Epson Stylus CX4200 Inkjet Printer

Wonderful!

Hi guys, I just got one of these printers for juts a few bucks. There are a few workarounds to the black and white printing issue. This may be helpful for those who have this printer. Heres a free program that will trick the printer into thinking it has a never-ending supply of ink: [...] Theres also an extensive blog post with solutions here: [...]

With the CX4200, every color cartridge must contain ink in order to print, even if you just want to use the black one. This product was created to oblige consumers to buy as much ink as possible, even when its unnecessary. Dont buy it. Please, dont buy it.

This is my second one. The first one lasted about 10 years, but it is not used everyday.

Ive had this printer for just over 2 years. With light use, the cartridges last for a while. The problem is that the print head does not clean itself properly and now anything I print has a smudge at on the side of the paper where the print head changed direction (going back and forth). No amount of head cleaning fixes this problem.

For years I used Epson printers, but the CX4200 was a chosen as a home/office solution. Was I wrong. Epson, in its greed, requires the use of color even when most printing is black and white. They also placed a chip in the cartridge that stops the printer when the chip is removed, shaken and reiniserted. Even if there is ink remaining. NEVER BUY EPSON.

If one color of ink is out, it prevents all printing. Even if you have a full black cartridge. Thats ok if you want a printer that doesnt print I guess. The cartridges run out quick. The color cartridges get used up even when printing in black only. The scanner is good enough, but does not scan 35 mm negatives.

Recently my low ink light went on in the middle of a project. I was not too disappointed - in fact I felt a bit smug because I had just purchased a half dozen black ink cartridges at a good price over the internet! So I changed cartridges and went on to continue my project. But the ink light was still on! I took out the cartridge, shook it, reinserted it over and over. I went to the Epson website to get a new driver. The new driver allowed me to see my ink status. The black cartridge was full, but the color was empty! In fact all 3 of the colored cartridges had suddenly become empty! How could this be? Im WAY too cheap to ever use color! I inserted my new black cartridges into the colored slots. No luck. Total loss. Trash can time. I will NEVER buy from Epson again.

The printing only works when ALL the ink cartridges have ink - including pages that only require black ink. Here is how I found out: I just got a great deal on black ink for the Epson CX5400 that was clearence priced at Staples. I even bought an extra cartridge. After installing the black ink and then trying to print out a text document, I found out that the Epson company wasnt going to let me print text (black ink only) documents unless I also buy the cyan and magenta ink cartridges too. What a screw over! So I threw the Epson Stylus CX5400 in the garbage and will NEVER buy from Epson again.

I have purchased a number of Epson printers over the years, but this one will be the last one I buy. I bought this printer because it had different carts for the inks rather then having a single color cart and a B/W cart like my prior printers. I figured this would make it more economical to print, but it actually made it more expensive! The cost of operating this printer has been very high, the ink carts (original Epson) have failed if I dont replace ALL of them at the same time! To add insult to the injury, the printer will refuse to print in B/W if there is no color ink. You cant even make a B/W photocopy even though there is a dedicated B/W copy button. This printer is nothing but a piece of junk and I imagine that all recent printers from Epson are the same.