Experience with a T120 HP 24” dye printer.
SETUP
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I’ll leave the “dye/pigment” debate to one side. My experience with the printer begins with price.
To begin with, the printer is cheaper in Australia. A local price at Officeworks of AUD$999, and a BH Photo US price of US$949 makes the US price AUD$1250 when bought with Australian dollars.
This price difference is unheard of in Australia where even iTunes downloads are more expensive than elsewhere.
The printer has a powered roll feed and Wi-Fi, AirPrint and ePrint.
When I first loaded a roll the color display panel said “Roll Loaded with Skew”. Before I could unload to try again, the panel said “Correcting skew”. A few clicks later and skew has been automatically corrected. Then it’s ready to print.
Our work is canvas printing and we use 100% woven polyester upgraded for photographic quality and high degree of water resistance. This canvas is easily cut with the inbuilt automatic cutter. It will not cut 300 gsm cotton canvas, and don’t even try – the cutter will embed itself in a jumble of piled up canvas and take at least 30 mins to sort out.
We had a profile made for us, but strangely, the HP Universal Gloss Photo Paper profile supplied with the printer gives us faultless results.
The paper cassette on the rear can remain in position while printing on a roll, but the roll has to unload , (but can remain in place on the spindle) when using sheets. Borderless doesn’t seem to be an option.
There’s a full range of all options available on the control panel touch screen.
Setting up wi-fi printing was very easy.
IMAGE QUALITY
It’s no exaggeration to say that the canvas prints, at maximum detail, are indistinguishable from the ones done on our iPF 6100 Canon pigment machine. We print from Qimage and have a floral 24”x 36” satin print from the Canon that we compared with the T129 print of the same image. No one, including our digital image restorer, could see any difference in color, shadow or highlight, or sharpness. That this is achieved with only three colors shows how technology of digital printing has advanced in the six years difference between the machines.
To get the best detail you have to choose “Custom Options”, press “Settings” and choose “Maximum Detail” and “Best” quality level.
It’s almost the best machine for the job except for the longevity of dye. One benefit of dye is that it sinks into the canvas – scratching is very hard to achieve, corners don’t crack etc. How long they last indoors is debatable. 30 to 40 years if coated is a guess, but for our customers that’s fine. If you try to engage them in debate on longevity their “low-interest light” quickly comes on. They’ve all watched the white plastics on their washers, refrigerators, microwaves etc turn yellow over ten years. Picture permanence is more important, but they seem happy with our estimate.
