J
J Rossiter
I wrote an honest inoffensive detailed response to an Epson 7890 Wide
Format Printer review request from Epson. They obviously don't like
honesty which puts their entire own website review system into
disrepute. Which I guess applies to many home grown reviews. Treat
with caution and try to find independent review sites.
So I shall give my review here which will hopefully filter into the
real world.
1: The 7890 is a very nice machine but huge and very heavy. It's a
four man job to move it but NO HANDLES or lifting points are provided.
So if you think you might have it upstairs FORGET IT.
2: TURN OFF auto cleaning or it will be pestering you almost every
other use to clean the system. I find cleaning it every few weeks with
a *normal* clean is more than enough (we print around 100 A1 sheets on
average per month and machine in use daily)
3: "Epson" engineers are great. Know their product and helpful. Sadly
you will be lucky to find one as they usually send out a generic
engineer who knows little about your machine and just goes through the
motions which means lots of wasted time and materials. However the
service is valid and they don't try to screw you with non covered BS.
4: Grab the 3yr extended warranty which is often on a special at half
price, or some machines will have it thrown in. Great peace of mind.
These deals come up often so keep checking. You can buy the warranty
anytime in the first year and you do not have to buy it from Epson
themselves.
5: Online support is very poor in that the guys know nothing about the
machines they support and merely read from a script. Which is very
frustrating when you are asking questions or trying to get answers
about what can be quite basic issues in printing generally. So if you
do have to call an engineer you will have to jump through many hoops,
many of which are really quite basic irrelevance. Which is fine if you
are clueless in Seattle but most of us with a wide format pro printer
will have at least a basic knowledge of how these things work.
6: The INKS last well and you can get some good deals on genuine inks
so I would NOT bother with generic inks which will certainly
invalidate any warranty you had and the machine can tell if you are
using non genuine inks and logs everything.
However EPSON will also try to insist you ONLY use EPSON canvas/Paper
at 4 x the cost of generic quality which is excellent, and I suspect
if you admit to using generic papers they will decline service on that
basis which is nonsense and very doubtful if its even legal. Both
Epson and Generic canvas leaves quite a bit of dust residue so you
need to vacuum the machine every other roll really, which is an easy
10 minute job.
7: The inks are all colorfast apart from the MATTE BLACK which seems
daft, so you will need to handle the blacks with caution. Matte
canvas/paper must use matte black ink. The other colors are rock
solid. The machine comes with inbuilt matte or photo black inks but it
is time consuming and expensive to change the inks as the machine has
to flush the system each changeover. Which makes using both
impractical in reality.
8: Output quality is outstanding on canvas, but it's not photo
quality. The control panel via PC is very good and you can also update
the software on the machine online vie the LFP Remote Panel which is
an optional free download from Epson and not to be confused with the
printer control panel.
9: Paper changing is a pain and can be quite complex, though changing
rolls is easy. If you want to go from a roll to print a one of A4/A3
sheet etc it's better to turn the machine off (noting how much roll is
left) pull the roll paper out then switch the machine on again and
when it asks for paper choose A4 sheet etc. You also need to choose
sheet in printer panel on the PC before you print.
Think that covers much of it. HTH
Epson....get stuffed you big babies.
Format Printer review request from Epson. They obviously don't like
honesty which puts their entire own website review system into
disrepute. Which I guess applies to many home grown reviews. Treat
with caution and try to find independent review sites.
So I shall give my review here which will hopefully filter into the
real world.
1: The 7890 is a very nice machine but huge and very heavy. It's a
four man job to move it but NO HANDLES or lifting points are provided.
So if you think you might have it upstairs FORGET IT.
2: TURN OFF auto cleaning or it will be pestering you almost every
other use to clean the system. I find cleaning it every few weeks with
a *normal* clean is more than enough (we print around 100 A1 sheets on
average per month and machine in use daily)
3: "Epson" engineers are great. Know their product and helpful. Sadly
you will be lucky to find one as they usually send out a generic
engineer who knows little about your machine and just goes through the
motions which means lots of wasted time and materials. However the
service is valid and they don't try to screw you with non covered BS.
4: Grab the 3yr extended warranty which is often on a special at half
price, or some machines will have it thrown in. Great peace of mind.
These deals come up often so keep checking. You can buy the warranty
anytime in the first year and you do not have to buy it from Epson
themselves.
5: Online support is very poor in that the guys know nothing about the
machines they support and merely read from a script. Which is very
frustrating when you are asking questions or trying to get answers
about what can be quite basic issues in printing generally. So if you
do have to call an engineer you will have to jump through many hoops,
many of which are really quite basic irrelevance. Which is fine if you
are clueless in Seattle but most of us with a wide format pro printer
will have at least a basic knowledge of how these things work.
6: The INKS last well and you can get some good deals on genuine inks
so I would NOT bother with generic inks which will certainly
invalidate any warranty you had and the machine can tell if you are
using non genuine inks and logs everything.
However EPSON will also try to insist you ONLY use EPSON canvas/Paper
at 4 x the cost of generic quality which is excellent, and I suspect
if you admit to using generic papers they will decline service on that
basis which is nonsense and very doubtful if its even legal. Both
Epson and Generic canvas leaves quite a bit of dust residue so you
need to vacuum the machine every other roll really, which is an easy
10 minute job.
7: The inks are all colorfast apart from the MATTE BLACK which seems
daft, so you will need to handle the blacks with caution. Matte
canvas/paper must use matte black ink. The other colors are rock
solid. The machine comes with inbuilt matte or photo black inks but it
is time consuming and expensive to change the inks as the machine has
to flush the system each changeover. Which makes using both
impractical in reality.
8: Output quality is outstanding on canvas, but it's not photo
quality. The control panel via PC is very good and you can also update
the software on the machine online vie the LFP Remote Panel which is
an optional free download from Epson and not to be confused with the
printer control panel.
9: Paper changing is a pain and can be quite complex, though changing
rolls is easy. If you want to go from a roll to print a one of A4/A3
sheet etc it's better to turn the machine off (noting how much roll is
left) pull the roll paper out then switch the machine on again and
when it asks for paper choose A4 sheet etc. You also need to choose
sheet in printer panel on the PC before you print.
Think that covers much of it. HTH
Epson....get stuffed you big babies.