Photo printers - how good are the Epson eco tank prints?

steveiep

steveiep

steveiep

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My Canon ip8750 has died and I'm looking a replacement for A3 prints. Anyone here got any experience with the Epson eco range - obviously the cost of inks is a major one but are the prints reasonably good?
 
I have just bought the Canon Pro 300 and it's excellent. It's a 10 colour-pigment based A3 printer, with a chroma cartridge for gloss/lacquer. I'm really pleased with the overall quality. It's better than Lab quality in my case. The inks can obviously be bought separately, and they're about £14 each. You're never likely to run out of all the inks at once, so buying individual ones may be the way to go. You also get a FULL set of ink with the printer, which is great. How much do the tank refills work out on the Epson?

I've no experience with the Epson but I did a lot of research prior. The Canon came out top in most tests, maybe apart from paper handling. Surprisingly though not much is said about cost of ink, in any of the reviews. I guess it's dependent on what you do with it.

I do also own an Epson A4 6-colour dye based printer which I use for the smaller stuff. It's excellent value, and reasonably accurate considering its age, but the A3 Canon is in a different league.
 
So a full set of inks would cost £140 and how many pages would that do? A full set of six inks for Epson's top eco-tank photo printer can be bought for £130 and all but one will give 5000-6500 pages. Individual tanks can be refilled as required from the bottles. It really makes you realise how we've been ripped off for decades by the printer manufacturers.
steveiep said:
My Canon ip8750 has died and I'm looking a replacement for A3 prints. Anyone here got any experience with the Epson eco range - obviously the cost of inks is a major one but are the prints reasonably good?
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I've had an ET4700 AIO for two years. It's a basic four ink printer so not the best for photo prints but that wasn't why I bought it. My main gripe is that I need to clean the heads more than I'd like but that may be because I don't use it enough.
 
Snapshot said:
So a full set of inks would cost £140 and how many pages would that do? A full set of six inks for Epson's top eco-tank photo printer can be bought for £130 and all but one will give 5000-6500 pages. Individual tanks can be refilled as required from the bottles. It really makes you realise how we've been ripped off for decades by the printer manufacturers.
Click to expand...

I don't know actually. I'm testing the water with this to see how many A3+ I can get out of a set. But I would be sceptical of 5000! Also, does the Epson use dye based or pigment based ink does it say? This can print on canvas and such like as a result. I'm not sure the Epson can, but I could be wrong.

For what it's worth, my Epson 6 colour is 11 years old now, and a set of official inks cost £80!
 
The Epson ET-8550 is hybrid part dye & pigment very cheap ink and half decent results.

My Epson P5000 cost about £800 to £900 to refill.
 
Sorry for the slow reply - I've been away working..
OK, it seems to me that while print quality of the Canon Pro 300 is better, the ink costs would be restrictive for me, while the Epson eco 8550 is way cheaper to run. This means that for me (I think) everyday use and prints that don't have to be the best quality it makes sense to buy an Epson and for the few prints I sell I can use a lab.
Thanks for the help with this, all I've got to do now is find someone who has then in stock!
 
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