Epson Stylus R1800 A3+ Colour Inkjet Photo Printer User Reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Overall excellent printer
Comment: I'm a keen amateur photographer and have owned the R1800 for about 3 years now. I've printed on most sizes and types of paper (though not roll paper) and CDs.
Overall I'm very pleased with this printer. It produces sharp, clear prints right to the edges (borderless) with excellent colour reproduction. If you've not printed at A3 before then it's quite a jaw-dropping experience to see such a great picture come out of the printer. All paper finishes seem to work well - I particularly like the colour saturation achieved on matte archival paper.
One word of warning: don't use non-Epson inks!! I tried once and will never do so again. The colours were lousy and they clogged the print heads. It took some time to get things back to normal.
The only real criticism I have is ink cost. A full set of inks costs about £80-90 and if you're making large colour prints they'll need replacing depressingly quickly. (Hence my experiment with non-Epson inks.) It would be very useful to see if there's an accurate comparison of the amount of ink different printers use; please email me if you've seen one. I'm going to look into CIS (continuous ink system) to see if this may help reduce costs.
Customer Rating:
Summary: quality vs greed
Comment: I was so excited when i finally got this printer set up as i could finally see all my favourite shots in A3, and it was SOOO worth the outlay, the prints were awesome. that was about a year ago...
unfortunately, there is a big however.
this thing costs a fortune to run, and you have to run it otherwise it just churns out rubbish.
after the initial excitement of printing out loads of my favourtie shots, the printer laid dormant for a few weeks whilst i was busy with other things. i then tried to print out some more photos only to find out that the quality was dreadful. i set about using the cleaning mechanism but a few goes just didn't clean it and it seemed that the ink levels were going down at an alarming rate, so i contacted epson support. I was duly informed that the print heads were in fact clogged, and ON AVERAGE epson expect about 6 cleaning cycles to be required to remove blockages. as it happened, it did actually take 6 cleans, and well over half a complete set of inks to return prints to their best. lesson learned and off i went, disgruntled but happy to have a top notch printer again.
BUT - don't ever think about going away on holiday for 2 weeks as the heads will cease up again. this time i have flushed through an entire set of inks and the problem is, more or less, solved but i don'd believe the quality is where it was.
this IS an amazing printer when it's firing on all cylinders (or phps cartirdges) but a great deal of criticism must be laid at epson's door for the sheer cost of running and maintaining it. the bottom line is it's going to costs you a fortune to run (i reckon about £50 a month on ink) however you use it - whether you're producing tons of high quality prints, or spending most of your time cleaning perpetually blocked cartridges.
proceed with caution...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautiful but expensive
Comment: I bought this printer a year ago, I'm an architecture student and I print a lot of A3s. To save money by printing myself I thought this would be a good investment. The print quality is amazing, no other printer I've used comes close. HOWEVER, this printer has bled me dry! I used cheap copy cartridges and the thing clogged up after 3 months. I cleaned it and bought a CIS with pigment inks, same happened after a while. I would only buy this if you are prepared to buy £80+ worth of cartridges every 30 or so A3 prints. I can't afford this and wish I'd bought the HP 1280 which is so much cheaper but has average graphics.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent mid-range A3 photo printer
Comment: Having had Epson printers in the past I opted for this printer as it seemed to provide the best quality offering in my price range. In particular I wanted to print A3 and panoramic rolls (banners with A3 height) using pigment inks (the benefit of pigment inks over traditional dye inks is that they do not fade over time, although they do not appear quite as vibrant when printed).
Six months in and results have been very good. Installation (hardware and software) was easy. The sharpness, vibrancy and overall quality of the photos produced has been excellent. Border printing, CD printing (it has a special tray), gloss effect and black and white prints have also been of a very high quality. I've found I've had to do quite minimal configuration to get the image I have on screen to match what is printed - this seems related to the pigment colours being somewhat more lifelike in my view than the dye colours in previous cartridges. The printer is quiet, fairly quick (a lot faster than my old Epson) and all in all a definite improvement on what I had previously.
On the downside, ink usage is high (but then you get what you pay for... to reduce ink usage use a lower print quality - you may not notice the difference most the time) although I've not yet had problems with cartridges drying up (since there are 8 cartridges they can be replaced individually, a big benefit to me). Despite some reviews I've read, I think the build is a bit clumsy - the paper collection tray uses some unusual hinges and springy bits to open up, but always strikes me as about to break off.
Is this the right printer for everyone? No, probably not... if you're doing a lot of black and white you should consider one of the other A3 printers in the Epson range, and as an all-round printer it is expensive to run (especially with the speed it goes through ink).
Two minor tips though: stick to Epson paper (especially on the glossy prints the difference between HP paper and Epson paper when both are used on an Epson printer is striking); also, stick to Epson cartridges (although it's tempting to use cheaper inks I'd really recommend against it as they do have a knack of clogging up the printer and making it utterly useless).
To conclude, I definitely recommend this printer for what I use it for... printing A3 and A4 photos from a digital SLR at a keen amateur level, and the odd A4 letter in black ink.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The flushing ink issue...
Comment: Yes, I love this printer, or rather I should say, I love the excellent quality prints and really accurate colour.
However, the printer itself is a greedy monster created by even greedier monster - Epson.
If your thinking of buying this model beware the hidden technology in these printers because it will make a big hole in your pocket if your a regular printer user.
The technology in this machine is designed to flush unused ink from ALL 8 separate cartridges every time you insert just 1 new cartridge and every time you close the ink hatch. It wastes YOUR ink and YOUR money and you won't have any control over it. Epsons promotes the the 8 cartridge system as cost-effective but how can flushing good ink away be cost-effective at £[...]-[...] a cartridge!
An good example:
Today my printer has stopped working. It tells me I am out of Gloss Optimizer and need to replace the cartridge before it will start again. Well the thing is, I have NEVER even used my Gloss Optimizer and I mean NEVER EVER used it. Not even just 1 test sheet out of curiosity when I first bought it. The Gloss cartridge is empty simply from all the flushing the machine does without my permission.
So, I am held hostage by Epson until I buy a new Gloss cartridge. And when I do buy one, and put it in the slot, the machine will once again FLUSH AWAY a little bit more ink from all 7 older cartridges AND my new unused cartridge before it will start printing anything again. Is this legal or just immoral?
In my opinion, it's kind of like being sold a new Car Tyre that you later learn was given a slow puncture by the garage before you drove away, simply to force you into buying another tyre very very soon. It can't be right.
This machine is an ink addict and it won't keep working if you don't feed it.
This is why it gets 4 not 5 stars!
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