HP or Epson printer

Further down, you will read posts in favor of HP and Epson. I'm commenting in particular to the comments about graininess with HP prints: could be the cartridge, not the printer.

Out of 6 printer cartridges since I owned the P1000, I have received two that were of sub-par quality. They produced grain (more noticeable in the highlights), and faint horizontal lines, probably due to a pixel not firing.

Going through the cleaning procedure did not fix the problem. An HP phone tech said that the problem could be due to a bubble lodged in the entrance to one of the jet conduits, and that the cartridges should always be stored upright. (Can you trust retailers not to mistreat the cartridges?)

I'm suggesting, though not concluding or charging, that HP's cartridge quality is inconsistent. When they work, they work great.

Just save your cartridge receipts so you can return them. HP will replace cartridges under a warranty but only after an extensive phone maintenance procedure.

The other four catridges produced very excellent results, smooth gradations, and no flaws whatsoever. And even if the Epson can be marginally better, I say who cares.

Tom T. said:

I am consider of buying a printer for photos quality. I can't
decide which has a the better photos quality and a reliable
printer. Please help!
Thanks,

Click to expand...

Dave Schambach said:

Foxbat said:

If your only concern is photo quality, none of the HPs can come
close to what Epson 870 offers.

Foxbat

Click to expand...

If you wanna make the statement that "none of the HPs can
come close to what Epson 870 offers", you had better get your
eyes examined. Some people only see what they want to see.

Click to expand...

I am sick to of the posts about what printer is better than this printer. we have drowned this thing too much! buy the hp, buy the epson, buy the canon. you cant go wrong with any of them for photos. Lets save the comparisons to the next generations of printers.
greg

greg said:

I am sick to of the posts about what printer is better than this
printer. we have drowned this thing too much! buy the hp, buy the
epson, buy the canon. you cant go wrong with any of them for
photos. Lets save the comparisons to the next generations of
printers.
greg

Click to expand...

Greg . . .

Greg . . .

Shawn ? ? ?

Is that you ? ? ?

I can't believe that we finally agree on something!!!

Dave ;-)

Would anyone know anything about the Xerox M760 or M940?

These ones sound pretty good so far (1200x1200 dpi, 7 - 10 ppm, seperate cartradges, etc.).
Or would anyone have any suggestions on what to look for?

I don't have a printer (had a really old HP500c until it died) right now but have been trying to find a good one for awhile now.

Any help would be appreciated - I don't really want to buy an expensive paper weight.

Thanks

Tom T. said:

I am consider of buying a printer for photos quality. I can't
decide which has a the better photos quality and a reliable
printer. Please help!
Thanks,

Click to expand...

Dave Schambach said:

greg said:

I am sick to of the posts about what printer is better than this
printer. we have drowned this thing too much! buy the hp, buy the
epson, buy the canon. you cant go wrong with any of them for
photos. Lets save the comparisons to the next generations of
printers.
greg

Click to expand...

Greg . . .

Greg . . .

Shawn ? ? ?

Click to expand...

greg is the name!

Member said:

Is that you ? ? ?

I can't believe that we finally agree on something!!!

Dave ;-)

Click to expand...

Dave Schambach said:

greg said:

I am sick to of the posts about what printer is better than this
printer. we have drowned this thing too much! buy the hp, buy the
epson, buy the canon. you cant go wrong with any of them for
photos. Lets save the comparisons to the next generations of
printers.
greg

Click to expand...

Greg . . .

Greg . . .

Shawn ? ? ?

Is that you ? ? ?

I can't believe that we finally agree on something!!!

Dave ;-)

Click to expand...

No he doesn't agree, but he is looking for recognition. After he fought against HP for months, he now retracts. He will be back with the next Epson as usual. The word lunetic is not enough to describe him. Wait and see.

I have followed the whole thread to the original question.

If Epson is the best at photo prints and not so good at everyday printing
BUT has a clogging problem, one that is hard to fix (send to manufacturer).

I do not print photos more often than I need everyday printing.

My question is:

Is the Epson's clogging problem worse? (If the printer is not used often)

If I keep the Epson as a second printer for when I need photos printed,
Is it a good option? (as opposed to getting a printer that does both jobs
reasonably well like an HP)

Thanks

Tom T. said:

Tom T.

Foxbat said:

Tom T. said:

Actually, I just needed for photo printer and do you know much
about HP P1000 or P1100? Are they as good as Epson870 or HP932c?

