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Looking for a good quality a4 printer.
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I’m not sure what’s “new” on the market right now, but one printer that immediately springs to mind is the Epson R800. It’s somewhat above you’re ?200.00 limit but is an excellent colour printer, even if it is getting a bit long in the tooth now.
I was amazed at the quality from my mates Canon ip4200 printer and that now it costs less that 100 euro. For my first comp (which i bizarrely won) i used this to print, and the judge commented on the print quality.
The only downside is the price of the ink. If you’re not going to be printing that often it’s worth looking into. I’m definitely going to buy one at that price and quality.
I have just purchased an Epson R220 at ?55 odd (a bit under ?100). 6 inks and incredible print quality. Epson says lightfastness is 25 years.
The downside, of course, is the ink at ?50 per set (or ?10 individually). Basically, they give you the printer free when you buy the first set of inks.
One tip that I’ve seen in numerous places, is always to use the manufacturer’s own paper because their inks are always optimised to their paper.
Ali wrote:
I was amazed at the quality from my mates Canon ip4200 printer and that now it costs less that 100 euro. For my first comp (which i bizarrely won) i used this to print, and the judge commented on the print quality.
The only downside is the price of the ink. If you’re not going to be printing that often it’s worth looking into. I’m definitely going to buy one at that price and quality.
I have one of these myself, think it’s the 4200… Canon Pixma anyway. Very nice, and usually get my ink from 7dayshop.com – order a couple of each colour at a time when I’m running low, job’s a good’un…
Was told you should ideally run something through it once a week or so, as I’ve suffered from the annoyance of a clogged print head in the past. Mind you, Canon have a service company out in Tallaght (Bryan S Ryan) and if anything happens within warranty you just drop it over to them for a free repair job.
PeteTheBloke wrote:
I have just purchased an Epson R220 at ?55 odd (a bit under ?100). 6 inks and incredible print quality. Epson says lightfastness is 25 years.
The downside, of course, is the ink at ?50 per set (or ?10 individually). Basically, they give you the printer free when you buy the first set of inks.
One tip that I’ve seen in numerous places, is always to use the manufacturer’s own paper because their inks are always optimised to their paper.
I have the predecessor to that (the R220) but didn’t recommed it here. While the quality is very good for a printer that cheap, it’s not nearly as good as the R800 I mentioned above. Incidentally, anyone doing home printingof photographs, would do well to invest in QImage. Although not a RIP, it does assist in producing amazing results. I first got this when I was printing on a three-colour HP Deskjet 840c and it produced results good enough to win the odd photographic competition – something I didn’t think possible from an old DeskJet 840c!
davenewt wrote:
… I’ve suffered from the annoyance of a clogged print head in the past. …
I did not use my Epson printer for ages and the printer head can be full of dry inks.
What the best to do?Roberto wrote:
davenewt wrote:
… I’ve suffered from the annoyance of a clogged print head in the past. …
I did not use my Epson printer for ages and the printer head can be full of dry inks.
What the best to do?You’ll probably have to get it serviced. When it happened with mine, it was just one or two of the nozzles which were clogged but it was noticeable in everything that I printed… I tried numerous head cleaning, deep head cleaning (!), test prints, nozzle checks… but nothing shifted it. Even took out the printhead and rubbed it with a damp cloth in the vain hope of it being that easy :-)
Had to get it serviced though. Which, if you’re under warranty, isn’t too bad – just the inconvenience of the time to get it done. If you’re not, it will probably cost you as much as the printer just to get a replacement print head, so you might as well chuck the whole thing and buy another printer. Sad but true.
And they wonder why there’s mountains of electronic waste being created by society these days!
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Thanks Dave.
I don’t use and need this printer because I use Canon.
I just was curious.Noley,
If it’s colour printing you are talking about then I would say, without doubt, the Epson R800.
This printer uses archival pigment inks (up to 200 year life) and produces superb images using 5 colour cartidges (cyan, magenta, yellow, red, blue). It also features a gloss cartidge which fires on a gloss coating to increase the vibrancy of the colour and reduce any gloss variation between the inks.
I have the A3+ version (R1800) which uses the same cartidge set and have been deligted with it. Even after extended periods switched off, I have never had any clogging issues that a quick self clean couldn’t take care of. Print quality is outstanding and to my eye better than a Fuji Frontier minilab.
For B+W it may not be the best choice as it only offers 2 black cartidges (photo black and matt black) with no “grey” cartidges. You might need to think about something like the R2400 if B+W is important to you.
Andy
Thanks for your input Andy,much appreciated. I’ll check out some prices :wink:
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