Epson Stylus Photo R2880 Wide-Format Color Inkjet Printer (C11CA16201)

I've been making due with an older Epson Photo EX...can't believe how much the technology has improved since then. The printer is easy to operate, and colors are nothing short of amazing...fine, detailed prints like nothing I've ever been able to produce. Drawbacks are probably what others mention...the matte black/photo black swapping thing is just silly, the ink cartridges are too small, at highest quality settings the printer's a bit slow, no built-in network interface, and the printer's physically a little on the large size. Still, for me it's all about the final image quality - and nothing I've seen tops the Epson in this regard. UPDATE: Okay, so I've been living with my R2880 for about sixteen months now, and I wanted to refute some of the claims other reviewers have made. Perhaps I'm just one of the lucky ones, but my experience with the R2880 has been nothing short of fantastic. I've printed well over 2000 prints and gone through dozens of ink cartridges by now, and I'm happy to say that I haven't experienced EVEN A SINGLE JAM, MIS-FEED or other operational problem. I tend to use Epson's Ultra-Premium Luster for 8x10 size prints, Epson Velvet or Exhibition Fiber in 13x19 - and a few non-Epson brands including Museo, Ilford Silk and a few others. I've done a bit with canvas (both sheets and roll), though that's relatively rare for me. The short story is that everything I've tried has worked properly. Overall, I couldn't be happier with my printer. I do use my printer fairly regularly - always at least once or twice a week, usually more. As of now, except for the cycle when I install a new ink cartridge or initially power it on, I've never seen it waste ink on a cleaning cycle, nor have I ever had to manually trigger cleaning. My volume is high enough that I deal with the ink-swapping sillyness by simply waiting until I have enough material that I can use an entire print cartridge (about 50 prints, generally). I make the switch, print till I run out of matte ink, and then I switch back. This works for me, and doesn't waste any ink. My initial comment regarding the ink cartridges being too small is probably my number one gripe. Because the various color inks are used at different rates according to the tones in your photographs, it's not like you stop every so often and replace all the ink. You print, replace one color, print some more, replace the next one, and so on. I just find this slows me down unacceptably, and I'd like the option to have maybe 3-5 times more ink per cartridge. Print quality continues to be amazing...the only other printer I've seen that beats it is Epson's newer 7900 - a much larger printer that costs five times what the R2880 sells for. Yes, I'm a perfectionist with top quality gear, all the best software, calibration equipment, and I spend a lot of time fine tuning everything to get the best possible image quality. But I feel I've been rewarded for this work, and everyone who sees my prints comments as to the quality.

I ordered my Epson R2880 about a month ago from Amazon, as a replacement for my trusty old Epson 2000P which was about seven years old. My new printer arrived very promptly a few days later. The Vista software installation went smoothly except for the fact that a couple of the amber "ink-empty" lights did not work properly, one never came on and one was flickering, like on and off. (These little lights are located in the ink well, they all (should) come "on" upon printer startup, then go "off", one by one, as each ink cartridge is inserted into the well.) The first couple of prints I made were not good, but I soon discovered that with this printer use only Epson paper and be sure to select the particular type of paper on the screen before commencing printing. I then printed several color and B/W sample prints, examined them under a loupe, and I must say they were great. I was impressed with the quality. Everything seems to run smoothly for the first week or so, although I noticed that the printer had a tendency to perform prolonged nozzle cleaning sessions. One session lasted between 6 and 7 minutes. That's when I started to look at the ink levels charts. This printer is really using the ink I thought. I then noticed large random dots, about 3mm in diameter on some of my prints, sometimes only an hour after a new start-up nozzle cleaning session. My last printing endeavor on this printer - just following a nozzle cleaning session - were eight 4x4" images where these dots showed up on five prints, some were in the margins and some right on the image itself. Calling Epson was quite an experience. The person told me to simply do a nozzle clean. I told him I had just done nozzle cleans, but he insisted and I did it. The first print out had the famous 3mm dots on the paper and the print. Do the nozzle clean again, he said. At this point I confronted him with the question of how much ink a nozzle clean required because my ink indicators showed a decrease in ink level of about 15% with each cleaning. He had no answer to that, or to any of my other questions, including the amber light question. I was now out of ink and had a lot of unwanted dots on many of the prints I had made. At this point I knew I would never feel comfortable using a set of inks priced at about $125. and only wind up with a handful of usable images. I returned the printer as I was still within the 30 days grace period. One last observation: It appears to me, after reading other reviews, that the ink/nozzle picotechnology is perhaps behind the curve of where it ought to be. In the quest for smaller and smaller picoliter dots, perhaps a different nozzle cleaning technology is required. At least, upscale future printers like this R2880 should have the ability to just clean one (1) color nozzle at a time, as user required, instead of necessarily cleaning all eight colors at a cost I figure to be about $18. to $20. per cleaning session. Tage Blytmann

I have owned this printer for only a few days. In that time I have printed over 200 prints. I have printed both 8.5 by 11 and 13 by 19 inch prints without any difficulty. I have also replaced the ink cartridges without any problem. I have not had any contact with epson's tech support because I have not had any problems. Now for the printer itself. The build quality is solid. Setup was simple and I was printing prints within a few minutes of connecting the printer to my mac. I am using this printer in conjunction with a macintosh computer and photoshop elements. I tried other programs (iphoto) but elements gave me the truest reproduction of what I saw on my screen. This printer prints color accurately but it prints slightly darker than what you see on your screen. In other words the printer provides an accurate but dark copy of what you see on your screen when you print. The difference is slight but noticeable. Black and White printing is accurate and there is no color cast. The only caveat that I can offer is that the printer drinks ink. I have been printing a lot at best quality and I have gone through a number of ink cartridges. Vivid light magenta in particular disappears quickly. I am very happy with this printer after a few days of extensive use. If a problem crops up after a longer period of time I will amend my review. Otherwise I am marking this printer as a five star product and giving a wholehearted buy recommendation