Remember ARC chips emulate an OEM functionality. Resettable on demand chips were once introduced and they failed miserably because the user base of printer owners as well as sellers, i. did not know of their usefullness, 2. sellers did not know of their benefits 3. Users do not want to be bothered with batteries. Even when there were manual resetters available for printers, users intially did not catch on their functionality and benefits until many years later and possibly it was on this site that it was disclosed and I may have been one of the first. It's been a long time.
That you sometimes get a bad print even with an OEM cart at times, is indicative of how "on the edge" this ink system is designed. Even with using OEM carts and refilling those, over time these OEM carts start giving up the ghost. Under the OEM outlet pad material is some foam. Over time this foam fatigues and becomes deformed and contact pressure is lost. When this happens air can infiltrate the ink path and then the horror show begins. Perform a couple head cleans and for sure one of the carts will empty, replace that cart and by the time that one is replaced surely another one will empty very soon. Etc Etc.
Between this series of printers and what we see on the P800, Epson is pretty much fully in control of what they will allow aftermarket to offer for their products. There are a whole lot of possibilities that can still be unleashed. Oh, I'm sure Canon is also holding back as well. Just remember, Canon has the ability to make processors for cameras, the power in these processors can easily be unleashed into the printer and a whole host of things can be done. The Canon Pro-1000 and its upper siblings has lots of processing power but this so far is pointed at printing capabilities not restrictive measures...as yet.
To answer the question of a good pigment printer. It all depends on what you need to do. For strict office work...the Canon Maxify is the top of the heap. FAST, Ultra Reliable and well priced. It is NOT a photo printer for 4x6s. Grain can clearly be seen. Even at home it is excellent as you can stop using it for a long period and it fires right back up and pretty much is ready to go without head cleaning. Mine has rest periods of approx 2 weeks and gives hardly any trouble at all. Not so with typical Epson printers. Oddly enough air infiltration resistance on the contact pad XP series is actually quite good....
If you want inexpensive photo work in your printer, stick with the workforce series that use the T252 series of carts. While still showing grain, it is a lot less so than the Maxify. However you need to use this printer fairly frequently air infiltration through the nozzles becomes a problem. It is not a fast printer but it prints...and look at the price and features. The Precision Core head by Epson is all about cost reduction in the manufacture/fabrication of the printhead. An older R3000 ( AMC Advanced Meniscus Control) used less frequently will exhibit far fewer air infiltration issues than these Precision Core heads and the P600 even better.( Each one of these costs 4 - 5 times what the workforce will cost) It is possibly the reduction in the cost of the printhead that allows Epson to sell this Workforce line of printers for such reasonable prices.
.
