4900 First thoughts.

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

Well I just finished unpacking and setting up our 4900 demo unit, and thought I'd share a few first impressions.
First, while Epson had informed us that this was a ground up redesign, I guess I still expected it to share more with the 4880. This is indeed a redesigned printer.
The most immediate difference, it's BIG. This is the mother of all "small" printers. It's like a tiger tank crammed into a mini cooper. It comes on a palette, and it certainly has a bigger presence, even if the footprint isn't that much different from the 4880.
Hand it to Epson, for designing a really great looking machine. When the Z3100 was first announced I wrote in my review how much I liked the attention that was paid to the industrial design, and this printer certainly radiates an aura of thoughtful design.
The layout is similar in terms of the placements of buttons and the control panel on the front. On the back it's quite a bit different, with the power connection on the far left, and the ethernet and USB ports spaced out quite a bit.There is also a power/data cable that connects the roll paper holder to the printer body.
The printer ships with the smaller starter cartridges, in this case 80ml, and the cartridges are slimmer, similar in design to the older x880 series carts. The front ink cover doors are opened by pressing in on the door rather than being released by a option in the menu as it is on the 9900. I like this system better.
The roll paper holder has auto advance features of the 9900 although it uses a classic spindle rather than the spindle-less design of it's bigger brother.
Sheet feeding is also redesigned with a pop-up adapter for loading sheets. The sheet paper holder is new, with various changes to the design, which functionally being the same.
Feel free to ask any questions, I'm in the process of hooking it up to our EFI RIP and making some test prints. I'll try and add some more info later, and I should have an in-depth review up on the website within a couple weeks.

[Christopher]

I have mine, too for a few days now and I'm seeing some starwheel marks in A4 prints. (Paper Harman Gloss Baryta by HM) They are produced by the star wheels at the END of the printer, which come down onto the print once it is around 50% through.

It's not easy to see them, but once you find the Angle one can see them quite good. Especially on a drak print. I didn't have time to try other stuff, like different papers and sizes, but hopefully will be able to do that this weekend. I would just like to know if you find anything similiar.

The thing is that these marks start around tha half of the print. (A4) Before that the star wheels don't tozch the surface. If one kneels before the printer one can see, how the star wheels click down onto the print after a certain time.

[Ernst Dinkla]

There was a message with an observation that the 4900 showed more color inconstancy under changing lighting than the same print made with with a 7890.  Gloss paper if I recall it correctly. Whether that implies that the 7900-9900 have that too is another question. And the same question could be asked for 11880 versus 7890/9890.

I can not find the thread anymore, could even have been on another forum.

Could you check that somewhat surprising result?


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

New: Spectral plots of +180 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

[Christopher]

So Far colors look great, however it is hard to say after 10 prints from only one paper. Especially my current maim concern are the tar wheel marks, but when I have some time I will compare it to my 9900.

[Remko]

I can not find the thread anymore, could even have been on another forum.

met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

New: Spectral plots of +180 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

Hi Ernst,

I had exactly the same thought: what happened to that thread ?

I  gave the reply you mentioned to a thread with "Epson 9890 ....." in it subject. Apparantly, somebody deleted it. But why ?

cheers,
Remko

[Doombrain]

So Far colors look great, however it is hard to say after 10 prints from only one paper. Especially my current maim concern are the tar wheel marks, but when I have some time I will compare it to my 9900.

Which media in the driver do you set? Not all medias need the eject wheels. PGPP and fine art papers should not use the wheels (in Epson's driver).

[Ernst Dinkla]

Hi Ernst,

I had exactly the same thought: what happened to that thread ?

I  gave the reply you mentioned to a thread with "Epson 9890 ....." in it subject. Apparantly, somebody deleted it. But why ?

cheers,
Remko

There are some site fora (Rangefinderforum is another one) where you can edit/remove your messages. There are even some where the thread starter can remove the entire thread. In my opinion there should be a time limit on the edit feature. An edit in the first 6 hours possible after that no longer. A thread started should stay. I had quite a long reply on your message but it is gone. Nothing provocative, no wikileaks in it. Wonder whether someone could use the content :-)

Let's wait for Mussi's observations.


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

New: Spectral plots of +180 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

[Craig Murphy]

No subversive wikileaks comments.  It was my thread it was deleted by mistake. The delete post button on the bottom of the page was accidentally clicked on and it all went away.  My apologies.  And yes.  Its news to me that you can delete an entire thread if your the starter of it. 

[Ernst Dinkla]

No subversive wikileaks comments.  It was my thread it was deleted by mistake. The delete post button on the bottom of the page was accidentally clicked on and it all went away.  My apologies.  And yes.  Its news to me that you can delete an entire thread if your the starter of it. 

Craig,

can happen with as stupid feature like that. Pity, but I can live with it.


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

New: Spectral plots of +180 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

[Jeff Kott]

No subversive wikileaks comments.  It was my thread it was deleted by mistake. The delete post button on the bottom of the page was accidentally clicked on and it all went away.  My apologies.  And yes.  Its news to me that you can delete an entire thread if your the starter of it. 

Thanks for clearing that up - I thought I was going crazy   

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

There was a message with an observation that the 4900 showed more color inconstancy under changing lighting than the same print made with with a 7890.  Gloss paper if I recall it correctly. Whether that implies that the 7900-9900 have that too is another question. And the same question could be asked for 11880 versus 7890/9890.

