so I went to Epson's website and found absolutely no explanatory information about one. After further online research, I found out that when printers go through their frequent cleaning cycles (just about every time you turn it on, when you hear that whirring sound), it is extracting a bit of ink from each print cartridge to shoot through the print head to keep it from drying out and clogging. A maintenance box on most printers is basically a "wasted ink" reservoir with paper filters in them (like the air filter on your car) , which receive and soak up that cleaning cycle ink. At some point Epson printers will simply stop printing when their maintenance box reaches what Epson considers "full". YouTube videos are plentiful on this subject with some claiming that the box is not actually full, as one is led to believe, and can be used further by going through some "cheater" steps to fool the printer into believing that it has been replaced with a new one. But to do that, you have to have a clean spare to insert momentarily, and then put the old one back in and continue to use it. But, to do that you have to purchase an accessory device that resets the chip on the "used" box that is supposedly full. This accessory (shown in some YouTube videos) is not something you can get from Epson. It is an aftermarket accessory made by a different company. After I went through initial setup of the printer, I ran some test copies of color photos (more on that later), at which time the Epson print queue dialogue box pops up (on your computer screen) and displays the level of ink in each ink well color. It also shows this maintenance box and at what level it is, regarding being "full". I was surprised to see that mine was "half full" already, after running only four 8x10 color photos. BUT, that may mean nothing since it is probably a default setting "new and out of the box" and may remain at that visual status for quite some time, before it starts to move to a higher percentage of "full". Remains to be seen. On Epson's website it appears that maintenance boxes, for some of their other printers are relatively inexpensive at 10 to 20 bucks. So this is one more thing you have to purchase in the future to keep your Epson running, and curiously, Epson, as of the date of this review, does not even offer replacements of the one that goes into the ET-7700, since it is such a new product. But with this new machine it is a mute issue because Epson does include a replacement for further down the road, in addition to the one that comes already mounted in the printer. Too bad Epson does not tell you what that little black box in the little zip lock bag is when you first unpack your printer. Quite puzzling, trying to figure out if you are supposed to install it during initial setup. The only clue given, was a little slip of paper inside of the bag which gave me a clue as to what the box was, but with no description or explanations. The small slip of paper said..."Do not dismantle the maintenance box"..."Do not touch the IC chip on the side of the maintenance box"..."Do not drink the contents of the maintenance box" (REALLY?)..."Do not reuse a maintenance box which has been removed and left detached for a long period."...and finally, "Once a maintenance box has been installed it cannot be used in another printer". I spent an hour, both online and carefully examining the printer itself, in trying to figure out where this thing goes in the printer. There were no obvious empty compartments on the outside or the inside of the printer where the print head carriage resides. Finally, I spotted a flat plate on the back of the printer with a single screw in it, so I removed this cover and discovered that is where the maintenance box is. BE AWARE OF YOUR WIFI SPEED SETTING: After I got everything set up with the printer and having it locate and connect to my wifi (using only the printer's on screen prompts on its LCD screen), the first time I tried to print wirelessly, I got an error message that said "printer not found". With some research on Epson's site I found that this printer has to function with your wifi router set at 2.4 GHz. BUMMER, because I have my wifi set at 5.0 GHz for faster downloads and operational speed, because my wife is a psychotherapist and counsels out of town clients, online with Skype and Facetime, which really demands fast wifi to insure smooth communication without video breakup or image dropping. That really caught me off guard, thinking that we would not be able to print wirelessly and have to hook this up to only one computer with a USB cable. I almost gave the printer a 1 Star rating at this surprise, since router speed requirements are not mentioned anywhere on their retail packaging and is definitely not mentioned on their Amazon product page. I am on a PC and she is on a Mac, so I was thinking she would be forced to continue using the Epson XP-820 wirelessly from her office in our home, which is next to mine, where both printers sit, which would defeat the benefits of the 7700 since she prints a lot more than I do. And after getting the error message that the 7700 could not be found when I tried to print wirelessly from my PC, I figured that I would be forced to use the ET-7700 hard-wired by USB to my PC to take advantage of the 7700, since we are not about to downgrade our router speed to 2.4GHz, due to her online counseling needs. SO, I connected the 7700 by USB to my PC and then went to Epson's download site to download their drivers and utilities, to enable me to test the printer's print quality. Hard wired worked for that purpose. Then, out of curiosity, I disconnected the USB cord and tried to print from my PC wirelessly. BINGO. I couldn't believe that I didn't get another error message. SO THE MORAL OF THE WIFI STORY IS: First, go through the initial steps of filling the ink wells etc, and when that is all done, you will be prompted to go to the wifi setup stage (located within options in the "Home" screen on the printer's LCD) to connect to your wifi... using the printer's step by step instructions, on the printer's LCD screen prompts. After the wifi is recognized on the printer's screen and says the wifi router has been found successfully, connect the printer to your computer with the USB cable which comes with the printer, rather than trying to go wireless initially. After you are connected by USB (printer to computer), go to Epson's site and download the drivers and utilities. Then disconnect the USB cord and attempt to print wirelessly, which I did and it worked flawlessly. So I am not sure where the culprit lies or why Epson indicates that this printer must be on the 2.4 GHz bandwidth, other than the fact that your router may play a role in whether the 7700 can connect at the higher download speed of a router, set at 5.0 GHz. We use Direct TV for our internet connection, which is set at "fast wifi" 5.0GHz. Looking back several months ago when we switched to Direct TV, I do remember our Direct TV install guy asking us, in light of my wife's online counseling, if we wanted to set our router to 5.0 GHz for faster download speed (which sacrifices some range) versus the slower 2.4 GHz (which has a wider range of transmission). We opted for fast. And he did tell us that we can switch that setting for the router at any time, because "some devices will have trouble connecting to the 5.0 GHz band". So, with a little trouble and wasted time trying to get wirelessly printing set up, the system is working instantly and flawlessly, regardless of Epson's contention that this is meant to operate on the 2.4 GHz band from your router. But because it worked for my combinations of equipment, you need to go through the steps above, if you are on 5.0GHz, right away to be sure your printer functions as promised, so that you can take corrective steps to solve or return the printer to Amazon. MOBILE PRINTING: After printing from the computer, I tested printing from my Samsung S5 smartphone. I pulled up a photo on the screen, from "Gallery" and went to the stacked "3 dots" in the upper right hand corner of the phone, which initiates actions. Scrolled down to print and selected that option. Magically, my phone then asked me which printer to use, which I selected between the XP-820 and the 7700, and then the 7700 immediately kicked in and printed what was on my phone screen, actually quicker than launching a print from the computer. So this printer is very responsive to mobile printing. I also have an iPad Air2 and am sure I will get the same result, although I didn't try that. PRINT QUALITY: You will get exceptional color photos, from this printer, when printing on Premium Gloss Photo Paper (Kodak in our case). The colors are very true and nicely saturated without being over saturated. But remember "garbage in...garbage out. What you see on your computer screen may not accurately represent the contents of a "psd" photo file (Photoshop RGB image), or a jpeg (CMYK file). My screen is pretty accurate so I always use Photoshop to tweak brightness, contrast, color saturation, and adjust for skin tones in most photos. And what I see on my PC's screen is what I get on the Kodak Premium Gloss Photo Paper, using this printer, so it is very good on Premium Photo Paper. However, printing color photos on plain paper, leaves quite a bit to be desired (I use HP Office, Ultra White copier paper, which is neither good nor bad). The image is washed out and over-exposed on plain paper, compared to photo paper (see the attached side by side comparison printed from the same jpeg file...on the left is printed on the plain bright white paper and on the right is on Kodak Premium Gloss Photo Paper, both of which were printed and placed side by side, for me to photograph with my Samsung S5, giving a true representation of the difference paper will make). But in Epson's defense, that is probably true of most inkjet printers when printing on plain bright white paper. Generally I try to use the brightest white paper that I can find. All reams of office copy paper have a brightness level indicated on the outside of the package which rates the amount of light reflected back to the eye, on a scale of 1-100, with most rated between 80 and 92. The HP is a 92 rated "brightness" of the paper. There is also a "Whiteness" rating on most reams of paper. The HP paper is 155. I can't say whether that is good, better or best, so you may want to do some research on the subject of "Whiteness" and "Brightness" of plain paper, if it is of importance or concern to you. Bottom line, is that I will not print color photos on this machine without Premium Gloss Photo Paper. But, if you are printing from web pages or other sources such as PowerPoint, Excel, etc, which use "spot color" versus continuous tone (photos) this printer will give entirely satisfactory results, since you are printing solid monochromatic colors in documents/text with bar charts or in outline content with solid colors to differentiate subject matter in text. CONCLUSION: On a technical level, in the week or so of using this printer, it functions flawlessly on all levels (wireless printing, mobile printing from handheld devices, copy, scan, printing on CD's or DVD's, as well as a wide variety of other paper sizes and types of documents). This printer has the greatest value for people who might do high volume printing, IF Epson's claims about the number of prints possible with the Eco Tank system, being cheaper in the long run versus low priced "throw away" printers, using outrageously overpriced OEM inkjet cartridges. I would say that for people who just do occasional printing, the front end cost of the 7700 needs to be analyzed to see if it justifies the benefits promised. One needs to examine their overall usage and do a "total cost to print" comparison. For instance, you pay a hundred bucks for a throw away printer and then buy 4-5 replacement sets (5 inkjet cartridges in the 3 colors and the 2 blacks) of the high priced inkjet cartridges, which in total (printer cost + number of inkjet cartridges) equals the purchase price of this printer, along with its huge quantity of ink, good for thousands of copies. And if this printer plus its 2 full sets of ink bottles truly equal what they claim to be the equivalent of 30 full sets of inkjet cartridges, then I would say this is a very sensible choice, economically. I guess the main question is whether your budget along with your emotions about exorbitant inkjet cartridge cost, will trigger a purchase. My basic thought is that for over 20 years I have wanted to "flip off" all the inkjet printer manufacturers for their outrageous cost of ink. So on an emotional level, I am "all in" on Epson's game changing and sensible step to eliminate consumer outrage and hostility to the industry in general. It will be interesting to see how many other brands follow suit in the future. So, if you want great color photos on Premium Photo Paper, this will get you there. If you are not overly picky about basic color printing from web pages or self generated documents, this will get you there. If you want to print from your phone, or tablet, this will get you there. If you want to break free from cartridge prison, You are there. The only reason for a 1 Star deduct is for the omissions by Epson to educate regarding the little black maintenance box, which raised quite a bit of confusion for me, and the road bump regarding your router speed requirements, coupled with the fact that it MIGHT work on the 5.0GHz band. And lastly, that there is no way to know whether Eco Tank will actually deliver the output promised, until one uses this printer for a year or so to see how quickly the ink tanks empty, I'll take my chances because I am tired of elevated blood pressure every time one empty ink cartridge shuts my printer down, when I don't even print in color (due to cartridge cost). I got to the point in the last 3 years, of always going to Fedex/Kinko's to generate any color prints or copies that I needed, since it was a heck of a lot cheaper than buying color cartridges for occasional use, after I realized I don't really need color at home. There is a big difference between "want" and "need" when you examine cost. So, now I can "WANT" again.