Just over a year ago we reviewed the Epson Artisan 810 All-In-One Photo Printer. It performed so well that it got our Editors Choice award (which it stole from the Artisan 800). Recently Epson released the Artisan 835, which is a newer model and should have a few upgrades. We are going to take a look at the new printer and see if lives up to the 810′s excellent performance.

Since the Artisan 835 and the Artisan 810 are almost exactly the same, this review is going to be very similar to the Artisan 810 review that I did earlier.

Features

• Smart, 7.8″ touch panel — large display lights up only the buttons you need; includes a 3.5″ LCD to preview, edit and print photos
• Ultra Hi-Definition prints from the world’s fastest 4″ x 6″ photo printer — brilliant 4″ x 6″ photos in as fast as 10 seconds; DX5 MicroPiezo technology provides the finest color and detail without sacrificing speed
• Send faxes fast, even in color — fax in as fast as 3 seconds per page; store up to 60 speed dials and receive up to 180 pages in memory; also faxes legal-size documents; includes PC-Fax software
• Built-in wireless and Ethernet networking — built-in wireless (Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n) and wired networking; print, scan, and access memory card slots from any room in the house
• One-of-a-kind projects — easily create coloring books, personal note paper, invitations and greeting cards using your own photos
• Results ready to share — lab quality photos are smudge, scratch, water and fade resistant
• Perfect photos made easy — Auto Photo Correction and red-eye removal with and without a computer
• Versatile paper handling — automatic two-sided printing with two paper trays, plus 30-page Automatic Document Feeder to quickly copy, scan or fax stacks of originals
• Bring old, faded photos back to life — easily restore the color to faded photos
• Individual ink cartridges — replace only the color you need
• Quickly print from your mobile device — print photos, office documents and more, see

When it comes to printing options, the Artisan 835 has a pluthera. This printer can print on just about any type of surface meant for printing, from photo paper, to printable DVDs. With the included duplexer, two-sided printing is a snap. Even without the duplexer you can still print on two sides, it just takes a little more effort.

This printer uses Claria Hi-Definition Ink which is currently one of the best and longest lasting inks you can get. Because of this, Epson claims that the photos that come out of this printer will last 4x longer than photos that are printed in a photo lab.

The Artisan 835 has at least five ways to connect it to a computer. First, you can connect it directly to the computer with a USB cable, this is good if you only have one computer. If you have more than one computer and a wireless network, then you can use the second way which is WiFi, or if you have a wired network then you can use the third way which is an Ethernet cable. The fourth way is using an optional Bluetooth adapter, so if you have a phone or camera with Bluetooth then you can print directly from those devices. Finally, the last way is to plug in a memory card or USB stick into one of the memory slots or the PictBridge port.

Not only can you print directly from a memory card or a USB stick, but the printer can enhance and fix those photos if they have problems like red eye or are too light or dark.

Printing photos and text is not the only thing this printer can print. The Artisan 835 is also able to print lined, grid, and coloring pages. All of these things worked out really great. I would only make one comment. The coloring pages can only be printed from a scanned source, or memory card and not from a picture on a PC.

Grid Paper

Coloring page

The printer has a built-in paper tray that functions like two paper trays. The bottom part of the paper tray is for larger paper, it can hold up to 8.5″ x 14″, and the top tray can hold up to 5″ x 7″ paper, which is great for photo paper.

Design

The printer is very compact. On top is an Automatic Document Feeder and the scanner. The ADF can hold up to 30 pages and the maximum size that can be scanned is an A4 document. I really like the design of the ADF because when you are not using it, you can close it up.

Top

ADF

The controls for the Artisan 835 are very unique. On the front is a very large 7.8″ touch panel with a 3.5″ LCD right in the middle. This is a very high resolution screen, and is great for not only displaying the menus and options, but also for showing photos that will be printed. If you are printing from a memory card or USB stick then you can use the screen to preview the images and see what they will look like before they are printed. The screen is not large enough to see a lot of details, but you will get a good idea about the results.

