Am I defecting to Canon ?

[Ink stained Fingers]

Some of these Chinese maint. boxes didn't give contact originally - there are apparently some mech. tolerances; I tested them when they arrived and wiggled them around a bit, some need a piece of folded paper pushed into a small gap between the cart and the printer case. It's easy to claim warranty with Aliexpress - at least in Germany - but this was not necessary in this case.
ColorMunki - that's a good step, you should get decent profiles with it.

 

[lemons]

Well the printer came and first impressions are good. I think it's a whole lot of kit for £550! Ordered a replacement maintenance box straight away, it was about the same price on Amazon as on AliExpress. As you warned, it was nearly full after installing the cartridges.

Apart from that, the setup was absolutely painless. The touchscreen is a decent size, responsive and logical. Network connection was straightforward and has remained solid. My first few test prints on Sihl Ivorycolor 210g matt paper look decent, though I need to get my hands on a colormunki and get it profiled.

I'm still a bit miffed about the matt black situation. I may order some chips and have a go at refilling the black cartridge when it's empty. Can you recommend an ink I can buy that will serve for both glossy and matt prints? I'm sticking to OEM cartridges for now for the other colours, but if refilling the black is tolerable, I might consider doing the other colours too.

I didn't intend to hijack this thread, should I start a new one?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It's nice to hear from you that the printer arrived and you got it installed and working. The printer just comes with the T40Cx cartridges - the small ones with 25 ml - or even less as start up cartridges.
I don't know if I mentioned it before - there is an optional simple paper tray available to catch the sheets from the sheet feeder

https://robot.epson.eu/de/products/options/optional-cut-sheet-output-stacker-tray-c12c936361

(Such tray does not exist for the Canon TC-20).

I got some longer time ago the Canon photo black PFI-304 ink out of an expired cartridge which works pretty well on both paper types - matte and glossy. Or the black ink of the Canon TC-20 - the PFI-050 is used by the driver both for matte and glossy papers which could be another option. And octoink.co.uk should be able to deliver you Epson compatible black inks as well. Just don't use the InkTec pigment photo black which creates a pretty visible metallic sheen, but it's overall difficult to recommend a pigment photo black ink, you always need to see how such ink is printing on your papers, it may look good. with low bronzing, good blacklevel , but looks disappointing on another paper . Inks for use on the Epson printers P600, 700, P900 should do the job on the T2100 as well. I'm currently using a photo black ink which is a mix of lots of ink samples from the days I was using a P400. But be aware - the T2100 is an entry level printer and does not run with 10 inks.

I didn't intend to hijack this thread, should I start a new one?

No, we are talking about the same new printer which we installed.

 

[palombian]

I use the Canon large format Lucia BK without problems in my Maxify.