Bah!
I love Epson printers, but don't love their built-in "countdown" timers that decide using a zero balance that a cartridge is empty or that a printer is now worn out.
I had a C-80 that would give about a third more ink if I zapped the cartridge chip when it declared it was done, using a device I scored online for pennies. Then the printer mysteriously stopped working and I regretfully junked it.
Only to find out a month later that there was a *second* counter that had decided that the sponge that held the ink shot out during a cleaning was inklogged and th-th-th-that's all, folks.
I bought an Artisan 810 but fell substantially out of love with it when I discovered that the cartridge chips were zap-proof and self-destructed when they hit the magic zero. Tiny cartridges too.
Thing is, I can see the point in buying proprietary ink. I'll go for Epson ink over 3-Gize Inc. every time because the colors are vibrant and photos look superb when I print with them. But the horseshirt with the counters is just so much BS.
When my kid went to college she started having to print slideshows (yeah - don't get me started). After a month I bought a Brother laser printer with a "starter cartridge". This announced it was out of toner so I researched the subject and bought an after-market kit to convert the toner cartridge to a full-function one (by installing a gear train) and some powdered toner. This was a fraction of the cost of a Brother cartridge. When I came to do the installing of the gears and the filling of the toner I did as the instructions suggested and emptied out the remaining toner before refilling. I was appalled at the amount I had to throw out. So when the refilled cartridge announced it was out of toner, I simply did my little rat dance with my screwdriver and reset the gears. I got over 400 11x8.5 inch pages of print out of that printer before it was actually showing signs of toner starvation. That's an entire pack of paper from Staples.
No-one begrudges a company the right to make money from their own lines, but printer companies are really shooting themselves in the foot by leveraging their ink-subscription model with fake ink starvation reporting.