At first glance, the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 Standard Model looks out of place in the photo printer market. There are a few very good photo printers with similar features that cost much less than the Epson's $2195, and some excellent industrial-strength printers with richer sets of features starting at a few-thousand dollars more.

However, if you are a photographer looking to create high-quality, large-format prints for sale or exhibition, the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 is a great printer that is worth your consideration, even though it has a flaw that will drive some potential buyers away.

The basics

The Stylus Pro 3800 uses nine pigment-based inks designed to provide long-lasting output on a wide variety of paper types. Like most pigment ink printers, the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 switches between two black inks: photo black, which is used when you print on glossy and semi-gloss paper, and matte black, which is used for printing on smooth finish and fine art papers. The other seven inks -- light black, light light black, cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, and yellow -- are used with all paper types.

Setup is quick and easy: the cartridges snap into place, and the driver installation is simple. The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 can connect directly to your PC via USB, but it also has a port for connecting to your Ethernet network for group printing. While the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 is a fairly large unit, you can recess the paper trays when the printer is not in use, which significantly reduces its footprint.

When it's time to print, the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 is very flexible, offering borderless printing on paper ranging in size from 6x4in photo size, all the way up to 432x559mm. It has three paper paths, including a front-loading, straight-through path for printing on rigid media up to 1.5mm thick, and two top-loading slots for papers of lesser thickness.

Print quality and performance

For years, Epson's hallmark has been its print quality, and the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 is no exception. Colours are rich and vibrant, even on glossy paper, which often presents a problem for pigment inks.

The Epson Stylus Pro 3800's black and white prints were exceptional -- and exhibited no colour shifts (or metameric failure) -- when printed on fibre and fine art papers.

When comparing a large selection of glossy- and matte-based photos printed from the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 to similar prints output by HP's Photosmart Pro B9180, and Canon's Pixma Pro9500 printers, viewers almost always chose Epson's prints as the best of the group.

And, when it came to black-and-white prints, viewers on our jury unanimously chose the Epson Stylus Pro 3800's output over any printer in its class.

The Stylus Pro 3800 doesn't just offer superior print quality; it's also very fast. Using the standard quality setting, a 6x4in photo took 56 seconds to print; an 8x10in image printed in one minute and 48 seconds; a 12x18in picture printed in four minutes and 16 seconds; and a 16x20in photo took only five minutes and 44 seconds to come out of the printer. (As a point of comparison, Canon's Pixma Pro9500 took approximately six minutes to output an 8x10in print at its default quality setting.)