I am considering a 24" wide printer and have heard lots of good and not so good things about different printers (Canon, Epson, HP). I am currently using an Epson 2400 and have used both Epsons and Canon printers (all 13" wide in the past). I like to print on gloss paper for snap and may move to Harman Gloss FB AI (warmtone) for most of my serious work. I seldom print on matte so MK is not a concern.
How have other made this decision?
My concerns are that I don't print that often (I am a serious hobbist) but would like to have the great colors of the Epson 7900 but am concerned about their tendence to clog. I noticed that Epson has "new reduce clogging" inks. Is this really a change in inks or simply marketing hype. How serious are the problems with the Epson if left shutdown for a month or so (I live in the midwest and the winters are dry and summers humid).
Between the Canon and HP, any recommendations?
Thanks
Rich
Canon or HP: you probably can't go wrong with either of them.
Both are frugal with ink for printing and cleaning.
Canon 6100/6200 (at least were I live: Netherlands) is substantially cheaper to buy then the HP 3200, although if you need a new printhead (or 2) for the canon it is costly. HP Heads are chaeper.
The HP brings the integrated profiling along, if you print on many different papers and keeps changing those papers frequently that is an advantage.
Canon has a nice Photoshop plugin to print your file. And if you not use the plugin but print thru the print dialog of PS and OS-X and you have installed the 'Extra driver kit' you can also nest multiple images on 1 paper (like a RIP often allows you to do) a nice bonus if you want to print small images on wider roll based paper. I'm not aware wether the HP software allows this too.
I opted for the canon, although the 17" model, so I had no to "worry" about the HP (only epson 3800/4880).
I leave the canon always on standby, it daily wakes up to check/clean, if you print every few days it just starts to print. However after longer periods (more than a week i guestimate) of no printing it does an nozzle check/clean. 2 days ago I printed a small test print after 3 weeks of inactivity: before it started to print it did a nozzle-check - clean - nozzle-check - clean - nozzle check cycle.
Permanentlely clogged nozzles are remapped to other nozzles, incurring some speed loss, I have not yet noticed that it started to print slower, when a certain amount of nozzles is clogged/remapped is exceeded it will error out on 'replace head'.