I decided to print out some A4 sheets to scan into this review using a border of around 1.2 inches.
Update on the head strike and tram lining issue: ( see footnote) It may be that these problems are related to my earlier comments about this machine having been used before (presumably in other reviews or demonstrations) - I hope so as it was a serious set-back.
These were present on all the prints produced with this paper, whatever the settings I tried. Looking closely at the prints without head strike damage I noticed a pair of faint “tramlines” impressed into the surface of the ink about 1inch apart and running the length of the print from top to bottom. I tried every adjustment I could find, both in Epson’s support site + from the wider web, slower printing speeds, setting the platen gap to wide, setting paper thickness to maximum and so on but always saw severe head strikes in the last inch or so of the print. Both worked well for prints with larger borders (15”x10” prints on a 19”x13”A3+ sheet) but gave serious head-strike problems when trying to print borderless. I tried loading it via the top loading tray and the front loading tray (which has to be fed one sheet at a time). With care this could be reduced to a minimum but I was never totally confident that the borders would be symmetric and even)Įpson Traditional Photo Paper produced quite stunning prints with the Black & White being exceptional - I have never produced anything of this standard before.
One small point was that I found it difficult to use the top feeder to produce skew free prints. It produced borderless prints without difficulty. Premium Glossy Photo Paper fed via the top loading tray performed flawlessly giving excellent quality gloss prints (judged by me and my wife as having a much higher and more consistent gloss than I can achieve with my current HP9180 printer + richer colours with stronger contrast). In addition I was able to carry out limited tests using Permajet Oyster 271 lustre, Papermill Direct Fine Art board (1.3mm thick), Innova Smooth Cotton High White, Roll fed Breathing Colour canvas and HP 6x4 inch Advanced Gloss. I was supplied with 3 papers: Epson Premium Glossy, Epson Traditional Photo, and Cold Press Bright White It took two complete cleaning cycles (around 10 minutes total) before the prints looked acceptable and whilst running some more A4 papers through I spotted that the leading edge was catching and buckling somewhere in the outlet from the machine. (As an aside, I have never had a blocked head on my 9180 in over 5 years of use).
The first print was dire with clear signs of head blocking.
I reset everything back to default, reloaded the drivers onto my PC and remade the connection and went straight into my first test print using a sheet of A4 HP Advanced Gloss (all I had in the smaller size).
Mind you, although it told me how to clear the jam it didn’t explain what had caused it! This did at least give me a chance to appreciate just how good the front LCD screen on the printer is and how clear the operating instructions shown there are. Noting that some of the inks were close to depletion I tried to carry out a nozzle check but was thwarted by repeated paper jams using the top sheet feeder with 98gsm inkjet. It contains 9 cartridges of Epson UltraChrome K3 with Vivid Magenta pigment inks loading both the photo and matt blacks at the same time (there are however still only 8 printer heads, necessitating head and line flushing when changing from gloss to matt printing) The cartridges are of a higher capacity than previous Epson printers in this class, 25.9ml vs. I used the LAN connection for this review.
The R3000 is able to connect via Ethernet LAN, USB and Wirelessly. ePHOTOzine first had a look at the Epson Stylus Photo R3000 at Focus on Imaging. The review is written by ePHOTOzine member, Brian Wadie who has used A3+ printers for printing high quality photos to sell. It also features a front loading tray and a rear roll feed to support a huge range of media. The R3000 has 9 inkjet cartridges with an increased 25.9ml capacity compared to the previous model, the R2880, and includes a separate photo and matt black, for true black and white prints.
The Epson Stylus Photo R3000 is a desktop A3+ printer aimed at anyone who wants to make professional quality prints.