Screen

To the left of the screen are six touch panel buttons. Those buttons are Display/Crop, Menu, Home, Left arrow, Auto, and Back. The Display/Crop button is for printing buttons from a flash card. With this button you can choose how to display the pictures (full, thumbnails, or full with details) and you can also crop the images for printing on photo paper. The menu button will display the menu for whatever screen you are currently viewing. The Home button will always take you back to the main screen. The left arrow is used to scroll through each menu’s screen. The Auto button turns on and off the Fax auto answer. The back button takes you back one screen.

On screen buttons

To the right of the screen are another 7 buttons. The buttons are plus and minus, Clear Settings, right arrow, Start, OK, and View Auto Correct. The plus and minus buttons are for increasing and decreasing the number of copies of each picture you print. Clear settings is self explanatory. The right arrow is just like the left arrow in that it moves through screens. The Start button will start a copy, or fax. The OK button accepts any setting changes. View Auto Correct turns on the auto correction and displays it on the screen.

On screen buttons

To the left of the touch panel are two additional buttons. The top button is the power button, and obviously it is used for turning on and off the printer. Below that is the CD tray button, and it is used for ejecting the CD tray so a CD can be placed on it.

The whole control console lifts up freely. This serves two purposes that I have found so far. The first is to give you a better viewing angle, and the second is to open up a space so you can get to the CD/DVD tray. As you lift the controls up they will lock into place. To get the console to go back down you need to press the unlock button, which is at the top left of the controls, above the power button (it has a yellow stripe). Pressing the Unlock button will lower the display automatically, do not press it down or it will damage the lock and you may not be able to lower it ever again (trust me, I know from experience).

Below the control console is the CD/DVD tray, paper output, and input trays. The first one closest to the top is the CD/DVD tray. Pressing the CD/DVD tray button causes this tray to come out, but the tray does not come out very far, so before you can put a disk on it you must lift the control console up. This opens up a space so you can reach in and place the disk on the tray.

CD tray out

CD on tray

Below that is the paper output tray. It pulls out and can support anything from 4″x6″ all the way up to 8.5″ x 14″.

Paper output tray

To the right of the paper trays are the memory card slots and the PictBridge port.

Memory card slots

At the very bottom is the paper input tray. Actually it is two paper trays built into one. There is an upper and lower section, the lower section is for large paper, up to 8.5″x14″ and the upper section is for smaller photo paper, up to 5″x7″.

Paper tray

The back of the printer has a spot for power, USB, Ethernet, and phone cables. There is also a rather large Duplexer attached to the back. This is responsible for automatic two sided printing. The Duplexer can be removed if you are trying to squeeze the printer into a tight space.

USB/Phone/Ethernet

Duplexer

If you open up the top and take a look inside there are really only two spots of interest and one is the ink cartridge holders. Almost all of the previous printers that I have reviewed have had the ink located right on top of the print head, but not with this printer. On this printer they are located off to the side. The small green tab that you see is a kind of lock. It is used to lock the print head into place while being transported. It must be moved before you plug in the printer, failing to do this may damage the printer. The Printer has a special place for it just above so it does not get lost.

Inside

Performance

Performance testing is where printers either shine, or fall flat on their face. One of my complaints about previous Artisan printers is that it required new cartridges before they would initialize. This meant that if you were upgrading from an older Artisan then you could not use the ink from your old printer, and many times the old ink was just thrown away. However, because I am frugal I always try and use the old ink. So I was pleasantly surprised when the Artisan 835 did not force me to insert new cartridges to begin the setup. However, during the setup it prompted me to insert new cartridges for Cyan, Magenta, and Black, I can only assume the old cartridges ran out of ink.

At the end of the setup I like to check the ink levels just to see how much was used. I was completely astonished by what I saw. As you can also see in the below image, half my black ink is gone, this was a new cartridge. This only affected the black, as you can see the Cyan and Magenta are still full (the other colors are the old cartridges). It is possible that I screwed up the initialization by using old ink, but I still think this is very bad, no printer should use that much ink during the setup.

Ink levels

The first thing I always like doing is printing out lots of pictures. Printing with the 835 is extremely quick, the Artisan 835 can print up to 38 pages per minute and a single photo can be printed in as little as 10 seconds.

