New Epson prnters announced

[Manfred M]

Epson has just announced replacements for the highly regarded P600 and P800 photo printers. The new units are the P700 that prints 13" wide / A3+ paper and the P900 for the 17" wide / A2 papers.

If if I hadn't bought my P800 less than 1-1/2 years ago, I would have a really hard look at these printers.

The biggest improvement is that they have changed the print head to take both photo black and normal black without having to swap out inks. This will save time and money.

Epson has added a new violet ink to increase the gamut. In the past, Epson printers were generally viewed as being stronger in the reds and greens and Canon printers created superior blues. The new additional ink colour is meant to improve the blues.

Epson already had the strongest blacks of any printer manufacturer with the Dmax on the P600 and P800 already exceeding the deepest blacks that traditional silver papers could produce. The new ink set improves on this without sacrificing print life. Preliminary data from Wilhelm Research suggest that the new ink set performs as well as the previous Ultra Chrome HD inks.

Both the P700 and P900 will support roll paper; something that is important to a panoramic photographer like me. The P700 has this functionality built in but the it's an optional add-on on the P900. That being said, there aren't all than many paper manufacturers that put out 13" rolls, so I'm not sure how useful this P700 feature will be.

The units are much smaller than the current models and I understand that the paper feed for thicker paper is much better than the current ones (frankly, feeding fine art paper can be a pain on both the P600 and P800).

The only bit of bad news is that the ink cartridge size has shrunk from 80ml to 50ml on the P900. That suggests the cost / ml will probably be higher. Also, they won't be shipping until sometime next month.





https://news.epson.com/news/surecolo...raphy-printers

[Donald]

If if I hadn't bought my P800 less than 1-1/2 years ago, I would have a really hard look at these printers.

In my case, less than a year ago, but I agree.

The biggest improvement is that they have changed the print head to take both photo black and normal black without having to swap out inks. This will save time and money.

Don't know how they do that, but good on them. Changing inks, as we have done, has long been a pain. If you have one image that you want to print on, say a semi-gloss finish, when you've being doing a batch of Matt images, it is a real bummer.

The only bit of bad news is that the ink cartridge size has shrunk from 80ml to 50ml on the P900. That suggests the cost / ml will probably be higher.

Having invested quite heavily in the Permajet Ink-Flo system as an alternative to Epson cartridges to reduce the ink costs (with no discernible loss of quality), I ain't going to entertain any thoughts of going to something that increases the cost.

[DanK]

Indeed. They claim to have dealt with two of the disadvantages that led me to buy the Canon Prograf 1000 rather than the P800: the poor paper feed and the requirement to swap out inks.

It will be interesting (in the abstract) to see what Canon's next step will be. However, my Prograf is still early in its lifespan, so I'm not planning to replace it for a long time.

[Manfred M]

Having invested quite heavily in the Permajet Ink-Flo system as an alternative to Epson cartridges to reduce the ink costs (with no discernible loss of quality), I ain't going to entertain any thoughts of going to something that increases the cost.

I had not thought that quality would be an issue, so long as decent printer / paper profiles are available.

My understanding is that most galleries in my part of the world want to know both the paper and specific ink set that is used in the print. If it doesn't match their standards, they won't take the print. In practice that means they will only accept archival papers from locally known manufacturers and OEM pigment ink sets.