Click to expand...

If your only concern is photo quality, none of the HPs can come
close to what Epson 870 offers.

Foxbat

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

wilpalma said:

My question is:

Is the Epson's clogging problem worse? (If the printer is not used
often)

If I keep the Epson as a second printer for when I need photos
printed,

Click to expand...

Don't even think about it.

wilpalma said:

Is it a good option? (as opposed to getting a printer that does
both jobs
reasonably well like an HP)

Click to expand...

"Reasonably well" is an understatement. It is excellent for both jobs and mainly extremely RELIABLE. It is a workhorse.

wilpalma said:

Thanks

Click to expand...

I have also experienced the Epson Clog and after sending the various Epson printers I had so many times. I finally bought an HP and it has worked flawlessly. Evryone else i know who had an Epson printer had the same problems and now all own HP's. It is a very big negative factor that the Epson print heads are on the printer itself. Unlike the HP's which are on the cartridge. HP's are also wonderfully easy to refill with great results.

Foxbat said:

Jeff said:

HP has the edge here but no much of one in my opinion. Their
print-head technology generally avoids the occasional clogging
problem with the Epsons, however the clogging problem is only
occasional and very quick and easy to fix with the click of a
button.

Click to expand...

Obviously, you haven't encountered a real Epson clog yet. Nothing
but send the printer back to Epson to replace the printer head can
fix this problem. This fix is costly and does not gaurrentee it
won't happen again soon.

Click to expand...

That's tough to answer. My first 870 clogged after one week of not using it after I first got...went on vacation and when I came back and tried to print out a few photos...Darn!

However, my 2nd has been grrrreat. I've gone 3-4 weeks without printing and it does just fine.

Sooo...it's tough...if you want a worry-free printer, the 870 isn't it. And I really can't use the HP for photos; I'd use ofoto before that.

I'm thinking about the 8200, but I've heard rumors about prints fading...worse than the problem with the 870?

Maybe I should just use ofoto until the next gen of printers comes out...

Wes

wilpalma said:

If Epson is the best at photo prints and not so good at everyday
printing
BUT has a clogging problem, one that is hard to fix (send to
manufacturer).

I do not print photos more often than I need everyday printing.

My question is:

Is the Epson's clogging problem worse? (If the printer is not used
often)

If I keep the Epson as a second printer for when I need photos
printed,
Is it a good option? (as opposed to getting a printer that does
both jobs
reasonably well like an HP)

Thanks

Tom T. said:

Tom T.

Foxbat said:

Tom T. said:

Actually, I just needed for photo printer and do you know much
about HP P1000 or P1100? Are they as good as Epson870 or HP932c?

Click to expand...

If your only concern is photo quality, none of the HPs can come
close to what Epson 870 offers.

Foxbat

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I have been hearing all the great things about the 1270 for quite awhile. Seems that many professional photographers use them on a regular basis. You just have to worry about whether you will be struck by the clogging problem or the fading ink. Searching these forums will turn up the discussions. In spite of this, the message was so clear (to me) that I bought a 1270 for photos even though I own an HP2000C. With test prints from a Canon EOS D30 camera using Photoshop on Epson's best paper on the 1270 and HP's best on the 2000C, I have the following impressions:

I believe the 2000C has better color. I haven't seen a fading problem yet, but the Epson looks faded to begin with compared to the HP. Not one person has picked the Epson prints over the HP.

The HP often has visible "banding" where the ink is not put down uniformly at one end of the print. Maybe this can be fixed, but I've seen it mentioned before.

The HP will crank out the nonphoto stuff in a hurry and with very high quality.

The HP paper feeding seems like a better design. Epsons come with guide cards to feed some paper and this seems like something that had to be done after the mechanical design didn't work instead of something planned. I can feed shipping labels (and just about anything else) into the HP ten times (once for each) and I have never had a missfeed.

The HP will "scratch" some glossy papers. I think it is only the thinner ones and it appears to come from the rollers. I never see it on matte papers or heavy weight glossy papers.

I am seriously considering returning the Epson. I expected more.

John Rausch

Tom T. said:

I am consider of buying a printer for photos quality. I can't
decide which has a the better photos quality and a reliable
printer. Please help!
Thanks,

Click to expand...

