Fuck HP

  • Carighan Maconar
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    fedilink
    49 months ago

    If you want to print in oversized, I can readily recommend the Epson ET 8550.

    It’s a 6 tank A3+ photo/poster printer for under €800. If you got the use case for these (say as a photographer or an artist or you just want to print your own posters) then it’s a really good model.
    Unlike it’s closest rival in the semi-professional market from Canon, the tanks make ink very cheap to operate, the vast vast vast majority of the printing cost is going to be the paper. It has a damn good printing quality even on mostly dark prints, it’s quite fast for documents spitting them out in 3-5 seconds each so for personal use it’s not meaningfully behind a laser. Quite variable, too, you can take the back off and feed whatever material you want in there with a huge clearance for thick plates to print on.

    Sure, it’s not something the average user ever needs but if you are looking for something like this, I can recommend it.

    • Lemmy_2019
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      19 months ago

      Interesting. What’s the total price per sheet on decent paper? I do a few hundred A3 prints a week.

      • Carighan Maconar
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        fedilink
        19 months ago

        It’s difficult to say as a lot depends on your specific use case and what you print and on which paper.

        For my main use case, I bought a 100-pack of relatively inexpensive satin a3+ poster paper (so only 280g, but eh, they get put on the wall with something like poster strips or tack, I hardly need them to be thicker) which comes down to ~78cents per sheet. Ink usage is difficult to measure because my prints differ wildly in how much color is on them but my average so far seems to be ~50 cents per max quality a3+ print. So ~€1,30 per full size print if I want to be slightly pessimistic about it. But some of them were probably more like 85 cents total. 😅

        The ink bottles really last a long time. Check your local prices but over here they cost €22 a bottle to replace, the printer has two blacks (one is pigment based for documents and stationary and so on), CMY and a 60% Gray, they all cost the same here but might be different for you. And then of course depends on what you print.

        What I sadly cannot say is what A3 would cost, but scaling down you should be looking at roughly 20% less ink costs per print for full-size graphics prints, and then of course the paper you’re printing on. But that’s just mathing it down from my A3+ prints.

        • Lemmy_2019
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          18 months ago

          Thanks for doing the math. I have a deal with a commercial printer for slightly less, so it appears I won’t be changing. Rather not have the hassle either, in fairness.

          • Carighan Maconar
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            fedilink
            18 months ago

            Oh that’s quite fair, plus at that volume it helps to not have the risk of the printing process on yourself on top of everything else. 😅