Review: Epson Kills the Printer Ink Cartridge

[Ink stained Fingers]

Brother is jumping onto the same bandwagon - printers with refill via bottles

http://www.inkbenefitplus.eu/inkbenefit.html

http://www.brother.pl/

following Epson the same path via East European countries first , a wider range of
models with supersize cartridges is offered in the Fareast - Sinpgapore - India with their
Inkbenefit series.

Brother - and Epson - want to make some money already with the sale of the printers, and effectively kill the 3rd party cartridge market. I guess much less customers will buy 3rd party ink anmore when the original ink - Brother or Epson - is priced much lower than today's cartridge prices. Brother is offering borderless printing - Epson does not with their office targeted modells.

 

[websnail]

or you use pigment inks..........the 1500W runs with pigment inks without problem, so the L1800 should perform alike

My turn to urge a little caution there... Remember that it's a CIS system and all the rules/precautions/work-arounds regarding use of pigment ink in CIS systems apply... (ref)

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

if longevity/UV/environmental stability of printouts is of major concern then pigment inks may be considered as an alternative with much less of those problems but not every ink in every printer is well suited for that purpose, you may consider the print frequency and print volume, you should be aware of pigment ink specific effects like gloss differential or bronzing very much depending on the ink/paper combination in combination of your level of interest and concern about those effects. There are lots of other threads and contributions to the use of pigment inks, their performance, limits, special effects, clogging etc. And as always - beyond the questions around pigment or dye inks - would I advise to consider the creation and use of icm-color profiles for every ink/paper combination in actual use. Only a color profile will let you use the gamut of a particular ink/paper set to its optimum

 

[PeterBJ]

Druckerchannel.de has an article about the Epson printers here, and here is a Google translation. They also have an article about the Brother printers here, and here is a Google translation.

 

[palombian]

Druckerchannel.de has an article about the Epson printers here, and here is a Google translation. They also have an article about the Brother printers here, and here is a Google translation.

The Epson refill bottles seem to cost about €140(dye color) and €105/l (pigment black).
Compared with about €60/l in the same quantities for good quality 3th party most people won't take the risk anymore.
Especially when the OEM resists better to fading (will it ?).

The move makes sense for them.

 

[carlosantoniolopez]

Thanks for all the advice - even more to chew over!

Looking at PeterBJ's links to the new printers, it's a bit disappointing that there's no mention of the L1800, and none of the new ones appear to be dedicated photo printers.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Yes, that's about the pricing situation, Epson is effectively dropping their ink prices from 1000€ in
small cartridges to those 100-140€/l you mention above, probably with slight variation by country. And that completely kills the 3rd party cartridge market and puts up a ceiling for the prices of 3rd party ink suppliers, they must be significantly cheaper to lure customers to buy their ink. O.k., you can get cheap ink from China via Aliexpress in liters or gallons as low as 5-10€/l, but that's the fast fade ink , and some will still go for the cheapest ink.

Epson's L series models had been on the market already for quite a while in the Fareast, and some of those made it to Europe probably to test the market , the T series appears to be a second generation of models, so far targeted at the SoHo market with an assumed higher print volume than with home users. The L800/1800 are niche products as I see it, but whoever really wants one will get it via
gray channels and suppliers. It's just P50/1400 models equipped with a CISS, the previous entry level Epson A4/A3 Photo printers. Epson rather likes to move the real photo/print fans up to the P600/800 models . And now with Brother showing up with a similar concept the change over will accelerate I guess, and more models will show up soon and in more countries.

 

[palombian]

Thanks for all the advice - even more to chew over!

Looking at PeterBJ's links to the new printers, it's a bit disappointing that there's no mention of the L1800, and none of the new ones appear to be dedicated photo printers.

The announced printers are more targeted to home/SOHO text and the occasional 10x15 photo IMO.
And if you print most in B/W any cheap printer refilled with a bottle of pigment ink will push your page price under the price of the paper itself (so no need to pay a few 100's in front for the ink).

Many amateur photographers use an A3 printer from Epson or Canon, and for €100-150/l you buy reasonable pigment inks.
It seems to me that these inks are produced for the large format professional market, and that this segment will not be affected by the move of Epson/Brother.

 

[The Hat]

From what I’ve read, the Epson L1800 6 colour photo printer is only available in the Eastern countries of the EU and won’t be available everywhere for the next couple of months, it’s suppose to be on sale here in Ireland as of now but no dealers seem to stock it yet.

I am afraid we just have to sit and wait for it..

 

[dlbott]

My turn to urge a little caution there... Remember that it's a CIS system and all the rules/precautions/work-arounds regarding use of pigment ink in CIS systems apply... (ref)

ok, trying to search about how to fill epson. not sure where to post but have not had much luck yet finding what i need. i have a new epson wf3640, it says it will do borderless, but i am not sure. i love the printer but i had to take one back due to clogged print head already. probably due to the cheap cartridges i bought off ebay. i just can't afford the epson cartridges... so i have a supply of black and yellow in cyan, out of blue, mostly cus one was bad but figured out blue is the primary mix color for all the other great colors we see lol... anyway. was looking what to do... either order the empty cartridges that say they autoreset and ink to fill them, again off ebay, 26 bucks for cartridge and ink is affordable. should i go that way or twenty more there, ebay, will get me cis system. i thought i wanted pigment ink but listening to you guys maybe i am wrong...

anyway, realize maybe the wrong place for this so if you want to just pm me or whatever but,

can i refill these empty carts i have, how? have not seen refill kit

should i go the empty carts with ink to put in them... they say autoreset, although not sure how they do that if you keep filling them over and over????

or ciss system...???

am low on blue ink so got to make decision like now in order to get them on the way lol....

any help appreciated.... sorry, not meaning to hijack, just closes thing to what i was asking i could find...

thanks all
don, the bot