John, if you're seeing some banding, either try another paper choice or run a cleaning cycle on the cartridges. Sometimes, when I put in a new color cartridge, I'll see some faint banding until I clean the cartridges. As far as paper choices, I usually stick with HP PREMIUM PLUS PHOTO PAPER, GLOSSY as the setting I use on HP Premium Plus and Kodak Inkjet Photo paper.

John Rausch said:

I believe the 2000C has better color. I haven't seen a fading
problem yet, but the Epson looks faded to begin with compared to
the HP. Not one person has picked the Epson prints over the HP.

The HP often has visible "banding" where the ink is not put down
uniformly at one end of the print. Maybe this can be fixed, but
I've seen it mentioned before.

The HP will crank out the nonphoto stuff in a hurry and with very
high quality.

The HP paper feeding seems like a better design. Epsons come with
guide cards to feed some paper and this seems like something that
had to be done after the mechanical design didn't work instead of
something planned. I can feed shipping labels (and just about
anything else) into the HP ten times (once for each) and I have
never had a missfeed.

The HP will "scratch" some glossy papers. I think it is only the
thinner ones and it appears to come from the rollers. I never see
it on matte papers or heavy weight glossy papers.

I am seriously considering returning the Epson. I expected more.

John Rausch

Tom T. said:

I am consider of buying a printer for photos quality. I can't
decide which has a the better photos quality and a reliable
printer. Please help!
Thanks,

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Thank for the tip, but I've already tried new print heads, paper, the whole works with the same problem - slight banding abot 3/4 inches from the leading edge as it comes out of the printer. Called HP - got a suggestion regarding how I was printing pictures. I was using Photoshops bicubic to scale up to 300dpi before printing or using ThumbsPlus to 'fit it to a page". HP suggested that I use one of their programs - any program. I did and that was the problem. Using Genuine Fractals to scale up the photo to 300dpi and 8x10 and then printing also eliminated the bands. Now I have two HPs that print outstanding photographs! You would be hard pressed to choose between them.

I wonder is the reason there are a lot of 1270s in the photo world is because they use Macs more than PCs and the 2000c did not work with Macs. The 2200 does, after jumping through a few hoops.

Thanks,

John Rausch

I "justified" buying the 1270 because my daughter needs a good printer for graphic work at school and I was going to give her the 2000. This afternoon, I returned the 1270 to CompUSA with non problems and bought a new 2200se. Pretty much an improved 2000 and no banding.

Terry Thorn said:

John Rausch said:

I believe the 2000C has better color. I haven't seen a fading
problem yet, but the Epson looks faded to begin with compared to
the HP. Not one person has picked the Epson prints over the HP.

The HP often has visible "banding" where the ink is not put down
uniformly at one end of the print. Maybe this can be fixed, but
I've seen it mentioned before.

The HP will crank out the nonphoto stuff in a hurry and with very
high quality.

The HP paper feeding seems like a better design. Epsons come with
guide cards to feed some paper and this seems like something that
had to be done after the mechanical design didn't work instead of
something planned. I can feed shipping labels (and just about
anything else) into the HP ten times (once for each) and I have
never had a missfeed.

The HP will "scratch" some glossy papers. I think it is only the
thinner ones and it appears to come from the rollers. I never see
it on matte papers or heavy weight glossy papers.

I am seriously considering returning the Epson. I expected more.

John Rausch

Tom T. said:

I am consider of buying a printer for photos quality. I can't
decide which has a the better photos quality and a reliable
printer. Please help!
Thanks,

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

i got an hp950c because of the problems i had and read about in here about the epson's, do any of you epson lovers want to buy a demic 600, nothing but clogging, pissed me right off,i'm happy now with excellent photo prints and not a head clean in sight.yippee!

mark

Foxbat said:

Tom T. said:

Foxbat,
I am just currious if your Epson 870 has any clog-up problems and
is it easy to clean the clog-up?

Click to expand...

I didn't get the 870 because of this. My uncle has couple of Epsons
that clogged-up quite bad.

Foxbat

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My epson 740 was a pretty good printer until it got clogged up and until I got a HP932C I now know what a great printer can/should be like:
1) No loud at all.
2) Great photo prints
3) Not bad text at all! but maybe a little less than the epson.
4) Three buttons on top are great to for ex: stop printing instantly.
5) Real fast! when ran in draft mode as I have it set most of the time.
6) Print preview feature is nice.
7) Ink level feature works unlike the epson's.
Summary: I am not going back to epson's.