Epson Stylus R2880

I have been looking at larger format photo printers for sometime now. Honestly speaking, the inkjet printer technology has advanced tremendously since I bought my last Canon S750, which was about, well.....8 years ago :) But I can vaguely remember that it was not a cheap A4 size printer and considering how much I paid for it, the print quality was a bit disappointing even at the time. Nowadays, you can grab a better one from Harvey Norman for as little as the price you pay for a large pizza down at your local pizzeria.

From weeks of reading reviews, I have narrowed down my choices to only 3 printers; Canon PIXMA Pro9500 MarkII, Epson Stylus 1410 and Epson R2880. Epson Stylus 1410 is an dye-ink based printer whereas the other two use pigment-ink, and also is the cheapest among them. At the end, I settled for the Epson R2880 as it is the only printer that takes roll paper for panoramic printing. This is also the main reason why I chose the Epson over Canon, even though Canon is a newer model for the same price.

After picking up the printer and a 9.8m roll of A3+ glacier photo satin 300gsm paper from PRA Imaging in Northbridge this afternoon, I spent the rest of the day playing with it and managed couple of prints along the way. The print quality is astonishing and is almost as perfect as those from your local photo lab! The biggest problem with this printer the capacity of the cartridges, sadly, the printer has grown in size but the cartridges are smaller than those in my S750 :) Well, with nine of those bleeding, I got a feeling we will definitely end up spending much more in ink cartridges than the $1325 initially paid for this printer!