I am looking at upgrading from my little G620 to an A2 printer.
Cost wise (including ink usage) the Canon and Epson look to br pretty comparable. I like the smaller more compact design of the Epson and the Epson seems to be more consumer/prosumer/ serious enthusiast printer, perhaps a bit more approachable in use?
That being said I have read of paper feeding hassles with the Espon, while the Canon can suffer from some banding issues.
I would appreciate any input on understanding how much of an issues these things are.
I have had many Epsons 13,17 and 24 inches and was reluctant to look at anything else. After many clogs and too much repair costs, I switched to a canon 1000 and the 2100 so 17 and 24 and 5 years running with no problem! I do a regular one page print once a week via image(automated also epson) and no problems, In my epson days this was unthinkable. I color profiled my epson paper to use on canon. I
Having used both previous generation printers (Epson P800 and the Canon PRO-1000), I can say that the Epson prints faster but with slightly less vibrant colors compared to the Canon, even when profiled and proofed. I believe this may be due to the Canon's use of a "chroma optimizer" clear coating ink.
I do not have experience with the new 10-ink system in the P900, which uses a new all-purpose black ink but still skips the clear coating on the Canon. Maybe it's better?
Epson print heads are not designed to be user replaceable. If your print head is shot, you have to call a tech for the service, at which point it is cheaper to buy a new printer altogether. On the other hand, the Canons have user serviceable print heads that you can readily buy from reputable sources.
Hard to argue against Canon's replaceable heads. Nevertheless, I've had the Epson P800 for six or seven years and have made a lot of money using its fine art capabilities with Hahnemuhle papers. Since I print so often I don't give the heads a chance to clog. Prints of digitized pastel paintings are hard to distinguish from originals using 'William Turner'.
We only have Epson printers (three of them) here, so I can’t say much about the comparisons of reliability and so forth.
The color reproduction issues that some report are most likely due to profiling and not differences in printer ability.
One member of a small print review group that we are part of is a relatively well-known photographer (represented by TAAG, for example) with a long history as an expert printer. He tests stuff pretty thoroughly. At one point his studio had 60” printers from HP, Epson, and Canon!
He did some extensive comparative testing of Canon and Epson and used our group as guinea pigs. (All of us have “serious” printers and do our own critical work.) He would bring prints of the same image made on the different printers to our meetings and, without telling us what was what, would ask us to evaluate what we saw. In the end, no one was able to consistently identify whether the prints came from Canon or Epson, and we simply concluded that both were excellent when used competently.
