Not really, Hp generally outperforms the Canon Lucia ink set due to its balanced fading performance and this shows up in the Aardenburg testing as well as WIR test results. However, when paired with an underperforming media, the superior HP Vivera pigments won't buy you much that the other pigmented ink sets can't deliver in terms of light fade resistance. Nevertheless, if you look at all the data on the Aardenburg website, it's a fair conclusion to rank HP's Vivera pigments as the very highest rated ink set in overall light fastness, followed by Canon Lucia, and then by any Epson printers that use the K3 yellow. The new HDX yellow in the latest Epson ink sets may change the rank order, but that remains to be seen. As pigment longevity improves, the battleground shifts more and more to the properties of the chosen media.
I was looking at some direct comparisons and found this:
Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl @ 100 Mlux hours - HP Vivera via Z3100 I*colour average 97.6/worst 10% 92.1, I*tone average 95.1/worst 10% 90.1
Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl @ 100 Mlux hours - Canon Lucia EX via iPF8300 I*colour average 96.8/worst 10% 91.9, I*tone average 96.3/worst 10% 91.5
Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm @ 140Mlux hours - HP Vivera via Z3200 I*colour average 94.5/worst 10% 82.1, I*tone average 92.7/worst 10% 84.8
Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm @ 140Mlux hours - Canon Lucia EX via iPF6300 I*colour average 95.1/worst 10% 83.2, I*tone average 93.4/worst 10% 87.4
All uncoated/unlaminated samples.
I'm very interested to see what you and others have found with the HDX pigments - after all, if you take out the yellow completely (via a RIP) and compensate with orange and green in the HDR inkset, you end up with longevity similar to those of Canon and HP. I'm also interested to see what Canon have done with the Lucia Pro inkset vs Lucia EX - with Lucia EX they were claiming 200 years plus, whereas with Lucia Pro they're only claming around 60-80 years. It's hard to imagine them going backwards, particularly since Lucia Pro is a more concentrated ink than Lucia EX, but maybe their standard of 'acceptable fading' has changed.
Don't get me wrong - I really like the HP printers and inks, and wish they had developed them further. The HP printers are fairly idiot-proof, and you know the inks will last as long or longer than any other aqueous ink available no matter what you're printing on. The gamut could have been improved a bit, but the next generation of Vivera pigments could have done that, and it's only when you put them side-by-side with a Canon or Epson print of a highly-saturated subject that you can sometimes see a difference. It's just unfortunate that HP dropped out of the aqueous photographic printer game and we may not be able to obtain red, green and blue ink in the future, if no other HP printers use them.
At the moment, I'm also looking at the possibility of using Epson's S70-series (and upcoming S80-series) solvent printers for indoor fine-art prints, since their gamut is now approaching that of aqueous printers, and their physical durability and ink permanence are without question (2-3 years outdoors uncoated probably equals several centuries coated with Timeless and on indoor display).
I own a Canon iPF8300 and am very happy with it, but it's not a clearcut case of Canon being better when used intermittently in comparison to Epson printers being used intermittently. Canon uses very simple clock timer intervals to initiate pre-emptive cleaning cycles prior to printing when your Canon pigment ink printer has been left unused for more than a few days. And the longer you leave a Canon printer, the more aggressive that cleaning cycle is. While this preemptive procedure to avoid clogged nozzles on a Canon printer gives the enduser the impression that Canon printers don't clog as often as Epson printers, the reality is that a lot of ink hits Canon waste tanks rather than your paper if you don't use your Canon pigmented ink printer almost every day. And also in light use cases, when the nozzles finally do clog and don't respond to cleaning, then the Canon remaps the misfiring nozzles to spare nozzles, but it's a consumptive process. Because I use my Canon iPf8300 for only my personal work, my usage follows that of the "fine art" photographer. I'm having to replace Canon print heads approximately every two years, and it takes even less time for the $90 waste tank to get full. That is about $500 dollars per year in ongoing maintenance costs over and above all the wasted ink which goes unaccounted for.
Is it the same with HP, though? They're both based on the same head technology; granted, the inks are different.
Epson clearly suffers from a cleaning and maintenance perception problem where there is some truth to the story, but the story for Canon printer owners is far less obvious though real nonetheless. I'm not so sure that the generally perceived reality between the two brands is accurate. Bottom line: it would take a rather sophisticated multi printer study to prove total cost of Canon ownership is less than Epson (not just hearsay on internet chat forums), and I don't know of any such independent test reports with conclusions along those lines as ever having been published. Because HP heads are so cheap to replace, it may very well be that HP wins the total cost of ownership game as well, so it's a shame that HP hasn't maintained a vigorous pursuit of the photography and fine art market. Maybe we should all write a "draft HP" petition, and send it on to Carly Fiorina's successors at HP.
The thing is, Canon and HP both map out blocked nozzles to completely compensate for them, so you don't get prints spoiled by malfunctioning nozzles, and can go away on a six-week shooting trip and still come back to a printer that works perfectly. It might cost a bit of ink to run it that way, but it still runs. Epson does not - a single blocked nozzle makes the entire printer unusable, and nozzles clog on a regular-enough basis that, unless you print every day, you end up spending more time unblocking the printer than actually printing with it. And, when even a single nozzle can't be unblocked by regular means, you need to drain all the lines and remove the head to try to flush or clean it - or even replace the whole $2000 head - rather than just remap it like with every other printer. Sure, it works fine for a production environment where the printer is working continuously. But it's probably not ideal for a photographer who prints on demand and doesn't also provide a printing service for other photographers and artists.