I am using Epson C45 printer for more than 2 years, so I can surely say something about it. I was previously using Epson C41 SX printer for 2.5 years and then I bought the C45 printer, because of the previous good experience of Epson printer.
The main reason for buying the Epson C45 printer was, its very cheap cartridges. I always use compatible cartridges, which give me same quality as original one. The compatible black cartridge costs Rs. 80/- in Pune and colour cartridge costs Rs. 160/-. This is really the small price and therefore there is no need to refill the cartridges. You can always use the new one and get the same print quality everytime.
Although I have bought this printer, because of low cost of cartridges, but when I printed the first photo on glossy paper, it came as lab quality photo. The photo was looking excellent on full A4 paper. It took long time (12 minutes) to print the A4 size photo, but that is OK time, because it is not targeted as a regular photo printer. So home user, who wants A4 size photos, can wait for this much time.
I print near about 100 black text pages every month. The regular black text print quality is not the best in class, but still ok for regular use. The print speed is low to medium as compared to other printer in this class. It prints at 3-4 ppm in black at normal setting. Although it states as 14ppm on the box, it must be in the draft mode. The print quality in the draft mode is too bad, and not even usable for rough prints. So I always use normal quality setting. Changing the mode to ’Fine’ quality does not make any noticeable difference in the black text, but takes almost 3 times more time. However the print speed is surely sufficient for home and personal use.
The colour document containing photos and text, looks good when printed and speed is also ok. It took near about 4 minutes to print 10 documents containing photos and text in normal quality.
The printer driver software is really good and gives you very accurate level of ink, and allows you to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, individual colour saturation, edge smoothing etc. Its really superb control.
Epson uses a small chip fitted to every cartridge for measuring the ink levels accurately. The chip counter turns to zero, when the cartridge is empty. So this type of cartridges require a special chip resetter device, if you want to refill them. It is available at almost every shop of refilling, so you don’t have to worry, if you want to refill the cartridges.
The printer is really very reliable. Both of Epson printers (C41 and C45) have never given me a single trouble in 4.5 years. I really appreciate the manufacturing quality of Epson.
This printer uses the fix head for printing. This means, you only replace the ink tanks every time. This is the reason behind the low cost of cartridges. This also means, you should change your printer after 4 years and buy a new one.
All in all, this is a good printer for home user, who especially wants a low cost cartridges and do not want highly professional print quality and speeds.