Advice for buying home printer

[stratman]

third party CISS

Avoid third party CISS systems for Canon printers. They will be a PITA and more likely to fail on you.

One set of 5 OEM cartridges is roughly 6-10 pounds

Is this for OEM Canon cartridges or aftermarket cartridges and for which Canon printer?

General comments that need to be considered in the context of what YOU want out of your printer, not what I want from my printer:

• A Black Pigment ink cartridge provides the best text printing, with deeper blacks, sharper resolutions of the font, and water resistance such as to smearing with a highlighter or on mail/package labels. Dye-based Black cannot compete when it comes to text. It may be sufficient for you, but you may wish later on you had Pigment Black for text if that is a significant amount of what you print.
• Dye-based inks may show a little more color "pop" to the eye depending on paper and your technique.
• Only OEM Dye-based inks have the potential for excellent longevity/archival/color fastness over time. NO aftermarket dye-based inks compare. Not even close. With the money savings on aftermarket inks you might not care since you can just print another image.
• Pigment inks also have excellent archival properties, including OEM and high quality aftermarket inks. Beware that just because someone states they sell an aftermarket ink or cartridge replacement for your Pigment ink printer it does not mean they perform as the amount of pigment particles may be less or even none.
• If you use an aftermarket ink refill or cartridge then you may need to either tweak the color settings in the printer OR obtain/make a custom ICC Printer Profile in order to have good color fidelity in the print. An ICC Printer Profile is a software driver that tells the printer how to adjust its internal settings for a SPECIFIC COMBINATION of printer, paper and ink. Change any one of these three components and color fidelity may be off and you may need to repeat the process.
• ICC Printer Profiles is a factor you may never need to consider. You can purchase them, they can be free, or you might spend money on equipment to do them yourself. If your prints are pleasing to your eye then no worries - happiness obtained. If your prints are not satisfying colors then you can either return to using OEM inks and OEM papers, tweak the color settings in your printer software, or, you can get into the more advanced nuts and bolts of color management, including ICC Printer Profiles, a world unto itself that can be as detailed as you want to go. Again, this may never be a factor for you, but thought I would preview the topic.
• Depending on what printer you buy, the forum may be able to help you with where to purchase high qualkity aftermarket inks. In North America, take a look at Precision Colors. In Europe, take a look at OctoInkjet. The owners of these etailors are forum members and their products are considered high quality. There are other bulk ink or aftermarket cartridges sellers that forum members use with excellent effect.

 

[sabotage3d]

Thank you for detailed input.
@Ink stained Fingers Epson Ecotank L805 seems like a a really nice option only Alza is selling it for decent price but I had bad experience with them.
Currently Ecotank 2715 is on promotion and in stock. It comes with dye black can I swap it for pigment black if I need to?
They are also doing 3 years warranty which is quite nice.
Can you clarify can I swap any pigment black on the refill printer including the G series with dye and force the driver to use it for photos?
When they say Borderless print (up to 10 x 15cm) does it mean I cannot print border-less for artwork as well on A4? How big will be the border on A4?
I am confused with they models they are way too many and confusing.
@stratman Sorry I made a mistake I meant compatible not OEM.
Thank you for suggesting OctoInkjet it seems they offer a refill kit for TS5050: https://www.octoink.co.uk/products/...illable-Cartridge-Kit-Bundle-[5-x-125ml].html
I will avoid third party CISS. I am already scared of spraying ink all over the carpet.

 

[sabotage3d]

I just found that this model is doing border less and has larger black tank epson L-3151 than et-2710 and it is sold in Aldi. At the moment epson are running 3 years extended warranty so it seems like a good deal.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The L3151 just gives you borderless printing for 4x6" prints, not for A4, Epson is creating stupid model variations here, if you need borderless A4 you need to upgrade and select a higher priced model. All these models use a print mechanism which is used since 10 years in a wide range of different models, and already the old WF2010W offers borderless printing up to A4, a piece of foam to absorb the overspray makes the difference. It's a printer with a 180 +3x59 nozzles printhead at the lower performance/speed range.
www.epson.eu/viewcon/corporatesite/site/231/products/mainunits/overview/22934#specifications

You select the paper matte/inkjet which uses the black ink regardless whether it's dye or pigment, and the matte paper supports borderless printing if available at all as an option. That's the way Epson printers handles this. And it mixes black with C and M if you select a gloss photo paper regardless if you use a dye or pigment black.
There are XP models with 4 dye inks, or home office printers with a pigment black or workforce models with the CMYK Druabrite pigment inks . The printhead can handle it all. And it's similar with the L...and ET...series models.
The Canon G-series models come with CMY dye inks and a pigment black, the black ink is used for normal or matte paper unless you use the borderless or duplex option and and the driver/firmware changes over to the black mixed with C and M to my knowledge.
The L805 uses 6 dye inks only, no pigment ink for normal paper.
Borders are typically 3mm, with Epson or Canon or Brother or lots of laser printers.
The ET7700/7750 runs with 5 inks like the TS5050, but gives you the benefits of an ecotank printer, these models use a pigment or a dye black depending on your paper selection in the driver. I'm not aware that Canon currently offers a 5-ink ink bottle printer.

 

[sabotage3d]

@Ink stained Fingers Thanks for that almost bought it. They got the wrong specifications on the UK website: https://www.epson.co.uk/products/printers/inkjet-printers/for-home/l3151
It is all very confusing as they cannot add the correct specs on their website.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You may check the user manual
https://download.epson-europe.com/p...m":149,"gen":0},{"name":"XYZ"},null,757,null]

on p 34 are various paper formats listed, the check mark at *1 - borderless printing - in the right column just lists 4x6"/10x15cm for borderless printing, it is pretty much hidden in the manual

 

[maximilian59]

If I were you, I would go for a printer from the Epson Expression Premium series. Look what refill cartridges you can get (I have some for the XP-7100, 33XL). Then buy the inks 105/106 for the ET-77xx series. Use Epson Premium Semigloss 251 g/m2 and you are fine. After four weeks now on east faced window these inks show a Delta E2000 of about 1 in average of 60 colored and grey fields. The worst 10% have a Delta E2000 of 2. Only difference is, that the 105/106 inks have been tested in Expression Home XP342. But the color changes are the same as the 33XL in the XP-7100. Even the mixed black on the XP-342 has a Delta E2000 of 2.
That is in the same range as the Chromalife 100+ of the Canon Pro-100.
Also you can use the ICC-profiles as provided with the XP-7100. Epson provides the same ones for the ET-77xx printers.
For family albums I would never use third party inks and third party papers (without knowing how good they are), because these albums are normally meant to last for generations.
At the moment I think this is the best combination of inks and paper you can get for a reasonable price.

On the XP-7100 there is no borderless option for A5 (on Mac), but it was no problem to make an own paper with 209,7x148 borderless and to print on it. Maybe you can use a lot of combinations as long as the width is one of the existing borderless options, because of the overspray. But even with overspray set to minimum it results in about 2-3 mm.

 

[sabotage3d]

@maximilian59 Thank you I need to look into these models.