Recommendations for A3 Printers

[roy445]

I have a 7/8 year old Epson A3 Sylus Photo 1290 printer.
It has served me well, but it is on its last legs.
Any suggestions for a replacement?
thanks, Roy

[Mike Farley]

Until recently Epson was considered to be the best choice for A3 printers. Last year Canon introduced the Pixma Pro-1 which has had good reviews and challenged Epson's supremacy. Although I do not have any experience of it, I have seen some very impressive prints which were made by Canon. Then again, Epson does much the same with its own printers.

A while back HP made the B9180 and a cheaper B8850 variant, which had fewer features. While it was capable of good results, many people reported problems with it. It still seems to be sold new, but so far as I know is no longer manufactured. HP provides support for Windows 7 and inks are readily available, but it is best avoided. HP's other photographic printers are expensive, large and intended for professional use only.

One of the best websites I have found for printer reviews is photo-i, http://www.photo-i.co.uk, where you will find appraisals of most of the contenders. The site was recently updated and the older content is archived at http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/printers_page.htm. Be warned that the reviews tend to be quite long, but I cannot believe that they omit anything which you would want to know.

The bottom line is that any modern photographic printer will produce excellent results. The final choice will mainly come down to purchase and running costs, and whether print longevity and the ability to produce mono are the prime requirements.

Printers either have dye or pigment inks. Prints made with pigment inks have a longer lifespan, typically 75 - 200 years, and while colours from dye inks might be more vivid, the prints will not last as long before they start to fade. This used to be a significant problem, but modern dye inks are now good for several years. Purely on the basis of longevity, pigment inks would be a better choice for anyone who wishes to sell their prints.

The choice of printer will also be affected by whether you print mainly colour or also wish to do a lot of monochrome work as well. If the latter, all the pigment inksets have two blacks, one optimised for gloss paper and the other for matte. Most also have light blacks (i.e. grey) for the best range of tonality. There is a limit to what can be achieved with just a black ink, although it would be fine for occasional use.

An extremely annoying "feature" of most Epson large format printers, including my own 3800, is that the print head only supports eight colours yet the inkset consists of nine colours. It means that one of the lines which transports the inks to the head is shared between the gloss and matte black inks. When switching between gloss and matte papers, the line has first to be flushed with the relevant ink. This would not be quite so bad if Epson charged a more reasonable price for its ink, but as it is the waste is galling. A further consideration is that the ink is sent to an absorbent pad inside the printer which is not designed to be user replaceable on consumer models. Although it has a long service life, it is difficult to open up the printer if it ever needs to be renewed.

It really is time that Epson resolved this unacceptable situation, which has been going on for several years. The one feature which I wish I had on my 3800 is the ability to switch papers without having to go through the ink swap process. Given the lack of competition in each of its various markets, it is not something which I expect Epson to resolve soon.

Epson makes four A3 models which are, in ascending price order:

• Stylus Photo 1500W. This is the natural successor the 1290, as both have dye inks. The inkset consists of six colours, one of which is black, but no light blacks.
• Stylus Photo R2000. Pigment inks, with photo and matte blacks but no light blacks. The printer has eight cartridges, one of which is a clear optimiser used for gloss prints to enhance vivacity and ensure all the paper is covered when there is a pure white in the image.
• Stylus Photo R2880. Another pigment ink printer, with nine inks including gloss, matte and light blacks. The line for the black ink is flushed when changing paper types.
• Stylus Photo R3000. Essentially an update of the older R2880 which cintinues in production, the main difference being WiFi connectivity and larger ink cartridges. This does not mean that the ink is cheaper, just less frequent replacement of cartridges is required.

Three Canon models are available, once again in ascending order of price:

• Pixma Pro 9000 Mk II. A dye ink printer with eight inks, only one of which is black. Nevertheless, photo-i reported good mono results, albeit they took a long time to print. At the time of writing, Canon has a £50 cashback offer.
• PIXMA Pro 9500 Mark II. A pigment ink printer with 10 inks, including photo and matte blacks, light blacks and gloss optimiser. At the time of writing, Canon has a £100 cashback offer.
• Pixma Pro 1. A pigment ink printer with 12 inks, including photo and matte blacks, light blacks and gloss optimser.

[davidc]

I have the Epson R3000. It's expensive, about £500 worth, and replacement inks cost about £100 for a full set.

But... It's phenomenal. Absolutely awesome and I can't recommend it highly enough. So long as you don't go crazy and print loads on full a3 the ink lasts pretty well - I've been using it for print competition entries printed A3 plus a number of prints for family and friends and it's still got loads left. You can replace individual cartridges a needed too. Mike is correct about the hassle of changing between matte and gloss black inks but after comparing the outputs, I've decided to just stick with gloss. Save on buying matte paper too

So although it's not cheap, it's worth every penny and should last an awfully long time.

