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Recommended A4 Printers
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Hi Folks,
I am looking for recommendations for an A4 printer. It has to produce quality B&W prints as well as colour without breaking the bank. I know very little about printers as I have been using the same Canon MP360 for the last 8-10 years but lately there has been a lot of banding on my prints and also the quality and colours are not what I expect.
All advice most welcome.
Mark.
I dont do a lot of printing, but if you were happy with the prints from your Canon
printer why not go that route again, after 8 or 10 years it is just probably worn out.
I have an Epson all rounder (does copies, prints, scans etc) so just a bog standard
printer, it is capable of some nice prints if the inks and papers are as recommended
by Epson. Which is probably true of all cheapy printers available.Hi Mark
I have a Canon pronter for sale and its’ brand new – canon-pixma-mg8150-printer-t46433.html
See what you think and if you want it then I can drop it over to you when it suited.
Aindreas
I know we had a discussion the other night in the Malahide Camera Club and based on what we spoke about I’m going to do some tests…….with wait for it………. the cheapest Epson A4 4 COLOUR printer (€30) but with custom profiles that I will generate for some of the papers that we sell. I did this a few years back and I was astonished by the results.
If I update this post then I will have been pleased by the results and if not then this will be the end of it.
Watch this space!
Hi Mark,
I have used an Epson R240 A4 inkjet for the last 6 years.
It has 4 inks and prints lovely in colour.
The B/W prints are not so good and tend to have a colour cast in them.
I have used prints from it for some camera club events but I have tended to tone the prints a little rather than try pure black and white.A few years back I researched to see if I could find a reasonably priced A4 printer that would print good in B/W but as far as I could see I would have had to buy one of the A3+ printers with multiple cartridges to guarantee good B/W prints.
All prints for our inter club competitions have been printed by one of our members who has an Epson A3+ printer for the last number of years and the B/W prints are much better than what my printer can produce.I await the results of Sheldon’s test with interest.
I’m not sure my post is of any use to you but I just thought I would let you know my experiences.
All the best,
John.
Thanks everybody for the replies. Shelson, I am extremely curious to see how you get on !!
The Result:
Firstly I decided to go with the Epson BX525WD multifunction printer as I have a need for a wireless office printer in our office. Retail Price is €139.95 but you might find them around about €75.00 as they were on promo for September last. The BX stands for business use and W for WiFi and D for Duplex.
This printer uses the same inks as the Epson S22 Printer (€30) although the ink is packaged differently. For those in the know these are the Epson Durabrite Inks (pigment based) sold in packets with either a Fox, Apples or Stag image on the packaging, depending on ml in the cartridge.
I first printed an image using the default profile for Epson Premium Semi-Glossy paper using the Canson Satin paper. The result showed a strong bronzing (differential sheen) when viewed at an angle and while the image was never going to be colour accurate it would be acceptable to most home users, but not photographers. Using the Datacolor Spyder Print spectro and software I generated a profile for the Canson Satin paper and the results are quite fantastic. The colours are vibrant and quite colour accurate and black and white images could be described as mildly warm tone but without colour shifts.Bronzing is still a huge problem for critical photographers but treating the print with a spray of Hahnemuehle “Protective Spray” neutralizes the effect and is an effective workaround.
Conclusion:
For an in-expensive A4 photo printer do consider the 4 Colour Epson machines. Do not expect them to be great for photographs however unless you have them individually calibrated for each paper type that you use. The business machines (BX) have larger capacity inks but cost more initially but should be a lot cheaper to run in the long run. I attach a screen grab of the profile/colour range mapped under Epson Premium Luster paper on an Epson 3880 and you can see the extra colours that can be got from a the extra high quality inks of the 3880. Still for very little you could be printing pretty good printd. Anybody interested in seeing the results for themselves please drop by our offices and I’ll show them to you.
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