RyanSpaulding Posted December 7, 2004 Share Posted December 7, 2004 Anyone have suggestions for a high quality photo printer? Or articles specific to the quality of the printer? The added features dont matter. I dont even care if it's 1 ppm, just quality output is all i care about. I haven't dealt much with printers, so I'm not sure where to start...Epson always seemed to print nice results. The only extra benefit I could see myself using would by direct-to-cd/dvd printing. Thanks in advance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted December 7, 2004 Share Posted December 7, 2004 I started out with a Canon i9100. The print quality & speed was awesome. The only problem that I had with it was I could never even get the colors close when printing renderings. I blame that partly on the printer driver because it didn't have very specific color adjustments in it. Eventually I got so fed up with it that I sold it & bought the cheaper Epson 1280. Same print size (up to 13x19) but this one overall has better quality to me. Its slower, but I'm really happy with it so far. Both of these are somewhere around the $400 range but they may be cheaper by now. Or are you looking for something bigger than these? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanSpaulding Posted December 7, 2004 Author Share Posted December 7, 2004 Actually, smaller. I'm looking in the > $200 range. I'll probably take anything larger than 8.5 x 11 to CopyMax or a Print Shop. I'm still a broke ass...to broke for big printers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted December 7, 2004 Share Posted December 7, 2004 Here check this one out. I have no issues with buying refurbished. To me they are just as good as new, if not better. http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=42227531 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted December 7, 2004 Share Posted December 7, 2004 I always seem to have a problem with the reliability of epson printers, but the quality is the best I have seen. -Chad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted December 7, 2004 Share Posted December 7, 2004 I absolutely love my Canon i960. It prints pretty fast, has individual ink tanks, can do borderless 8.5x11, and has some kind of prism that actually monitors the ink level, rather than an estimation of usage to determine when a cartridge is empty. Plus, it has a display that will pop up with a graphical "gauge" that shows the ink level, and when a cartridge is low, it tells you on the screen, and when it's empty, it stops printing, notifies you, and won't continue unless you make it, or put in a new cartridge. The price is right too!! I bought mine at Best Buy. http://www.usa.canon.com/html/conCprProductDetail.jsp?modelid=9388&item=9443§ion=10214 Every Epson I have had seemed like it was destined to irritate me. With one of mine - if you didn't replace the ink when it said it was empty (though it wasn't really empty), and you kept printing, when it actually ran out and you replaced the cartridge, you had to force it into a cleaning mode and unplug it while the cartridge carrier was half way across the page, allowing access to the cartridge. Freaking pain in the butt. I've known 3 epsons that had that same problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted December 7, 2004 Share Posted December 7, 2004 I have an epson R300. I have had epsons that did annoy me. I think it was the 700 something like that. If I didn't print often enough it clogged and kind of died. Colors became horrible. Now I have the r300 and so far it is great, quiet, fast and prints to printable cds/dvds (special cds that have printable surface so no stickies or stompers) I think it was about $150ish its fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kris B. Posted December 7, 2004 Share Posted December 7, 2004 Hi, I recently purchased an Epson PhotoStylus Photo R210 printer. I mainly bought this printer for printing directly to CD/DVD and it was pretty good value I thought at $215.00 Australian. Has 6 ink tanks, prints borderless to A4 plus. The photo quality is fantastic. The drivers also installed an ink tank usage monitor - which drove me crazy. Kept wanting me to change the ink tanks when they were not completely empty. I uninstalled the software monitor and now the printer will just flash and indicate which tank is empty - which is actually far more accurate than the software monitor. This is my second Epson and I like their quiet operation and reliability. I also have an ageing HP 1125c for A3 prints. Nothing special, but has been reliable and just keeps on going! I've had a couple of HP's and have been very happy with them. In the past I have also had Canon printers and they were so noisy and took soooooooo long to actually commence printing after going through all the noisy self tests, I got rid of them. They also broke down a lot. Perhaps the newer models are much better. Regards, Kris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elliot Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 I have a variety of printers that I have accumulated over the last several years. I gave up on printers. While on trips I ussually have to print something on an emergency. I started buying very inexpensive printers and taking them to the hotel rather than paying a fortune to Kinko's. Lately I have been buying R200's from Epson. They are OK..... The problem with them is that the printer cost $99.00 each and the ink cost $89.00. I go to the stores and buy the re-furbished units for $69.00. I throw them away when I ran out of ink. Additionally I also have a 3000 and a 5000 Epson's. Which I don't use very often because the ink is too expensive. Lately I have a war against EPSON USA. I think they are plain thieves. They have no honorability and their services should not be used. As far as they are trying to basically steal from people by overcharging for the ink. I have also tried clone ink but some of them are no good. A friend has an Olympus 440 and he likes it a lot. It is a dye sublimation printer that produces very good results. I think he spends about $1.40 per page. I don't know the anwsers for your questions but stay away from the thieves..... Epson....! By the way today I called HP to ask them why my big laser Black White printer doesn't want to work with SP2. Of course they questioned me for 30 minutes. They took all the information and then they said "You are out of warrranty" You have to pay $39.99 and "WE DO NOT WARRANTY SUCCESS WITH OUR CALL". I hope they go bankrupt after I spent $4,000.00 on this printer and many other thousands on toner. I try to send everything via E Mail. When I need a good quality print I go to a local print bureau that has a very expensive printer and charges me about $2.40 for a very nice print. Selling printers and supplies has become more profitable to the electronics stores than selling computers. I can't wait until somebody starts cloning inexpensive printers in China. Elliot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 Epsons are my favorite, but Canon is good and so is HP. I'm an Epson guy. My first Epson--from the early 1990's--is sitting here to my left, chugging along nicely. I am tired of it, so i will buy an Epson R800 to replace as soon as I can find one in stock when I'm in the store. The rule of thumb is this--the cheaper the printer the more expensive it is to print. Printer makers will happily sell you a printer at cost or below because you will be hooked for years buying their inks. they only make money on inks anfd papers, NOT printers. I currently use an Epson 3000 and two 7000 (large format). I love the bastards. But I don't use Epson's inks in any of them. If you only have about $300 to spend it really doesn;t matter which one you buy Epson, Canon or HP. Get whatever looks the best and has the cheapest replacement ink. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 As a followup to my canon i960, I still love it, it still prints great quality prints, and it still prints fast. There are no long buffer times or long noisy self test (at least not with my printer), and there is actually a "quiet mode" that you can program it to use, where every day at 9:00pm, or something, it will switch to quiet mode. When I first installed it, and printed a page, I wasn't sure if it was actually printing. The only way I could tell was to watch the piece of paper as it was pulled into the printer. Speaking of inks, what does everyone use for their non-name brand ink? I recently ordered ink over the internet. http://www.4inkjets.com/canon1.html Anyone have any experience with non-"canon" or whatever inks? The lifespan of the colors, etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 I've had horrible experience with non name brand inks. I tried buying the really cheap $4 generic brands before and the colors were totally different compared to the name brand. Plus when I tried those on the Canon, it would always give me false reports on the ink levels. Usually it would say that all of the tanks were nearly full when that obviously wasn't the case. Then I would have to guess which one was out. If I took out the wrong one by accident, you have to put in a new one anyways. So I've found the best thing for me is to just find the cheapest name brand inks on the internet & save a few bucks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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