[PaulW]

Hi
I use the Epson R2880, and have changed the cartridges for rechargables with Permajet pigment inks, which reduces the cost from £100 per set to £10 for each refill. The print quality is excellent, and I am unable to see any difference in colours from the original epson inks. I have been printing with this set-up for over a year now with no problems, if you are going to do a large amount of printing as I do, this is a cost offective way.
Paul

[Mike Farley]

I have been pleased with the prints from my Epson 3800, which uses a slightly different inkset from the the R2880 and R3000 which have a Vivid Magenta ink, rather than Magenta. From what I have read, it seems that the results are very similar. Due to changes to the print head in later machines which use the new ink, it is not compatible with the 3800. I mainly use Permajet Oyster paper, but have also printed onto Epson's own papers and those from Canson and Hahnemuhle.

[Bill Yates]

If you stick to one type of paper only as in my case (gloss), thereby avoiding the hassle and wastage of ink in changing from photo black to matt black, you will find what I consider the perfect answer in an Epson R2880 fr both colour and monochrome. I use mine only for photographs - the inks are far to expensive to waste on documents and such - and I keep my Epson 1290 (still in perfect working order) for everythng else, which also means I have a back-up printer for photos, if needed.

A new 2880 costs around £450-470 at present from the suppliers such as Park Cameras. It would be worth asking Richard Frankfurt's price.

Whether or not to add a continuous ink system to keep costs down is, as suggested in earlier posts, mainly a question of how often you need to make large prints. I have never felt any such need and am happy with the standard Epson cartridges from 7dayshop, although the no-VAT advantage for purchases from the Channel Islands is no longer applicable.

[Mike Farley]

If you stick to one type of paper only as in my case (gloss), thereby avoiding the hassle and wastage of ink in changing from photo black to matt black, you will find what I consider the perfect answer in an Epson R2880 fr both colour and monochrome. I use mine only for photographs - the inks are far to expensive to waste on documents and such - and I keep my Epson 1290 (still in perfect working order) for everythng else, which also means I have a back-up printer for photos, if needed.

I found on my 3800 that the level of the matte black ink was going down, even though I was not using it, and eventually I had to replace the cartridge. £40+ worth of ink literally down the drain! When I queried this Epson, I was told that this was perfectly normal as the line is routinely flushed when the printer is powered up to help prevent clogs. It is possible that the same will apply to other printers in Epson's range where the gloss and matte blacks have to be switched, including the 2880 and 3000 models. To be fair to Epson, the printer has never clogged, so there are some benefits from this and the occasional cleaning cycles which the printer initiates.

Whether or not to add a continuous ink system to keep costs down is, as suggested in earlier posts, mainly a question of how often you need to make large prints. I have never felt any such need and am happy with the standard Epson cartridges from 7dayshop, although the no-VAT advantage for purchases from the Channel Islands is no longer applicable.

I agree that continuous ink systems can make sense when printing large volumes, although when I investigated this option a few years ago there were a number of reports on the Internet of people experiencing clogs after a year or so of use. I am guessing that a CIS has to be used on a regular basis to avoid problems.

Amazon is a good place to look for low cost replacement cartridges, although I prefer to buy from Amazon itself where possible rather than Marketplace suppliers to get as long as possible before the cartridge expiry date and ensure that I receive genuine ink. Premier Ink also has good prices, although it does have a small delivery charge.

[davidc]

Hi
I use the Epson R2880, and have changed the cartridges for rechargables with Permajet pigment inks, which reduces the cost from £100 per set to £10 for each refill. The print quality is excellent, and I am unable to see any difference in colours from the original epson inks. I have been printing with this set-up for over a year now with no problems, if you are going to do a large amount of printing as I do, this is a cost offective way.
Paul

Oooh very interesting - where do you get your inks from?

[davidc]

I found on my 3800 that the level of the matte black ink was going down, even though I was not using it, and eventually I had to replace the cartridge. £40+ worth of ink literally down the drain! When I queried this Epson, I was told that this was perfectly normal as the line is routinely flushed when the printer is powered up to help prevent clogs. It is possible that the same will apply to other printers in Epson's range where the gloss and matte blacks have to be switched, including the 2880 and 3000 models. To be fair to Epson, the printer has never clogged, so there are some benefits from this and the occasional cleaning cycles which the printer initiates.

If memory serves, and I might be wrong about the version number, the 3800 flushed ALL ink cartridges when any of them were replaced which led to a lot of waste. This has been fixed in the 3000.

[roy445]

Thank you gentlemen for giving me your comments about a replacement A3 printer. From your comments I found that for me it was a choice between Epson R3800 and Canon Pixma Pro 1, the two most expensive A3+!. They both had very favourable reviews in Dpreview.com. But when I saw that the Canon weighed 27kg, which is over half a hundredweight in old money, and my printer lives in the attic up two flights of stairs, I forgot about Canon.
So I am now a proud owner of an Epson R3000 and am trying to sort out the printer profiles. First reactions are very favourable. The next problems is to find some decent photos to print.
Roy