Why I buy this one ?
- Fast, up to 9 ppm print speed, 4-by-6-inch photo in less than a minute
- 2,880 x 720 dpi maximum resolution
- Prints large format, up to 13 by 44 inches
- Lightfast and water-resistant ink formula
- USB and parallel interfaces; PC and Mac compatible

What our customer's say!

"You can print on anything!", I purchased this printer while I was still in college (in 2001) and it saved me a ton of money on large-format printing costs. Since then, I have used it as a freelancer for various design projects and it has always produced wonderful prints. I'm able to use papers of all sizes and also print on other various medias (such as watercolor paper and even stiff fabrics). Every once-in-a-while, the heads tend to clog, but I've usually been able to fix that. That's common for all ink jets, especially when printing in large quantities. It's been about 5 years and I'm considering buying another SP1280 rather than upgrading to the newer model.

"Good and Bad", The good:

I have had the 1280 for about 7 months now. I love the color and the fact that I can get ink cartridges for cheap to fit it and they work fine. As long as you print ONE sheet at a time it works very very nicely. I repeat: ONE.

The bad:

This thing has a horrible sheet feeder from hell. I wish Epson would change the technology on this because the 780 had the same problem. It wants to eat a whole stack of paper at once. It doesnt matter how I put them in, whether i fan the sheets, nothing.... so you end up babysitting it when you are doing 10 prints or 20 prints, whatever.

I'm doing a multi-print project right now and i think it can hear me because it just ate another stack of paper... argghhhhhh!

"ONE OF THE BEST EPSON PRINTERS EVER MADE", I have owned my Epson Stylus 1280 for over a year and a half now and have never once experienced any type of problem with this unit what so ever! I only use aftermarket Abacus Ink and have yet to have a glogged printhead issue. I use this printer to print images taken from my Olympus C 8080 widezoom at 8 megs.
The printouts are perfect! Epson has just released a new driver for XP which can be downloaded at the Epson site to bring this 1280's resolutions all the way up to 5620 x 720!

"The 5th star would be Linux drivers from Epson", My 1280 died over the weekend. So I did some shopping and bought an HP Photosmart 7760. I figured I'd save some money and wait to get a larger-format printer later.

It was a bad move. The HP is going back, and I've ordered a second 1280. I used my first one hard. For two years. I used it for everything -- normal documents, and lots and lots of digital artwork on matte paper.

Amazon currently has about the best price on ink cartridges and matte paper around.

I did my own tests on the inks -- both water resistance and ultraviolet light resistance. My Bic pen that marked the sample faded in two weeks of sunlight, but not my printed image! (I put a control in my filing cabinet to compare to.) I will not buy compatible cartridges, because I've already investigated the quality of the Epson ink and paper myself. I sell what I print for $185 a page. Sometimes a little less. With framing, more.

If you are a Linux user (and if you don't know what that means or you aren't sure, you can disregard this), you are in for a tough trip. The gimp-print drivers don't come close to matching the Epson Windows drivers for color quality. Not one little bit. Bug Epson about this. There are some adjustments possible with gimp-print, but it would be entirely trial-and-error. [MARCH 2, 2006 -- The gimp-print drivers have gotten much better. You'll be happy now.]

I don't suggest going to the HP side to fix the Linux problem. HP says they "support" over 200 printers with Linux drivers, but the one I happened to try was abysmal. It couldn't even center the image on the page, Gimp didn't work at all, and neither did OpenOffice. At least with my Epson 1280, I have a little printing support (albeit with crummy colors).

If you've used other Epson printers, the 1280 might have slightly different color rendering. I had a Stylus Photo 820 which produced beautiful blues for sky and water. On the Stylus Photo 1280 (under Windows -- we're no longer on the Linux subject), these blues were more grey. I wish the 1280 came with the 820's coloring.

One other thing I like about the 1280: you can print very close to the bottom of the page. Not all the way, but closer than many other printers. This is very helpful.

I wish Epson made an affordable six-color printer like the 1280 with a wider format, perhaps 17" or 22". In my view, they don't.

One warning; Epson claims that the 1280 can print up to 13" x 44". I haven't found a supplier for paper that size. Epson doesn't seem to sell any. At least not in matte finish.

I never print glossy stuff (longevity considerations), so don't consider me to be any kind of authority on glossy stuff.

"Very Disappointing", I just bought the 1280 and I am extremly disappointed. I had a Canon i9100 for a couple of weeks, but returned it because it didn't print 11x14 borderless prints. The Epson did, so I bought it. Upon comparing the Canon i9100 to the Epson 1280, there really is no comparison. The Canon has vivid, and true color, the Epson prints couldn't come close to the Canon prints no matter what I did. The Canon is lightning fast. Even at it's highest resolution settings. The Epson is painstakingly slow at any setting other than draft mode. I was really hoping the Epson would work out for me, but no such luck. I'm returning the Epson and re-purchasing the Canon i9100. I'll just have to print out at 11x17 and trim off three inches when I need 11x14 prints. The $100 price difference for the Canon is well worth it.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"A digital darkroom in your own home", The 1280 prints beautiful professional like images that will rival any pro lab or competitors printers in its class or price range. Yes its a little slow and may want to use a little more ink than its competitors but when your print is complete you than can go to the next step and frame it and hang it up for display because it looks great.I have used other photo printers and achieved some good results but nothing as good as the 1280.Mind you your prints are going to come out as good as your digital images are in the first place Remember garbage in garbage out. You know by now their tons of software out than can help aid a soso image but it all starts with a great shot.If you choose the 1280 stick with epson photo paper or canon photo paper pro to achieve those great prints.Good luck and great shooting.

