I'm in the process of setting up a new epson et-8550 printer. I will be using it with an M4 macbook pro, and printing out of mostly lightroom and occasionally photoshop, though I may change that plan and print out of epson's print utility as I learn more.
I know enough to avoid using the airprint driver, so that's one pitfall avoided.
Wifi would be more convenient, but I believe a direct connection to the printer will be marginally faster, and probably more reliable.
What about quality? I'd welcome any feedback from folks with a recent Mx mac and either the 8550 or other similar vintage epson printers on your experience with wifi vs usb.
LAN/ethernet is also an option as I have a free 1000gbps port on my switch from a retired mac tower.
Hi @scottsoutter
I have both an Epson P900 and also an Epson ET 4850. I recently replaced an HP8620 printer (I had that for ~ 10 years) with the Epson ET 4850.
My home network is with a Linksys router and 4 linksys extenders. The also has hard wired ethernet cables to each room.
I also use a MacBook Pro for printing.
I discovered a couple things that might be helpful.
1) Despite limited experience, the WiFi connection to my two Epson printers has frequently ended up with "Communication Error" and required restarting the printer and sometimes reinstalling the printer driver to get it back up and running. Very disappointed in that.
2) Even though it is a high-speed network and routing system, with WiFi, it did seem to take a while to spool and print.
A few key factors that really helped
- Use the official Epson drivers and not what comes with the Mac!
- Connect the printer directly via the Ethernet cable. Even when printing from Wi-Fi from my MacBook Pro, with the printer directly connected to the system via an Ethernet cable, it significantly speeds up the spooling process and printing. This was true whether for big jobs on the P900 or office jobs on the ET 4850.
- Lastly, and this really helps the communication problem - If you are using a VPN, that is part of the communication problem with my two Epson printers. When I configured the VPN to allow traffic within my home network (bypassing the VPN), the communication issues so far have stopped.
To the first order, it doesn't change the quality of the prints that came out. There may be a secondary factor that the printing is not delayed by the Wi-Fi speed issues yet we have not noticed any quality differences. Just better quality-of-life, having less swearing at the Epson Wi-Fi with all the previous communication stoppages and restarting prints to the queue
Pretty happy with the setup now
Hope this info is helpful
John Wheeler
John Wheeler:
Thank you for the feedback on your experience. This is the type of information I was looking for as I set up my environment. What you are describing with the communications error messages sounds a bit like problems with timeouts and packet loss which I'm trying to avoid, so wired networking just moved up in the hierarchy.
I've had enough experience with computers over the years (decades!) to where I'm already a little suspicious about printer drivers, and adding a complex network into the mix (in your case with VPNs and the associated rules) does up the risk equation.
It's good that you were not seeing print quality issues when things were working, however your experience with reliability of the connection (and having to reload drivers, good grief!) is a good lesson.
Thanks for taking the time to provide a comprehensive reply!
If the printer is close enough to use a cable, I'd utilize one. If the printer is further than a 15" cable can reach, I'd setup wirelessly and do a test print. I use rather expensive paper and don't want to waste it if there's an issue with the data sent wirelessly. I'm using an old Canon Pro-100 with a MBP M2 and haven't had any problems via cable.
tcphoto wrote:
If the printer is close enough to use a cable, I'd utilize one. If the printer is further than a 15" cable can reach, I'd setup wirelessly and do a test print. I use rather expensive paper and don't want to waste it if there's an issue with the data sent wirelessly. I'm using an old Canon Pro-100 with a MBP M2 and haven't had any problems via cable.
I'm closer to a 6' / 2M cable just because I'd like to put the printer to the left of my desk (and the port is on the left side of the printer when looking at it from the front). Curious about the short length, did you mean 15 feet or do you have some experience with issues using cables longer than a foot or two?
EB-1 wrote:
USB typically needs an active cable at around 5m. Ethernet is reliable and stable after setup, and long lengths are easy.
EBH
I can run CAT6 pretty easily to the printer and ignore setting it up on wifi, but I'm still leaning pretty strongly to a simple dumb usb2 cable to the single computer I'll be printing photos from -- just to reduce complexity.
scottsoutter wrote:
I'm closer to a 6' / 2M cable just because I'd like to put the printer to the left of my desk (and the port is on the left side of the printer when looking at it from the front). Curious about the short length, did you mean 15 feet or do you have some experience with issues using cables longer than a foot or two?
I've always heard that a fifteen foot cable is the limit for tethering and a repeater is required if you need to extend the cable. I imagine that a printer is about the same as it too is sending data to the computer or hub.
I have! His content was one of the reasons I made the jump, and I sent him a small ko-fi thank you for all the detail he's compiled. Really solid stuff. (I've also previously bought his tilt-shift book, which I can recommend for folks who are puzzling through that learning curve).
Agreed. When I get some spare dollars I am going to replace my Epson XP-15000 with an 8550, as per his 'endorsement', even though he says he doesn't recommend anything in particular.
I just had a series of print failures that went away when I started using an ethernet cable (directly connecting pc to printer without a router) instead of usb. I have no idea why usb started paying up a few days ago without being moved or modified, but that's what it did.
Anyway, the incident highlighted the possible cost of a bout of intermittent comms failures in terms of wasted printer ink and even more expensive photo paper and of course, time. It's better to set it up for reliability in the first place. (Historically, I've always found networking unreliable, but maybe that's just me. This time there is no network.)
In the great scheme of things, wi-fi is not especially unreliable; all connection types might all be 99 point something percent reliable for all I know. However, if you compared different printer connection methods by the number of print failures rather than the number of successful prints, then wi-fi is noticeably worse than usb and ethernet. Even worse on Macs than on PCs because apparently Macs mess with wifi settings unnecessarily (Look for articles like "AirPrint must die"). Wi-Fi is far more prone to external interference than hard-wired connections (and I'm not talking about hacking; just electromagnetic).
When I printed frequently I had a separate printer computer. I would send the files from a main computer to the printer computer (not connected to internet or other network) and print from it directly to the printer. The cost of paper, ink and my time meant that I did not want any network issue or communication glitch to ruin a large print.
