I Hate Epson Printers

[Peter McLennan]

FWIW, with my 4800, I've found a noticeable improvement in clogging issues since I raised the humidity inside the printer to about 69%.  I use a plastic tray and a water-soaked rag.  The lid is propped open to prevent inadvertent printing with the tray inside.  The entire printer is enclosed in a large plastic trash bag to retain moisture.

[Rob Reiter]

I've used Epson 9600 and 9800 printers in a commercial fine art capacity for 6 years, then switched to the Canon 8100 and now 8300. My 9800 clogged daily, using rag papers, and sometimes required 3-5 cleanings to fix. The Canon printers, in four years, have had about three clogs that cleaned up with one cleaning. The heads need replacing after 4000ml of ink (each head prints for 6 of the 12 cartridges) so that means you will go through the original set of 330 ml carts and one more set before needing to replace them. In my modest business, that's about once a year. For me, that cost (now about $350 per head) is well worth it compared to the hassle and ink waste of my last Epson.

I think Canon and Epson printers are comparable in image quality, each having small areas where they might excel. We are in an odd place these days, when looking to buy printers of this level-raw image quality seems to low on the list of features to compare, because it is so good across the board. Reliability, speed, cost and ease of use are more significant determining factors.

If you are thinking of switching, spend a few bucks to have the same image printed on each machine and see for yourself if there are worthwhile differences in image quality. That issue aside, I am certainly happy to have made the switch.

Day in and day out, I just print.

[falthj]

"FWIW, with my 4800, I've found a noticeable improvement in clogging issues since I raised the humidity inside the printer to about 69%. 
I use a plastic tray and a water-soaked rag. 
The lid is propped open to prevent inadvertent printing with the tray inside. 

The entire printer is enclosed in a large plastic trash bag to retain moisture."


Isn't technology wonderful?

Epson, would do well to enclose that information in its manual of instructions ?


I was once told, "if you can't afford to buy new...

you certainly cannot afford to buy used,
and escape the mental stress,
nor escape the cost of repairing someone else's old junk..."

YMMV