"Gorgeous print quality", The print quality of the Epson Photo 1280 is gorgeous. On heavyweight matte or photoglossy paper the results are virtually indistinguishable from a print. It does consume a lot of ink, but that is to be expected. The only way to produce rich colours is by laying down enough ink to saturate the sheet which is being printed on. The only complaint I have about this printer are the ink cartridges. I would much prefer the ability to replace only the colours I've run out of as opposed to replacing the entire cartridge.

"Stunning for the price", I am a commercial architectural photographer working with 80mb+ files. My results using the Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper are quite good. I have printed up to 11x14 as well as borderless 8x10. The printer holds without compromise both the highlight and shadow detail. The one area that is in need of improvement is in gradients. The transition gradient on walls etc is a bit harsh with no even flow. It tends to jump from one tone to another. I have found no difference between the 2800dpi and 1400dpi settings, even when I magnify the prints. If you are serious about color I would suggest getting an ICC profile program to keep the color consistent with your monitor, it will save you countless hours of color balancing the printer.
I have used this printer for about 6 months now and there are currently other better Epson printers on then market, although if you are on a budget this one will do the job.

"yep, it was worth every penny...", ...I recently got in the market for a high-quality color printer after wanting a way to print out some of the photographs I've been doing. Most of my work is displayed on the web, but it's nice to have some large photos to put up around the house. I'm printing from 4x5" and 2x3" negatives, and I wanted something that would let me print put very large photos without spending 1k+ on a "wide carriage" printer.

My previous inkjet was a BJC-600, which is a total piece of junk compared to the 1280. Not much help when doing comparisons.

The Epson can easily be cajoled into doing a nice 26"x24" print without too much effort (two carefully-aligned 13" prints), and the image quality is stunning. Most of the images I've printed out so far have been B&W, and the prints are awesome at showing off all the tonality of the original negatives.

It's not all perfect, and I wish the printer manufacturers did a better job of emphasizing the drawbacks. The prints simply aren't going to be as permanent as a "real photo print"; the inks fade and color shift over time if they're exposed to air, and from what I can tell this fading takes place much more quickly than a standard B&W photo print would in the same environment. It's not the end of the world, but it is a drag.

The cost of printing is high, especially given the cost of ink cartridges and how quickly they're used up. Frankly, I almost think it would be cheaper to do 8"x10" or larger B&W photo prints (not considering labor), and the upfront costs for equipment would be cheaper as well. (Color's a different story, of course, and the 1280 would win hands-down.)

Another thing to keep in mind is that generating a high quality print isn't a click-n-go operation, and I doubt if it ever will be. You need to carefully consider the quality of the source material, and realize that what is printed won't match 100% what you see on the monitor without doing a lot of tweaking. Obviously this all depends on how nice you want the final product to appear... but it can take many hours to get the results you really want.

2880dpi is just a waste of ink as far as I can tell. It doesn't look any different than 1440, tho I haven't taken a microscope to the print (and if I have to do this to see a difference then it doesn't actually matter).

The only other problem I've run into was getting 13" borderless prints appears to be impossible without using their software. (I run Linux only, so I have no way to use their printer programs.) There always seems to be a .12" white border on either the left or right sides. It works fine on smaller sizes which is what most people will be using, but it's a little annoying that it doesn't easily work at 13" as well. Again, this is only a problem if not using their software, as supposedly it works fine with their print package.

Have I compared it to anyone else's products? Nope. I don't believe anyone else is selling a 13" printer of the same image quality that also accepts roll paper in the same price class. Having the ability to use roll paper opens up a lot of possibilities for larger prints and other odd sizes, so it's a big advantage for my purposes; that and the 13" carriage were the main reasons I chose the 1280.

I haven't tried it with text or any other uses, as I have a faster laser printer for that type of stuff. But for a photo printer, I think this is a very fine choice indeed. There are cheaper alternatives, and you'll want to think about your priorities before buying--I can't honestly say if the image quality is particularly better or worse than the competitors, for example, and that may be your primary concern. But I can definitely say that it's better than what I need for my own purposes.

"faded prints", I have had the Epson 1280 for about 6 months now. Very good prints except for it really uses the ink. The ink for my HP 960 lasted longer and had good images.
A photo that I had printed after getting the new Epson of all the teachers at my daughters school faded horribly. It was hanging in a room with no direct sunlight on it. The only thing I could think caused this was the flourescent lights. It was printed with the Epson 1280, Epson inks, on Epson paper. I was very shocked and concerned.