I am sick of babying my r800. Any alternatives?

mmroden

Hi Everyone,

The title says it all. I have an epson r800, and I'm just plain sick of the damn thing. It seems like every two to three weeks it needs a new cartridge, it won't do its basic functions when it's 'low on ink', and the heads just evaporate ink like water in a desert under the noonday sun whenever a head cleaning is required. I feel like I'll get three or four prints, and then have to replace at least one, if not two or three, cartridges. I just replaced the blue, and once that was done, the black ink got drained during replacement (what the?)

So, what are the alternatives? When this printer is massaged just right, it makes decent prints, but unless it gets babysat all the time, it's just so painful to mess with. Is the r900 a significant improvement, or just more of the same?

What I want:
1) no banding, or at least, an easy to fix for banding which doesn't destroy ink
2) not to have to swap out ink cartridges every five prints
3) good quality? (ie, looks like my screen, which is calibrated).

Anything out there? I'm by no means married to Epson; I will switch brands in a New York minute if it will give me what I want.

mmroden

So, printer technology really hasn't advanced in four years?

I've seen no real reviews or anything for a printer since the r800 that produces the goodness. Any pointers?

Miguel Delinquento

Just check user reviews on Amazon and the printing forum at dpreview for the following models:
R1900, which replaced the R1800 that is the larger version of your R800.
HP B9180 and the new B8850;
Canon Pro 9000 (dye) and the Pro 9500 (pigment like the R800)
I have the R1800 and its glossy work is great. But for matte, not so good. And those carts are too small, but you can get a CIS system if you output a lot of work frequently. The R1800 is also hackable for alternative matte black and white output, and that's wonderful.
I also have the HP B9180 and that is excellent for glossy and matte black and white. The ink carts are fairly large too and the ink consumption is far more frugal than the R1800.
Lots of folks like both Canon models.
What are your requirements?

M

Art Scott

I am still using an HP932C.....I think all printers suck up the inks when doing head cleaning of calibrating......I have yet to see one that didnot.....my HP does and so did the Epson and HP we had at my office at the University and they were both brand new and top line....and in the graphics dept all theirs sucked the ink and they had quite the assortment of cannon, epson, hpand a couple others that were all for graphic arts and photography.....but they had money for a lyson set up on their biggest ink suckers:D

But I think it is time for you to upgrade .....I know if I was going to be printing my own enlargements above 8 x 10 I would and may have too if I keep printing b-cards as I have........

mmroden

Thanks for the responses.

My printing needs are somewhat sporadic, which is why the tiny cartridges on the r800 are annoying. I'll go for two months without printing anything, and then need to print maybe 5-10 prints. I'd like to print more, but on that schedule, the ink just goes. I might check out that HP, to see if it's as good, and the ink isn't so quickly lost.

I realize that with me printing so infrequently, that I'm going to lose a lot of ink to head cleaning and so forth. I did put some thought into getting larger ink wells, but then I'd definitely need to calibrate, and the last time I had off-brand inks, they lasted for about a year before fading badly. So I guess print longevity is necessary as well, for at least 5-10 years.

So I should check out the
HP B9180
Canon 9500 (to get ink longevity, right?)
HP932C

any others? How are the ink prices? I'll look for some in-depth reviews...

Thanks much!

webwizard

mmroden wrote:

Thanks for the responses.

My printing needs are somewhat sporadic, which is why the tiny cartridges on the r800 are annoying. I'll go for two months without printing anything, and then need to print maybe 5-10 prints. I'd like to print more, but on that schedule, the ink just goes. I might check out that HP, to see if it's as good, and the ink isn't so quickly lost.

I realize that with me printing so infrequently, that I'm going to lose a lot of ink to head cleaning and so forth. I did put some thought into getting larger ink wells, but then I'd definitely need to calibrate, and the last time I had off-brand inks, they lasted for about a year before fading badly. So I guess print longevity is necessary as well, for at least 5-10 years.

So I should check out the
HP B9180
Canon 9500 (to get ink longevity, right?)
HP932C

any others? How are the ink prices? I'll look for some in-depth reviews...

Thanks much!

My printer use is like yours. I don't print often but when I do its lots of photos. I use the Epson Stylus Photo 2200. I bought it a few years back; it does a great job for me. Its discontinued now. I think the closest equivalent would be the R2400.

I think all ink printers use lots of ink. When I haven't used it in a while, I usually have to cylcle through a couple of head cleaning passes first. I'm sure that consumes ink too but I always keep a couple of extra cartridges for each color on hand. The most irritating thing that can happen for me is to run out of an ink catridge and not have an extra to slap in. I order my ink over the web and I just back fill my reserve supply.

I'm pretty happy with the quality of the prints. The 2200 doesn't handle glossy prints well. Perhaps they fixed that in the 2400. That's my only disappointment. It's survived three long distance moves in two years and is still ticking

Sweeper

Must add to this thread. I have both, an R800 and R1800. Both are ink consumers for sure but, it is the end result that I look for and Epson is by far my choice of printer. I've gone thru the gammut of trying the HP and Canon. Closest to the Epson was the Canon. The HP gave me headaches and support was all but non existant. The Canon was great in that I could keep refilling the cartidges with quality 3rd party formula. BUT eventually I did notice that the formula lead to fading and that lead to me upgrading to the Epson. Just yesterday, I spoke to a rep from "Island Inkjet" which claims to be able to fill any company cartridge with company formula. Unfortunately, the Epson R series is so exclusive that they had to stand down on their claim and eventually told me that my cartridges could not be done by them. In short, I'll be sticking with the quality which Epson delivers. At $17.00 per, the cartridges can add up to a lot of expense but I do keep at least one extra of every colour on hand. The cost... it's passed on to the customer as quality usually is. At least I know that the prints I deliver will outlast any current life form that is viewing them. We also run an Epson Photo RX 580 which we got cheaply with a camera purchase. What a great little machine !!

Nuff for now...
...Steve

northtnguy

I know I'm new here, as you can tell by all my posts here!

Since you don't use your printer all that much and have to go through a cleaning cycle everytime you have to use it, how would it do to just print a small picture .... maybe a 2"x3" (something small) ... every week, just to keep everything primed and ready to go?

Maybe set up a message on your system to pop up once a week to remind you to do this.

That's what I do with my small HP D7360 and it's saved me a bunch on ink replacements.

Don

mmroden wrote:

Thanks for the responses.

My printing needs are somewhat sporadic, which is why the tiny cartridges on the r800 are annoying. I'll go for two months without printing anything, and then need to print maybe 5-10 prints. I'd like to print more, but on that schedule, the ink just goes. I might check out that HP, to see if it's as good, and the ink isn't so quickly lost.

I realize that with me printing so infrequently, that I'm going to lose a lot of ink to head cleaning and so forth. I did put some thought into getting larger ink wells, but then I'd definitely need to calibrate, and the last time I had off-brand inks, they lasted for about a year before fading badly. So I guess print longevity is necessary as well, for at least 5-10 years.

So I should check out the
HP B9180
Canon 9500 (to get ink longevity, right?)
HP932C

any others? How are the ink prices? I'll look for some in-depth reviews...

Thanks much!

MikeKelly

There are some other alternative solutions other than cartridges. Bulk ink system is one of them. The init investment is a little bit higher than a whole set of inks, but it last 10 times longer than cartridges or even more.
There are some reference and pictures
http://www.pbase.com/belenh/inkrepublic_2400
http://www.inkrepublic.com/members/MerrittIsland/review.asp
http://www.inkrepublic.com/members/ozprintshop/review.asp
http://www.inkrepublic.com/members/Soren/review.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system