SureColor P900 17-Inch Printer

As an independent artist and business owner, getting my own printer was a huge goal of mine, and I'm so glad I took the plunge! The printer is a game-changer for me; I can now produce my own fine art prints in any size up to 16x20". I primarily print on 8x10", 11x14" and 12x16" matte fine art paper, using Premium Matte paper by Durico or Finestra Art. The first printer I ordered did not work, but I called Epson and they immediately sent me a new printer and set up an exchange. I've been printing on my new printer for 3 months, and here is a summary of my experience: The Upsides: -Quick and easy wireless communication with my laptop -Great customer service from Epson -The printer yields gorgeous, rich, and vibrant colors; high color accuracy -Each print takes just a few minutes to create -The Epson Print Layout program is straightforward and easy to use. I open this up every time I want to print something. Once I've selected the size and type of paper, I let the printer choose the colors. I find that this produces a better, brighter color quality than the color profiles listed. -Each print is 25-50% the cost of ordering from a fine art printing business -I've ordered ink once in 3 months -Fits perfectly on the alex drawers from Ikea The cons: -Sometimes the printer takes in a few pages at once instead of one at a time. You must keep an eye on it. -For some, the printer might feel slow -If you accidentally shut your laptop, or if your laptop unexpectedly dies, the printer will stop printing midway and you have to start over -Ink costs are high ($522 to replace all cartridges), so you must factor that into your print costs. I calculated my cost of ink per print using ChatGPT -Epson and Amazon ran out of ink recently, so I had to buy my ink from B&H Photo in NYC -The first printer didn't work, which was stressful -The ink isn't quite as vibrant as my the art prints that I used to order from a fine art printer, but it works well enough for me and my customers.

This web page's description of this printer begins: "Outstanding image quality and color." I have never encountered a marketing claim that is less true than that one. In my opinion, the printer is junk. Fit and finish are shoddy. The construction feels cheap and fragile. The on screen "instructions" are often incomplete and confusing. Ditto for the user manual. The printer devours...and destroys...expensive Epson photo paper. The principal quality issue is that prints are marred by "banding"...long colored bands that span the print at every few inches. I have made every possible adjustment that Epson suggests, and nothing solves the problem. I have had "success" only with Epson matte photo paper, which is so thin I'm not sure how it could be mounted without damage. I'm extremely disappointed that Epson shipped this half-baked printer, as it is not even approximately ready for prime time. Shame on Epson for continuing to sell such a grossly unsatisfactory product!

I'm a professional photographer. I use the P900 for my black and white printing needs. It's excellent. It does have a couple of drawbacks. One is ink choice. If you want deeper blacks, you have to use a certain paper. I like a heavy paper and often a heavy textured paper. I'm still experimenting with this, trying to figure out how to get more ink on certain papers. The other *major* drawback is the price for the ink cartridges. Granted you'll seldom have to buy all 10 cartridges at once, but if you do, it's going to cost you around $450 for all ten. Epson needs to furnish an initial 10 FULL cartridges that come with the printer, not the sorta 10 half-full ones. That's like buying a new car and the dealer puts enough gas in it for you to drive it home. Wouldn't hurt to lower the price on ink, either. I like the printer, though. I gave it Five Stars. So far, there isn't anything that makes me regret buying it. Really don't need the little pop-up LCD, but it's there just the same. Use it, don't use it...buyer's choice. This printer has a lot of good stuff going for it. Read the specs thoroughly before you buy. Read some dependable reviews. Make sure it's what you need.

I bought this printer primarily because it would print large format on roll media. So I added the roll feeder to the printer. Two things to remember. When attaching the feeder its important to pay attention to the angles. It felt like it didn't fit until I did that. Then it came together just like it was supposed to. And when loading roll media, make sure to select the media type before inserting the media into the printer. I started with satin canvas but did not select the type and the printer refused to load the media. Once I selected the media type, it loaded just like it should. People have complained about the initial inks not lasting long enough. My printer did use about half of the ink during the priming process. But I have since been able to print thee 30" X 5" prints and still have more than a third of the ink left in each reservoir. Yes, the inks are expensive. But, the prints are amazing on either satin canvas or matte fine art role paper. I am very pleased, so far.

