The use ink from series L8xx to L3xx/L4xx.

[Yianni]

I think there is a misconception - the L300 etc inks are all dye inks including the black, the L300 inks have a pretty poor longevity performance as I have tested them several times.

Yes, you are right, I confused the 1xx and 2xx series printers which use pigment inks.
I also wanted to point out that the real durable inks was these for the more inexpensive 1xx, 2xx printers.

 

[KMen]

3xx series 4 inks are pigment ...

Please if you try the 8xx inks drop a note here.

"Ink stained Fingers" is right. L3xx and L4xx inks ( Epson 664 ) are dye inks.
I don't try L8xx (Epson 673) because I was not sure if the colors/hue of these L8xx inks (Epson 673) were the same as the L3xx , and I don't have tools/time/money to create my own profiles for these L8xx inks.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I had a chance to test a L382 for a while, an ITS ink tank printer like the L300 plus a basic scanner on top of it. There is a range of workforce and L-type models with the same printhead - 180 nozzles for black and 3x59 nozzle for the colors. Canon printers need separate nozzle rows for different droplet sizes, Epson printers can modulate the nozzles for several different nozzle sizes so it is impossible to directly compare Epson and Canon printhead, another parameter would be the length of the nozzle rows which directly correlates with the paper movement. The workforce printers with or without a scanner - like a WF2010W printer - use Durabrite pigment inks by default whereas all these L... tank system models use dye inks. The L382 comes with a bottle of 70ml each for the 3 colors and 3 bottles x70ml for black which is quite a lot of ink.
I have shown elsewhere that the WF2010W delivers quite a good overall print quality barely discernible from prints of a L800 photo printer. This with driver the quality setting to high and matte Photo paper which uses the black ink, the driver setting Premium Glossy does not use the black ink, the Durabrite black is suitable for matte papers only. The print speed is slow, very slow, but such printer is not primarily a photo printer. The WF2010W does offer borderless printing for various papers except plain paper.
The L300 does not offer borderless printing at all, since it is using dye inks the Premium Glossy paper setting as well uses the black ink, different to the WF2010W. The L300 has been crippled without the borderless option, the difference is just a small piece of a foam strip in the print bed and some aborbent beneath and the resp. firmware/driver changes.
The L300 runs the smallest droplets not with the same settings as the WF2010W but only with a quality setting 'very high' for the Premium Glossy paper only which is visible under a loupe when comparing printouts.
The L382 works the same without the borderless option but when activating 'borderless' the highest quality setting 'very high' gets deactivated....here again the L382 gets crippled in performance vs. a similar WF2010W.
And there is another difference between the L382 and L300, the L382, with dye inks, does not use the black ink with the 'Premium Glossy' paper setting but mixes black with the other inks which does not deliver a neutral black. It is disappointing to see that Epson cripples the performance of the ink tank system printers vs. the base models, similar what Canon is doing with the Gxxx models.
The L382 printouts are not bad at all and the borderless option is an improvement over the previous L35x type printers but Epson still let these printers not perform as good as the workforce base models. Speed is slow but it is neverless simple to start bigger printjobs and let them run unattended since no ink can run low stopping the printing process frequently.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I did a print to compare the quality of the L382 and the WF2010W, it is a crop of a high res 720 dpi print on both printers, not profiled which causes some color differences

The left part is printed with the L382, with the highest possible driver settings - Glossy 'extra high', this mode is not available in borderless mode, the graininess increases with the 'high' setting.
The right part of the image is printed on a WF2010W with the settings matte paper 'high' quality, it does not make a difference if printed borderless or not.
The same print on a L300 with the 'extra high' setting looks identical to the WF2010W, but the L300 does not offer the borderless mode at all.
All these 3 printer models use the same printhead, the same driver as it looks to the user but tricks are played by Epson to cripple the L382 print quality vs. similar models.

 

[KMen]

Generally I try use Linux also for printing.
Original CUPS driver for L386 has similar options like Windows version,
but I also try use Gutenrpint driver for Epson L210 , and the number of option is impressive . I try "Color Precision" set to "Best" and "Print Quality" to "Best" , and result was much better then from Windows driver with "high" setting .
There are all setting from Gutenprint L210 driver :

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I may try Printfab another time, but I don't like such niche/bypass solutions very much.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I did a quick test with a demo Printfab version under windows using Turboprint functionality. The WF2010W driver supports the L382, as well borderless printing, and offers a range of quality settings regardless of the borderless printing option on or off. The print quality looks very good, as good as with the WF2010W. But both the WF2010W and the L382 are veeery slow printing in high quality mode, the L382 with the convenience of unattended printing over a longer time, just reloading the paper after some time is necessary.