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246 of 248 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Accurate prints at last !, 31 July 2008
This review is from: Epson Stylus Photo R2880 A3 Photo Printer (Personal Computers)
I purchased Epson's R2880 to replace my trusty Epson 1270 photo printer which, after 9 years producing excellent prints finally gave up the ghost. I was keen to see what improvements had been made in 9 years of development.
The printer is quite large but easy to assemble, and the software installation proceeded with no problems. Reviews say that the new printer interface is an improvement on the old one. I dissagree with this. It's still good, but not an improvement.
So what were the first prints like ? A bit dissapointing - too washed out with weak colours. So I reduced the brightness and increased the contrast in the printer preferences and the results were then very good indeed. In fact the colours matched exactly those on the monitor screen, something I have never been able to achieve before.
Although the R2880 has higher resolution than the 1270, this did not show in the prints. What did show was the printing speed - just over 2 minutes to do an A4.
The pigment inks do not soak into the paper like dye inks do, but sit on the surface, so the resulting prints are not as glossy but still very good. An they should last a lifetime.
Would I reccommend this printer. You bet. The results really are very good indeed and the printer feels well made. I have printed many thousands of images over the years on several different printers, and the R2880 gives better results by far. Enough said.
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115 of 117 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good quality prints but poor documentation and expensive ink, 29 Dec 2008
This review is from: Epson Stylus Photo R2880 A3 Photo Printer (Personal Computers)
I bought this to replace an R800 that was showing banding on photos and which the local Epson service agent was unable to fix.
It was easy enough to set up and the prints look great. I used genuine Epson ink and premium glossy photo paper with Photoshop colour management (the software installation automatically added the R2880 colour profiles to the Photoshop print menu). Blacks are particularly good - the R800 blacks had a warm colour cast. Bright colours are possibly slightly better in the R800 but there's not much in it. However, the R800 was very poor at printing dark greens.
Speed is very slow on max quality setting but on standard setting much faster and I couldn't see any difference in quality - even under a magnifying glass.
However, I was very disappointed when, after 3 days, I did a nozzle-check. The printer went into an extended cleaning cycle and then showed that one of the nozzles was blocked. I did another nozzle check and again it did a cleaning cycle before printing the nozzle check pattern. This appeared to use around £12 worth of ink, although it's difficult to tell as the ink-level window doesn't give a very accurate display - earlier versions of the printer status monitor at least had graduation marks against the displayed ink levels.
There is no printed manual supplied and the electronic manual doesn't mention this behaviour. I've now seen similar complaints in the US Amazon web site.
Next time I did some printing the problem didn't happen and the nozzle check was fine, so maybe this is just a teething problem.
So overall, I am happy with it but a bit nervous of the apparently random cleaning cycles and the amount of ink that gets used as a result - the R800 would check the nozzles and then give the option of nozzle-cleaning or not. Especially disappointing as Epson are supposed to have improved the nozzle and ink technology so why so many cleaning cycles? Then again, if it makes the printer last longer than my R800, perhaps it is worth it.
Summary:
Very good colours
Excellent blacks and greys
Good speed on standard quality setting
Max quality setting appears to be no better than standard setting
Worrying, unpredictable and expensive automatic nozzle cleaning (not described in the manual)
No printed manual.
Although I have not used Epson's support service for this printer, experience with previous printers have left me unsatisfied.
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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best print results so far, 7 Mar 2009
This review is from: Epson Stylus Photo R2880 A3 Photo Printer (Personal Computers)
I've had this printer 1 week now and have only printed to epson archival matt paper so far.
Results are very encouraging for the first batch of prints. Mono prints are excellent with no colour cast that I suffered with by now defunct R1800.
I've found the best results are to print straight from photoshop using the supplied profiles for epson paper, and disabling the color management.
Cons: If you need to change cartridges (Matt black to Photo black), it takes ages to purge out the old ink and is quite wasteful. Sometimes it doesnt recognise the change and needs the printer switched off and on again.
Its best to do a batch of printing on matt or gloss to avoid frequent swaps.
Why didnt epson make it to hold both blacks at the same time - like my old printer?
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