Update 12/9/2024*** I've struggled with this printer for a long time and it finally stopped printing the VLM color cartridge altogether. No amount of head cleanings will fix it either. You can't even print B/W when one of the colors goes out even though it has dedicated B/W inks. I had just replaced 4 of the cartridges at $50 per cartridge and now they will go in the trash as the printer is done. This was a terrible purchase and no way I broke even on it. I would have hoped by now these manufacturers would have figured out the head clogging issues on ink jet printers. Save you money and your hair by skipping ink jet and just send out for prints. The print quality is phenomenal. when it actually prints. You never know when it will decide to print your photo. Some times it will print right through without issue, but most times it will pull the paper in and print about 4 passes then stop. When you are printing on 17x22 papers that cost about $6 a sheet this adds up to a lot of waste, not to mention the ink wasted when the print gets halfway through then stops. This reminds me of the early days of CD burning when blanks were still expensive and you never really knew if the burn would actually complete without buffer underruns. We made a lot of coasters back then and this is what this Epson seems to like to do. I have had many Canon and Epson printers over the years and have never had these kind of issues before. I also noticed that when you do get a print to complete, it is not centered properly on the paper. I notice this most on 17" prints where the margin line drifts more and more as the print gets to the bottom of the page. For $1,300 this printer should be able to properly center a sheet of paper. If Epson could resolve these two issues this would be a great printer, but until then I don't recommend it.

The printer itself is very good. I purchased one recently to replace a much older similar Epson large format printer. The print quality is outstanding and it is easy to set up. One thing to keep in mind is that the printer comes with starter ink cartridges that are 1/4 the normal size. The cost of the normal sized ink cartridges for genuine Epson one is around $48 per cartridge and for 10 cartridges, about $500. You should factor that into your purchase decision. You should also be aware that you can't buy the actual Epson cartridges on Amazon, as Amazon only appears to carry refurbished 3rd party ones, that most likely void the manufacturers warranty if you use them and may not offer the same quality of ink as the real deal. To add insult to injury, you can't get these cartridges from the Epson website either. They have the cartridges for the SureColor P700 but not the P900. You will have to go to another vendor to purchase them and hope they deliver them reasonably quickly. The same is true for the quality photographic paper that Epson makes. Amazon does not carry the 17 * 22 Metallic Luster or Gloss packs and you also can't get them on the Epson site. For those reasons, if I was a first time buyer of a large format color printer, I'd probably look at other options.

I'm a novice to high-quality printing, having sent off all my wall-hangers to professional labs. But those are pricey and time-consuming. I chose the P900 over Canon's PRO-1000 for the lone reason the Epson is a 2020 release and Canon's is getting up there in age. Not saying I wouldn't have been just as happy with the Canon; I've never used it, so I can't compare. Set-up was straightforward and from box to initial print was less than an hour. I'd caution new owners to follow the instructions to the letter, including shaking the ink cartridges a bit before insertion. I didn't and caught it just in time before it started charging the lines. I've been printing my favorite vacation photos on a variety of different Epson premium papers to find my preferred look. I printed a photo I took in Santorini (so lots of hard lines and vibrant colors) and it looks exactly as it did on my monitor. Lines are crisp, shading is smooth, and the colors pop. I wanted a desktop printer with photo lab quality and I'm not disappointed. If this helps anyone, I struggled with deciding on furniture to put it on. I ended up with an Ikea Besta TV stand that's 47.25"W X 16.5"D X 29"H. Depth was my main concern and it fits with about a half-inch to spare front and back. The dimensions for the unit are for the feed and output trays extended.

After being into photography for some time I still considered myself a digital only shooter. From camera to screen it was all about the best presentation on this medium but I reached a point where I wanted something I could give to people and in came prints. Now like many things this is a hobby for me but I wanted something substantial and after some research landed on the 17" size as the largest I could feasibly manage and that narrowed the choices down to this and the cannon. Both are great printers but the Epson had a slight edge for me. What this brings to the table for me is the ability to pint out something and make changes where as sending it off to a print shop it had best be right the first time. On to the downsides. Ink and paper this printer demands the best and devours resources at breakneck speeds. Expect to spend $2-3 per sheet of paper and over $400 for a pack of inks. Only you can decide if this is worth it to you. The prints are amazing and well beyond my expectation. I feel that I have improved as a photographer from this as it pushes me to create more.

So far so good. Came with everything properly in place. Ink carts are all half full (as expected) but PLENTY of ink to do several prints! Works good so far. Set up was super easy. I am very happy with this purchase. Hopefully this doesn't die within a month.

Exxelente calicad fotografica.

Printer only came with about 1/4 cartridge of ink each. Thought that there would have been a full cartridge each for the initial purchase, considering that there are 10 different colours of ink. And the cost of the printer was not cheap, neither are the replacement full cartridges of ink.