I have been in the market for a new larger printer and have been looking at three printers. The Canon 1100, the Epson P900 and a A3+ Canon Pro 200S. The larger Canon and Epson while more expensive, come with larger ink cartridges which help make the price jump from the smaller A3+ 200 a bit less financially painful. My interest in the 1100 and the P900 is mostly being able to print A2 size.
The Epson seems to have more reliability issues than the Canon. But the Canon is really a big printer making the fit in our office more difficult.
I just picked up the 200, mainly because I wanted the ability to print in a half-way decent pano format. It is performing well up to this point and the ink that came with it seems to be holding out amazingly well.
I do know a number of people with the Epson 900 who love it.
I have been using the Canon P900 for years and love it. It makes stunning prints. My only complaint is that loading thick paper is finicky, but once you get the hang of it only a small annoyance. In photo forums there are lots of complaints about it, but you have to take that with a grain of salt. I think printing is the most difficult and fraught part of photography, and I am guessing lots of people take out their frustrations by complaining about their printer in forums. And as you probably know, people are much more likely to complain than praise in a forum.
I have the S200. I would have preferred a pigment based printer but as I don’t print very often I was afraid of the nozzles getting plugged. The S200 does a much better job the the 1000pro I had that failed after over 10 years.
I have the Epson P800 (it’s similar to the P900, I believe) and have been using it for a few years. As Tony said, sometimes loading thick paper from the front is finicky, but not a deal killer. It makes beautiful prints on both glossy and matte paper. I don’t print that often and haven’t had many issues with the print heads clogging. At most, I have to run a print-head cleaning twice a year, if that.
I have the Epson P900 and love it. I got the optional roll paper holder so I can do 16x24 or panos. Unlike my old Epson 4000, I’ve never had a clogged nozzle with the P900, even after it sits for weeks without being used.
Great results with Epson papers using the built-in profiles.
The issue I have with the Canon S200 is the lack of drivers for different formats, 11x14 is missing for one. I’ve resorted to forcing it from other software.
Thank you all for your very valuable input. I spent some time in Glasers yesterday and today purchased the Canon 1100, a very very nice early birthday and Christmas gift. I am quite confident that all of the three printers I was looking at will be capable of making beautiful prints.
With the aid of Chat GPT, I was able to do three year projections of the cost to operate each of the printers. I found this number crunching particularly easy. It goes to illustrate the fact that when you are purchasing a printer, you are really purchasing two things, at the same time…namely the physical hardware of the printer but also the very valuable ink supply that comes with it.
I know there is concern within the arts and ohter areas of the impact of AI and I share those concerns too. However it least for this task it was a big help to me.
Even easier than AI, though hopefully not needed for a long time, Red River Paper tests the leading printers, figures cost comparisons and posts them on their website.
Dennis…I agree that Red River provides their ink cost comparison has been a wonderful tool and KUDOS to them for taking the time to put this together.
In my exercise with ChatGPT, I could have completed all of the calculations and comparisons, which went beyond the RR data. Its just that AI was able to do it in under a minute, so a big time saver for me.
Interesting. I’m still in the state where I’ve seen AI be dead wrong about too many things to really trust it, but I suppose if it’s working on data that’s well substantiated where there isn’t too much misinformation on the web, it should work well.