The photos that printed are fantastic. I printed off several photos from different printers to compared the quality of each. I printed photos from the Artisan 835 and the Artisan 810. The photos appeared identical, this makes sense because the 835 and 810 photo printing specs are also identical.

One of the features of the Artisan is that it will auto correct photos that are printed from a memory card or USB stick. It can also automatically remove red eye. I could not see a difference between the auto corrected and regular photos. The red eye reduction, also worked reasonably well, except that it missed one of the red eyes in my test photo. If you want everything perfect, it is always best to do the touch-ups yourself.

Printing documents is also very fast. I was able to print 7 full color pages in 55 seconds. By default the pages print in order, which means the first page is on the bottom. Luckily, I found a reverse option which prints the last page first. I think this option is in the word processing software and not the printer drivers. Either way I appreciate having it and I wish it was the default.

Printing DVDs is a lot of fun. I have bought printers in the past just because they could print on CDs and DVDs. The Artisan 835 makes the process really easy because it is all built-in. The quality is also superb, as you can see from the images, it is very easy to see even the smallest detail.

CD on tray

CD Printed

Next, I wanted to test the printing of text. This is where most inkjet printers have the hardest time. I compared the Artisan 835 against my HP P2035n laserjet printer. The first image is the P2035n and the second one is the Artisan on normal text, and the third is the Artisan on fine text. As you can see the P2035n does a better job with text, but the Artisan 835 is not far off. I think you will find that no matter what inkjet you buy, a laserjet is always going to do better with text, that is why I have one of each.

p2035n text

835 text fine

835 text normal

In addition to just printing text I also tried out the Duplexer. I am happy to report that double sided printing completed without a problem. The only thing I would mention is that the printer pauses for about 5 seconds after it prints the first side. This may make you think it is done, but do not remove the paper otherwise the second side will not print. The printer will pull the paper back in and flip it over so it can print on the other side.

To test scanning I have some professional color charts that I like to scan. This gives me a good idea of how well the scanner performs. As you can see it did a decent job, the colors are not perfect, but they are really good.

Charts

Last, but not least, is faxing. To test this I sent a 7 page document to myself. I was very happy to see that the fax did not actually dial until all the pages had been scanned into memory. The scanning was quick, taking about 5 seconds per page. Once they were all scanned the fax dialed the number and sent them to the destination. I was sending black and white pages so it was fairly quick. The whole process took about 5 minutes. I don’t have a second color fax, but I imagine that it would take quite a bit longer, because it takes longer to scan color, and color documents would also have more data to send to the destination.

All during these tests the printer was really quiet. Sometimes I had to watch the printer just to make sure it was printing. The scanner is also really quiet and fast, so if you are not paying attention you will miss it.

The entire Artisan line uses the same ink. So if you upgrade you can keep your old ink and use it with the new printer. The ink is not super expensive, costing about $9 per cartridge if you buy all the colors together, and $18 per cartridge for the high capacity black.

Warranty and Support

The warranty for the Artisan 835 is simply a one year warranty that covers parts and labor for manufacturer defects. Epson also offers a one year extension to the warranty for $39.95 and two year extension for $59.95. In my opinion this is a weak warranty, and a cheap trick. The Artisan 810 included a two year warranty, so by reducing the warranty to one year it seems like Epson is trying to make more money by selling warranty extensions.

My experience with support has been positive. On a previous model I accidentally broke the lock release for the screen (I pushed it down instead of using the release button) and Epson was very easy to deal with. They sent a new 800 and even paid for return shipping for the old one, no I did not tell them I was writing a review, I spoke to them like a normal customer.

Conclusion

So to sum everything up, the 835 is still produces great quality prints, it does not require new ink to activate, and it is wireless N certified. However, it does have a shorter warranty, and it used up half my black ink just in the activation.

Because the upgrades aren’t really that great, the lower warranty, and the ink wasting, I am going to recommend that you skip the 835 and get yourself an 810 instead. Since the 810 is last years model you can save quite a bit of money, and you should still get the 2 year warranty if you buy it new.

JusTech'n editors' rating
Features Design Performance Warranty Support Price