First off, there seem to be very few logical reasons to nowadays chose a simple printer, when you can get an all-in-one for close to the same price. Of course, some people chose to not spend a couple of extra bucks for features they know for sure they will never use. But having a scanner around, just in case you might need it, is pretty convenient. Another thing that needs to be said is that all-in-ones can do a lot of stuff, but don't manage to do any of them as well as single devices.

All-in-ones, just like your regular printers, come in a wide variety of prices and sizes. The Epson Artisan 810 all-in-one color inkjet printer aims a bit higher than most. It's packed with premium features, provides a printer, scanner, fax(color) and wireless connectivity. It's main audience is the more pretentious user who would rather spend an extra buck for a top of the line device that can do just about anything (anything that has been invented up until now anyway). On the front side of the printer you'll instantly set your eyes on a 7.8 inch touch panel. Right under that you can find the output tray. Somewhwre to the right, there's a built in card reader that supports but the bigger Compact Flash cards and the small SD, xD and MS cards.

When the all-in-one was invented, it was pretty clear what type of consumer it was being made for. You could mainly find the devices in small businesses or home offices. This is because they were a more affordable alternative to actually acquiring a printer, scanner, copier and fax machine separately (specially when you're not that interested in quality) and they took up considerably less space.

The Artisan 810 however, is more of a all-in-one high end printer for very creative people that enjoy printing out quality photographs as well. It works just fine for offices though and it comes with a built in duplexer and an automatic document feeder.

You'll have no problem printing pictures directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch and it will even charge any device that you decide to connect through the USB port. It's decently fast, it has excellent print and photo quality and a pretty large touchscreen for controls. One extra feature that it has to offer is CD printing. But since there's no information at all regarding how to do that in the printer's manual, users will have to figure it out all by themselves.

Having said all these good things about the Epson Artisan 810 all-in-one color inkjet printer, the bad points don't seem all that important anymore. What could bother a potential customer is the higher purchase price and the fact that it has six ink cartridges, which means more consumables that have to be bought, thus a higher price to pay when it runs out of ink. But most people will find it well worth the money.