One of the reasons I have this blog is for my personal benefit, so I can remember when I purchased items of kit, when they broke down and what I replaced them with.

After my current printer, an Epson XP-8500 started having problems, I realised I hadn’t blogged about getting that printer back in September 2018.

I bought the Epson as a replacement for a Canon printer I had, which itself had been a replacement for a wonderful Canon printer, the MP600R, that had lasted ten years….

I bought the Canon MP600R back in 2006. This was a somewhat expensive printer, but it had separate ink cartridges, a scanner, memory card slots (remember those) and could print printable CDs and DVDs.

The scanner was pretty decent, and it could print some excellent colour prints, if you used Canon paper and Canon inks. Compared to modern printers it was quite slow, but speed wasn’t always a key issue for me, picture quality was. I didn’t like the fact that you had to use Canon paper, but it was quite easy to get hold of, at local stationers and Amazon.

I was saddened when the print head failed  in May 2016.  The cost of repairing the MP600R was prohibitive, I would have been happy to replace the print head, but the cost of a replacement was around £150 and even then I wasn’t sure if it would have fixed the issue. So I recycled the Canon printer and replaced it with the Canon MG7752. I thought at the time that was an excellent replacement for the MP600R and hoped it would last as long as the printer it replaced.

Alas it wasn’t going to be and the MG7752 failed after two years in 2018 (just out of the two year guarantee period). Though I was happy to buy another Canon, in the end we went with the Epson XP-8500 in September 2018, which we got from John Lewis as they offered a two year guarantee and a good price.

Perfect for photography enthusiasts looking for exceptional photo printing and great all-round performance, the Epson Expression Photo XP-8500 will print, scan and copy to a high standard. The XP-8500 uses six individual inks for high quality colour prints, and features a large LCD touch screen and wireless printing functionality for easy use throughout your home. This compact and stylish printer has a small footprint so it’ll fit neatly into your set up.

I much prefer separate inks, as I think they are more economical than purchasing a combined colour ink cartridge. I wanted to print photographs, and also wanted to scan stuff as well. I also liked the fact it was wireless so I could Airprint from the iPad or the iPhone.

I was impressed with the photo printing which was quite fast, yet still excellent quality.

There were a few issues that I didn’t like. Now and again the printer would get lost on the network and you had to go through a process of power cycling the printer, cancelling the print job and printing again.

Over the last few months, I started to have issues with the photo paper feed, so much so that within the last month it stopped working altogether. I followed all the troubleshooting guides, but to no avail. As it was in lockdown, and we still needed to print, I decided to wait, though I did check it was still within the two year guarantee period.

I have been scanning a few photographs and other documents, and noticed that the quality in some areas was quite poor and blurry. It wasn’t the whole image which was blurred, just part of it.

So having a little time I phoned the John Lewis technical support line.

The end result was that due to the age of the printer, I could either have a replacement or a refund. At the time of calling there was very small range of printers in stock. So I initially decided to wait until later, as we could still print to A4, but I wasn’t sure how long that was going to last. In addition if I had refund, we would have to return the printer, so we wouldn’t be able to print. Also I had just forked out for a complete set of replacement inks which was about £90… 

Later that day I checked the printer range at John Lewis and was pleasantly surprised to see they must have had new stock come in.

They had the Epson Expression Photo XP-8605 which used the same cartridges as the XP-8500 and looked to be an upgraded version of the printer we had, but in white…

Perfect for photography enthusiasts looking for exceptional photo printing and great all-round performance, the Epson Expression Photo XP-8605 will print, scan and copy to a high standard. The XP-8605 uses six individual inks for high quality colour prints, and features a large LCD touch screen and wireless printing functionality for easy use throughout the home. This compact and stylish printer has a small footprint so it’ll fit neatly into your set up. You can print double-sided onto A4, and with dual paper trays you can feed A4 paper and photo paper at the same time.

To be honest the description and functionality was almost identical.

So I ordered the printer and phoned John Lewis back, who were really helpful. I could drop off the old printer at our local Waitrose and at the same time pick up our new printer.

I was slightly sceptical about ordering virtually the same model, but I wasn’t too sure that if I ordered a Canon, whether I would have the same issues I had with the MG7752.

I think I really miss the reliability of the MP600R.  In a similar story, I had in 2011 bought the HP PhotoSmart B110a in the main so I could print direct from my iPad using AirPrint, this was to complement the Canon. However just over a year after purchase and as I replaced the inks, the print head failed.

So here’s hoping that I get some decent life out fo the XP-8605.