Mark, out of interest: supposing eventually the new and old inks turned out to have near-identical light-fastness... would you still buy one of the new printers?
I'm coming from the comment often read that there is no longer any real difference in image quality between Epson and Canon (and that presumably meaning the Canon CO doesn't add that much relative to the Epsons which don't have it). Admittedly, the 8300 is now two generations old... but do you forsee image improvements, or are there other issues beyond lightfastness and image quality that would motivate a new printer?
Presumably there will be some good prices on X400 series printers over the next few months...
Well, eventually I will have to buy a new WF printer if I want to keep printing my own work (which I do because I insist on total control of the process). My 8300 is getting old and having more printhead burnout issues with increasing frequency which suggests the motherboard may also be on the way out. At that point, the out of warranty repair bill goes a long way towards purchase of a new printer. Nevertheless, I will try to keep it running as long as feasible because the thought of just sending all this plastic and metal to a landfill with not much opportunity to recycle tugs at my environmental conscience.
I freely admit I'm not the manufacturers' target market for any big printer. I only print my personal work which puts me squarely in the low volume output user group, and printer reliability issues get magnified for those of us who aren't running our printers each and every day. That means I will have to spend some time studying how well the new crop of WF printers cope with lower frequency use. I have learned how to keep the ipf8300 reasonably happy by just running daily nozzle checks, and a small print or two once a week. I can handle that. But interestingly enough, the little Pro-1 I purchased several months ago, needs even more constant throughput to keep it from running many preemptive cleaning cycles. It's an unbelievable ink hog that makes my iPf83300 seem positively frugal by comparison. So, I will want to understand the new printer routine maintenance and reliability issues much better before pulling the trigger on a new one. Unfortunately, ink consumption and reliablity are not easily documented in the printer reviews since the printers are typically loaned to the reveiwer for relatively short periods of time. And relying on forums for the info also gets tricky because people tend to report mostly the horror stories, and it's hard to get any statistics on "the average enduser" experience. So, we all have to try to sort out signal to noise issues when forming impressions about printer reliability, and that simply takes time.
I tend to agree with you that all of the printers have reached an image quality state where drop size and screening patterns don't lead to easily noticeable differences in sharpness or "smoothness", especially on prints over 16x20 in size. Price, cost per print, reliability, media handling, and overall ease of use are all very big factors to consider when making a WF printer choice. The addition of a gloss or chroma optimizer is also feature I instinctively like very much, but only if it gives the enduser proper control when venturing away from RC media and truly eliminates the need for a post treatment coating step. The problem I have seen is that the manufacturers seem to be optimizing their optimizers for RC photo media, so it can sometimes fall quite short when used on other non RC media (the so called Baryta papers) because the microporous coatings on those third party media often suck up the clearcoat more than the RC media. If the user can't adjust the GlOP channel output, then it will often fall short on truly eliminating gloss differential on those fine art media. I use very little RC and none for any archival printing. Because i dislike gloss differential in inkjet pigment prints, i would therfore still have to resort to a post treatment spray for all glossy fine art media where the Glop doesn't take care of it, and in those situations, having the built in clearcoat feature fails to meet the intended objective, at least for me. I'd actually like to see one or more of the printer manufacturers market an easy to use standalone GLOP machine that has more coating thickness versatility, but I doubt that will ever happen.
The manufacturers seem to be concentrating in the latest generation of printers on Dmax and B&W output quality, and from what I've seen there, the improvements in these areas of image quality are noticeably real but subtle. They are also highly media dependent, so if one has a favorite glossy/luster paper that you use a lot (I like HN photo rag pearl very much), it is worth checking a new printer's output specifically on that paper before purchasing.
Too many interesting choices, too little time
cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com