Printer recommendations please?
 

Hi guys, looking to buy new printer as mine is kaput!

Have a Canon Pixma IP4000 which I was never really been happy with and now it won't print with any thing like the colours it should and despite trying everything it just won't play ball. Canon themselves were pretty useless when asked for information/help, and basically did'nt want to know.

I am thinking of an Epson printer about £150.00ish but want to get the best I can afford. I dont want loads of bells and whistles, just a good reliable printer which will give me good A4 prints.

Iam sure you guys can give me lots of recommendations.

Many thanks in advance.

Nogbad

Nogbad, I have had lots of different epsons over the years and found them to only last about 18 mths. The ones I had r300 and the r800 and earlier ones went into cleaning mode everytime I switched on, I didn't get many photos before the ink ran out and not just the one colour, all colours.
I decided to go for the canon ip6700 because I can still change individual cartridges and its at a good price. The photos are superb and haven't had to put in a new cartridge in 6 months, I am just about to buy my first lot and only the ones that have run out, which is black, magenta and cyan the others are still 3/4 full. Bare in mind I don't print many anyway it is used more for text and the occasional photo.

I had an Epson 870 and it was forever blocking, and the cleaning cycles used up huge amounts of expensive ink. In the end about half the ink was wasted. dpreview is a good place for printer information.

I had an Epson, I think it was the 870 too. My experience of this printer was identical to Leif's. I think you did very well to only wasting 1/2 of the ink on cleaning cycles. This printer put me off the idea of home printing completely.

D.

Exactly my experience!

I have been looking at a colour laser CLP300 from Samsung. PC World pricing at £119. I only print documents maps etc. I'll be waiting for the next Apple OS before I take the plunge and I advise anyone with a PC to check Vista compatibility/availability of drivers before the part with cash.

I never print photographs at home, I leave it to the professionals at PhotoBox.

Thanks guys, so it sounds like the Epson printers could be as bad as the Canons?

I have my prints for comps etc printed profesionally, but as my wife makes home made cards from my images thats why we wanted a fairly reliable printer to produce images for these.

Seems I will need to do a bit more searching and try some of the magazine reviews for info.

Thanks to all for your helpful comments.

Cheers

Nogbad

Seems that the older Epsons have really tainted your views :)

Having started using Epsons fairly recently (about 4 years) I have nothing but praise for the quality and rarely had to run clean cycles (only if the printer has been off for several weeks, and then not every time). Yes, they drink ink but not much worse than the HP ahem 'photo' printers I used before.

One thing to note - I believe that Epson photo printers use a little of all colours when printing text, therefore they can be very exensive to run if you want to do general printing as well as photos. I have a very cheap HP Deskjet for that purpose and only print photos on my R1800.

I think that if you want to create high quality prints yourself, whichever manufacturer you chose, you are going to end up using a lot of ink.

Nogbad, I was going to recommend the Epson R260 - it uses the latest print-head tech and Claria ink - but I see it isn't availble in the UK - I guess that the R265 is the equivalent? It will not work standalone (i.e. it doesn't have an LCD and you can't just stick a CF card into it and print) but at half the price of the standalone equivalent, you can either buy another set of inks or a cheap deskjet to do general printing on ;)

Stephen, yes, it is easy to use an online lab and cheaper for the odd print, but you don't get that satisfaction of watching your print coming off the printer...

I had trouble with a couple of older Epson's with blocked nozzles but I have had my R800 for almost three years now with no problems - one of the things I do is to leave to printer turned on and do a quick nozzles check print every week or so if I have not used it.
I have now also found a compatible ink which IMO is just about as good as Epson originals but at 1/5 of the price.
Print quality wise I still find the R800 stunning.

As I understand it Mark, on my R800 (A4 version of R1800) if you select Grayscale it only uses Matte black ink.

Hmmm, I thought Epson dropped the 'black only' option on this generation of printer (R800/1800) - I can't find anywhere to set it nor can I find a grayscale setting. Where do you set this Roy?

I agree about leaving the printer on - it avoids the charging cycle.

You need to go on the Advance preferences screen and not the Basic one Mark. When you select 'Grayscale' all the colour controls are grayed out.

I only ever use Advanced (otherwise Epson tries to colour manage for me) - I can only guess that the driver dialogs are different for the two printers :confused:

There isn't a grayscale option under Color Controls. If I select PhotoEnhance, I can select a tone, as illustrated on the attached.

Anyway, from the Epson website - the R800 FAQ
Q: The color ink cartridge is expended even though I print in black only. Why does this happen?
A: To keep the print head clear, the printer uses a small amount of ink from all the cartridges whenever it prints and to keep the print head primed. Even if you select Black Only, some color ink is still being used.

Epson R800 FAQ

That looks like a canned answer but I have not found anything to suggest otherwise and I'm not going to waste my ink proving it ;)

Sorry Nogbad for highjacking the thread a little :)

Thats strange Mark. Fairly sure that the grayscale setting on the R800 only uses matte black as I have printed several hundred pages of text in one hit and only the black ink goes down.

I definately don't have that option - and I'll take your word on the ink use :)

Interesting direction this thread has taken. I now seem to have reviewed my opinion of epson, and perhaps they are not as bad as they appear.

Will continue to review the magazine reviews and then decide which one to choose.

Nogbad