Others say...

"Not worth the time or money"
This picturemate has been a total disaster. After printing just a few pictures the color on the photo turns to pink and yellow. Put in a new cartridge and it will work for a few photos and then the color turns funny again. Not only does it not print many photos with a true color image, but it is slow and the cartridge runs out of ink after a couple dozen photos. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS PRODUCT!

"PictureMate Printer"
I loved my PictureMate for about two years. It made great pictures and I used it frequently. After using it for about two years, it needs to have the heads cleaned almost every time I use it. It is not as much fun to use when you have to remember to do that every time. My daughter had this problem with hers from the beginning.

"Prints great pictures when heads are not clogged up"
Inkjet printers have never been a personal favorite of mine. Since the early days of inkjet printers, the quality of printouts they generate never impressed me. As photo printers came into the market, I never felt they were a worthy replacement for traditional photo prints.

Having said that, the quality of prints from the PictureMate is very impressive. At a passing glance, you cannot distinguish these prints from professional photo lab prints. Crisp, colorful pictures print crisp and colorful. The stipple ink patterns are still there but much less pronounced that your typical tri-color inkjet printer.

My only complaint is with the tendancy of this printer's print heads to clog up. With my printer, it happens rather frequently. Sometimes when printing a series of photos, a photo will land in the output tray faded out. After that I try printing a nozzle check page. Half the lines in the test pattern are colored smears, indicating clogged print heads. Why does this happen after it had just printed a perfect print? I cannot leave a large print job alone for fear of the nozzles suddenly ruining prints and wasting paper.

The printer's nozzle cleaning utility doesn't always work on the first try. Sometimes it takes three or four cycles to clear up the problems. Of course, this wastes valuable ink as the printer uses ink from the cartridge to shoot through the nozzle to clean it. After owning this printer for a couple of years, I've yet to be able to use all 100 sheets of photo paper with the Photo pack.

I'd like to think this is an atypical issue but my long history with Epson printers, both personally and professionally as an IT expert, this is a common problem all Epson printers have. Designing a printer with fixed print heads, as almost all Epson printers are, is a good way to make cartridges less expensive. But without a way to replace troublesome print heads as the ones I have, all you have is a paperweight that plugs into your computer and wastes paper.

If you can get past these issues with the Epson PictureMate, they're great printers and you will love the quality of prints it can produce.

"This review was put off for too long"
This printer has been a piece of garbage since the day I bought it. I don't know why I kept trying, as the purchase was made about a year ago. It should have been thrown it in the trash long ago and I would have cut my losses (instead I did buy one more package of paper and ink. Mistake.) I have never gotten more than one picture in a row without an error message, turning the printer off, turning it back on, doing that several times, and finally maybe getting it to print two pictures in the same day.

Now it says the cartridge should be replaced, when about 20 minutes earlier it told me there were approximately 56 pictures left in the cartridge (and I have not printed anywhere near 44 pictures, which would add up to the claim of 100 per cartridge. I have printed about 6.)

The ironic thing is, the handful of pictures that have printed correctly have been beautiful. The one that I printed today was perfect. But several tries to print one more picture were a waste of about two hours. This is the last time I try to use the printer, it is finally going in the trash.

"Immediate malfunction"
I tried my Picturemate for the first time last night and it malfunctioned almost immediately. It claims that it has a paper jam, but it doesn't. I've tried pushing "OK" to clear it as suggested, but this does nothing. It still insists it's jammmed and refuses to operate. I've tried the suggested "troubleshooting" to no avail, so I'm now on hold for an estimated sixteen minutes with the Epson support center. All of this hassle for a brand new fussy appliance makes me wish I'd gone with another brand. The few pictures I got out of it looked very good, but the macine took a few minutes to print each one, so even when it's working, the machine is still flawed. I would strongly suggest another brand.