If you're the kind of person that sticks to Ford, La Coste, Adidas or any other of the well known brands, chances are – if you're the lucky owner of an Epson Artisan 800 – when time comes you'll want to replace it with the excellent upgrade, the Epson Artisan 810 Wireless.
Don't be embarrassed to be so easily identified, you could have done much worse and I don't believe anyone would criticize your conservative choice of brand or model. As you probably already know, the Artisan 800 won “Best printer of the year” in the US, so the only thing left to do was to add features, rather than trying to fix mishaps that weren't there in the first place.
The Epson Artisan 800 and the Artisan 810 – even though a couple of years apart are almost identical twins. Well, the duplex that you get included with the Artisan 810, you had to cough up an extra 50 bucks for with the 800 and Epson added a small LED on the button that lowers the touch screen back into position.
Since the Duplex unit supposedly saves you 50 percent paper as you're printing on both sides, you really have to analyze your printing needs and get your calculator out. A letter sheet of paper is roughly 0.01 $, so if are you're printing in the excess of 13.6 papers a day and if you're planning to keep the printer for a year, it could well be worth the money – that's about 7 sheets a day if you're planning to keep the printer for 2 years – and so on.
One of the similarities between the two Artisans that really justifies staying with the Epson brand is the use of Claria inks. The Claria ink dries so fast that you can literally pour water on the print without having to worry about the ink smudging.
The wireless networking is a bit simpler with the 810 since Epson doesn't actually ask you to plug it into your router, which was the case with the 800.
If you're just scanning the market looking for a multi functional printer and haven't yet made up your mind, I'd like to recapitulate on a few features and mention a couple of others to help you get an overview of the Epson Artisan 810 Wireless as well as the 800. They both share a huge touch screen which is literally unmatched by competitors, the duplex unit is good for saving paper, the duplex ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) helps you get a load of papers scanned, faxed or copied on both sides while you tend to other things and of course the wireless networking that has only been improved with the 810.
A thing to mention in regards to both the Artisan 800 as well as the Artisan 810 Wireless is the printing speeds which are no less than impressive as 4 by 6 inch photos shoots out in 10 seconds, and we're talking single shots not repeats.
There are good alternatives out there, one being the MX870 from Canons intrusive PIXMA series. It doesn't show off with a 7.8 inch touch panel on the other hand as this article is written, it does come in at a slightly lower price but then again with slightly different features.
Good luck making up your mind choosing the best printer for your needs.