Interesting. Since much of the ink set is shared between the x900 and x880/x890 if there was an increase in color inconsistency/metameric issues it would be logical to assume that it was related to the orange or green inks. Now the 4900 and 9900/7900 share the same ink set so it would be easy to assume that any issue present on the 4900 would also be mirrored by the bigger printers. For what it's worth I've been using the x900 printers in applications where metamerism was a carefully monitored variable, and the printers always performed very well. That said the different inks certainly do have different properties, and some have a higher metameric index than others, it is possible that with the 4900 there have been changes to the printer LUT, which resulted in a higher use of one ink vs another. I think that any change would probably result in a fairly small change but I will certainly look into this.

One small feature that I've grown to appreciate over the last day is the change to the ink change button. On the 7900 it simply switches between black, on the new printer it brings up common cleaning options, no more going through three menu levels to do a nozzle check. Now it's one button away. So that's nice.

Also I rechecked the ink levels after it was done priming the lines, and it certainly appears to be a bit more frugal than the 4880. Even with the smaller 80ml carts, there was around 80% ink still left.

Small negative is that it seems a bit louder.IT makes a low level humming sound(some internal fan i suspect) that is noticeable in a quiet room.

[walter.sk]

Just wondering:  is it still necessary to purge the lines to switch from matte black to photo black?

[Mark D Segal]

Just wondering:  is it still necessary to purge the lines to switch from matte black to photo black?

The publicity is a bit coy about this point. They say: "Depending upon your media type or driver setting, the printer will automatically switch" and "Highly-efficient print head design ensures fast switching with minimal ink usage". Sounds good, but how much is "minimal"? I think it would take some observation to find out, the possibility of observing this depending on how the driver has been programmed to report ink usage. It has become less transparent in this respect over time, without going to a great deal of trouble. Perhaps a request to Epson directly would elicit an answer this question.

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

No it's doesn't purge the lines. The process is essentially the same as on the 7900. IT does purge a small amount of ink from the head when switching but this is on the order of 2-3 ml, much less than the 50ml on the 4800.

[Mark D Segal]

No it's doesn't purge the lines. The process is essentially the same as on the 7900. IT does purge a small amount of ink from the head when switching but this is on the order of 2-3 ml, much less than the 50ml on the 4800.

Makes sense, thanks Julian.

[Mussi_Spectraflow]

Also perhaps the coolest feature is the ability to switch back and forth from roll to sheet without touching the printer. This has been working really well from the RIP, and in a setting where you have multiple people sending job for sheet and roll this will be a really nice feature.

RE: Ink usage, if you go into the printer menu you can get the total ink usage, checking this number before and after cleanings can be useful if you really want to see how much ink is being used. Also the printer report the usage down to 1/10 of a ml, the drivers ink usage graph is really only useful for letting you know when a cartridge is getting low without being in front of the printer.

[Mark D Segal]

Also perhaps the coolest feature is the ability to switch back and forth from roll to sheet without touching the printer. This has been working really well from the RIP, and in a setting where you have multiple people sending job for sheet and roll this will be a really nice feature.

RE: Ink usage, if you go into the printer menu you can get the total ink usage, checking this number before and after cleanings can be useful if you really want to see how much ink is being used. Also the printer report the usage down to 1/10 of a ml, the drivers ink usage graph is really only useful for letting you know when a cartridge is getting low without being in front of the printer.

Julian, useful to know, but so far all I've been able to find is the "per job" ink usage in the "Job History" list accessed from the printer menu LCD. I have not yet found anything in the manual indicating how to get the information on total ink usage from the printer. I know there is a way to see cartridge by cartridge the percentage of ink remaining in each, but this is pretty tedious. Could you please describe any other path leading to ink consumption data?

[Wayne Fox]

can happen with as stupid feature like that. Pity, but I can live with it.

I noticed that thread missing a few days ago, the day after I had posted a response.  I sent a PM to the site administrator, voicing my concern that an original poster can delete a thread, despite time and effort  by others contributing to the thread and having content that may be  beneficial to others, not to mention the fact it may help the site be more  relevant with search engines.  Now to find out it's that easy to do accidentally ... just doesn't make any sense.

Part of the discussion on the thread was about metamerism differences between 79/9900 printers and 78/9890 printers.  I'm not sure where those claiming it exists are, except for additional orange and  green the printers use the exact same ink cartridges.  The 49/79/9900 are K3 printers with added green and orange.  You can check the part numbers ... they use the same part numbers for all the inks.  I can't see any difference between output of my 4900 and 11880 here in the shop, and specifically printed out some samples and ask everyone here to compare them.  I just don't see how adding a tiny bit of orange and green can have that much impact.  Perhaps those colors have an issue so on rare cases where a lot of them are used, but to be honest in normal photographic printing those inks seem to used very little.

[walter.sk]

No it's doesn't purge the lines. The process is essentially the same as on the 7900. IT does purge a small amount of ink from the head when switching but this is on the order of 2-3 ml, much less than the 50ml on the 4800.

Thanks.  That's good to know.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Part of the discussion on the thread was about metamerism differences between 79/9900 printers and 78/9890 printers.  I'm not sure where those claiming it exists are, except for additional orange and  green the printers use the exact same ink cartridges.  The 49/79/9900 are K3 printers with added green and orange.  You can check the part numbers ... they use the same part numbers for all the inks.  I can't see any difference between output of my 4900 and 11880 here in the shop, and specifically printed out some samples and ask everyone here to compare them.  I just don't see how adding a tiny bit of orange and green can have that much impact.  Perhaps those colors have an issue so on rare cases where a lot of them are used, but to be honest in normal photographic printing those inks seem to used very little.

I seem to remember that the two new cartridges were only useful in proofing situations and not for general purposes.  Perhaps that is what your finding notes.  It would be interesting to see long term what the ink usage patterns of the two new cartridges are.