Stylus Pro 3800

Dealing with ink

One problem with some of Epson's printers is that they require you to swap cartridges when you switch between matte and photo black inks. This process is clumsy and wastes a lot of valuable ink, and it can set off a cascade effect that drains other ink cartridges in the process. The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 is better in this regard, offering separate slots for each black ink type. When you choose a paper type in the print driver, the printer automatically chooses the appropriate black ink type.

Unfortunately, the black inks share a single channel to the printhead, which means that the printer still must purge that line of ink before switching. This two- to three-minute process wastes approximately 2ml of ink when swapping from photo to matte black, and 4.5ml when going the other way. While this is better than the R2400, both HP's Photosmart Pro B9180 and Canon's Pixma Pro9500 use separate ink lines for matte and photo black inks, a much less wasteful approach.

Fortunately the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 does an excellent job with ink efficiency. We printed almost 400 photos -- mostly 8x10in and larger -- before we had to replace any ink cartridge, and we went back and forth between black ink types during the testing. Because of this, the cost per page will be much less with the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 than it will be with any comparable large-format photo printer, which really turns into savings if you print a lot of photos.