Recommend an A3 Printer

bravo

Considering an A3 printer and looking for recommendations and online stores with stock. Probably buying online as no decent shops close by.
Have seen prints from epsons and very impressed with colour gloss finish.
Budget around 400, mostly for colour but some b&w, maybe 50 prints a month. Genuine ink ongoing costs a consideration.

trishw78

have you tried elara.ie or komplett.ie

nilhg

This was a good thread about Epson A3 printers just a few weeks ago, loads of info there.

stcstc

i know someone who has just bought an epson 2880 from barker photographic for a good price

but its over your budget

the best fit i think would be the epson 1400, but the problem is its not great at b&w

and most of the printers you will find within your budget wont do great b&w

AnCatDubh

sorry to go slightly off topic for a moment but i'm curious -

why are some printers not up to producing good black and white prints yet may do colour perfectly fine? (if i'm understanding previous posts correctly)

stcstc

because they only have 1 shade of black and make everything else from mixing colours

cnocbui

AnCatDubh wrote: »

sorry to go slightly off topic for a moment but i'm curious -

why are some printers not up to producing good black and white prints yet may do colour perfectly fine? (if i'm understanding previous posts correctly)

Some newer Canon printers have a special grey ink that produces good B&W prints apparently, like the MP980 multifunction. http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRINT/MP980/MP980.HTM

Canon make A3 printers. I had/have an Epson A3 printer, I vowed never to buy an Epson ever again so bought a Canon A4 to replace it, which has been just brilliant.

stcstc

the trick is to find a printer with 3 black inks

light light
light
and black

out of interest what put you off the epson

cnocbui

stcstc wrote: »

out of interest what put you off the epson

The printer was an Epson 2000P, It was very expensive by current standards.

Unacceptable metamerism with the inks, a problem Epson were totally deceptive about, and which they should and could have fixed when new inks were developed. But instead, they introduced new models with the new inks, leaving their existing customers in the lurch.

The print head was shocking for letting loose with streaks of inappropriate colour across the full width of prints. A problem no amount of nozzle cleaning could overcome. An A3 printer you simply couldn't trust to print a 6x4 without ruining it, let alone an A3. This problem seems to have been endemic judging from the large number of users reporting the same thing on the Web. I think the design of the head was simply flawed.

The inks were very expensive, and it wasted a lot of them on nozzle cleaning, which didn't even work. It would readily use some of the wasted ink and get it on internal rollers and then ruin prints that way.

It had only one combination ink tank for the coloured inks, so when one ran out, you had to throw away the rest.

Epson produced an inherently faulty product and did not stand by those who bought into their 'professional' product.

The Canon MP600, by contrast, has been 100% flawless since purchase. When one brand new cartridge exhibited a problem, Canon customer service owned straight up and said there had been a batch with faulty chips and they immediately sent me a replacement which arrived in 3 days from the UK.

bravo

Thanks guys for the valuable advice. I'm leaning towards the epson R1900 as the price is just over 400 with a few online stores and seems to have plenty of good reviews. Already have a Canon Pixma for A4's and it does an ok B&W.
Next search will be for decent prices on ink and paper. Have already found 7dayshop and inkmaestro, which seem to have some value in genuine stuff.
Thanks again.