There’s a long row of A4 sized framed photos of our extended family at my parents’ home, and most of those prints had been done using the Epson L550 inkjet printer we’ve had for just over five years now. Truth to tell, I didn’t expect that inkjet printer to have been used for this long. But as these things go, the mechanical parts were starting to experience significant wear and tear, and frequent flushing of the ink nozzles became a bi-monthly affair. Just as well – it was time to find a replacement. The wife and daughter are both far heavier users of the printer at home than I am (my main use of the printer is actually to scan documents), so we collectively had a bunch of additional requirements for this new printer:
Support wireless printing
Duplex printing
Duplex scanning
Epson’s refillable ink cartridge system was pretty novel for its time, but it’s also become a common feature in most inkjet printers in the about $250 to $500 price bracket nowadays. So, i was going to be able to get pretty good volume no matter which brand I went with. I was also a little uncertain initially if I wanted to get another Epson; good as the print quality is for photos, Epson’s photo paper aren’t as commonly found as Canon’s for instance. In any case, the model I settled on was the Epson L6170 – a multi-function printer that retails at around SGD479 at the usual electrical appliance stores, but can be had for around SGD447 or so if you buy from online vendors. The printer arrived 2 days after an order placement at Shopee, and I’m quite happy with it – for the most part. Comments:
The L6170 has a pretty compact and block-y design – which I like a lot more than the L550’s paper trays protruding everywhere design. The footprint of this new printer is also smaller than the L550, despite it also offering a fully concealed paper cassette – something the L550 lacked. The unit also has dust covers at the top that you flip over if you’re going to scan documents using the automatic document feeder
Setup was easy, if also a little involved. After the ink tanks were filled up, the L6170 goes through half a dozen different print alignment and nozzle check tests, and you’d need some paper as the printer to churn test patterns for you to check. Setting up the wireless connection was also the last step, but made easy with the printer’s support for WPS – Wi-Fi Protected Setup.
The L6170 also supports a color LCD panel compared to the monochrome dot matrix like display on the L550. Ah, the advances of technology. The panel isn’t touch-screen enabled though and somewhat diminutive too. Nonetheless, text is easy to read off it, and in the absence of a touch-screen, input is registered by the 11-key keypad that’s beside it.
Most impressive of this printer is Epson’s new ink tank system. There are still four ink bottles that fills the tank: black, cyan, yellow, and magenta, with the black offered in larger capacities on account that we routinely use that color a lot more often than the others. And each ink bottle can be purchased separately – they cost around SGD10 a bottle. What’s improved is the ink bottle’s upgraded nozzle system: basically, you just unscrew the ink bottle cap – the cap screw threads go several rounds so there’s zero change of it popping out by accident – turn the bottle upside down, and align the ink bottle’s nozzle against the tank’s ink mouths and push it in gently, and the ink automatically flows out steadily. There was no spillage whatsoever, and the ink top-up process was so easy this is something I’d entrust to my kids to do even. The L550 ink tank top-up process was a lot messier, and there are permanent stains on my counter-top to show for it!
Unlike the L550, this new printer also supports borderless printing. And based on the couple of photo prints I’ve tested this feature with, it works as expected.
All in and after a week of use, the printer seems to be a great replacement for the old L550, though also more costly too. I’ll report in after a longer period of use – probably around the middle of next year or so.
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