Hp vs Epson

In this forum it seems that 80% of you guys are in favor of

Epson printers. How come that all official reviews in various magazines and on line sites are mostly in favor of HPs, while the users are for the Epsons?
Are the EPSONites more enthousiastic than the others and show up their support
or the critics are not saying the truth? Any comments?

I don't know which reviews you're talking about. When reviews consider "all around" use, they seem to favor the HP, but when they talk specifically about photo reproduction they seem to favor the Epson.

Don

Kirk said:

In this forum it seems that 80% of you guys are in favor of
Epson printers. How come that all official reviews in various magazines
and on line sites are mostly in favor of HPs, while the users are for the
Epsons?
Are the EPSONites more enthousiastic than the others and show up their
support
or the critics are not saying the truth? Any comments?

Click to expand...

It all depends on what your evaluation criteria is. Epson prints seem to look better to most folks eyes although they may be inferior on the basis of technical measures. My Alps MD 1300 can resolve about 450 pixels per inch in dye sub mode and my Epsons (700 and 1200) can do about 300 pixels per inch. The Epson prints just look better. On the other hand, the Alps dry micro process is very color fast while the ink jet set are not. Then there is cost per print, speed, noise, etc. I'm a fan of HP (laserjet, scanner, etc). HP's quality and engineering is very good but the Epson prints are still more attractive (so far).

I have a cheap Epson (Color 400) and a middle-0f-the-road HP (722C).

For photographic reproduction, the Epson is clearly better, but only on very expensive Epson glossy paper. Printing on any kind of other paper, the colors are dull and lifeless.

The more expensive and more recent Epsons do an even better job on glossy paper. The "grain" is quasi invisible, the quality so close to photographic that you really have to be a grinch to say otherwise!

For general work, on the other hand, the HP does a much better job on regular or relatively inexpensive "photo-quality" (but not glossy) paper. CD-labels? I use the HP. Plain paper? I use the HP. Correspondence? I use the HP.

I feel very fortunate to have both. They have different strengths. But with photo services now appearing on the web (real photographic prints made from your image file, at very low cost) I can see that the need for photographic printers is going to wane.

regards
Robert Jeantet

Don,

Consumer Reports for example, Sept.99 issue, rates HP printers in the 3 first places, while Epson 900 is in 6th place and Epson 750 is in 10th place. Photo output is also considered. I have also seen other online reports about HP's superiority, including lower operating costs, not to mention the clogging problem of the Epsons. I'll try to find these reports again and let you know.

==============

Don Lashier said:

Don

Kirk said:

In this forum it seems that 80% of you guys are in favor of
Epson printers. How come that all official reviews in various magazines
and on line sites are mostly in favor of HPs, while the users are for the
Epsons?
Are the EPSONites more enthousiastic than the others and show up their
support
or the critics are not saying the truth? Any comments?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I have an epson photo printer. I did a lot of research before purchasing by comparing the same photo printed on various printers. Hp still has a problem with large grain compared to Epson. I like the colours and plain paper printing on HP.

Fevzi

Kirk said:

In this forum it seems that 80% of you guys are in favor of
Epson printers. How come that all official reviews in various magazines
and on line sites are mostly in favor of HPs, while the users are for the
Epsons?
Are the EPSONites more enthousiastic than the others and show up their
support
or the critics are not saying the truth? Any comments?

Click to expand...

Kirk said:

In this forum it seems that 80% of you guys are in favor of
Epson printers. How come that all official reviews in various magazines
and on line sites are mostly in favor of HPs, while the users are for the
Epsons?
Are the EPSONites more enthousiastic than the others and show up their
support
or the critics are not saying the truth? Any comments?

Click to expand...

The various reviews that I have looked at generally give the edge to Epson (especially the 750) for strictly photo printing. The Epson, however, is very noisy, relatively slow, has more problems with gumming up the print nozzles, and has a significantly higher per page cost than say, an HP Photosmart P1000. On the other hand, the 750 is much less expensive to purchase and you don't have to worry about page jamming, which the HPs, with their more complicated paper path, are more likely to suffer from. You pays your money and you makes your choice.

Kirk said:

In this forum it seems that 80% of you guys are in favor of
Epson printers. How come that all official reviews in various magazines
and on line sites are mostly in favor of HPs, while the users are for the
Epsons?
Are the EPSONites more enthousiastic than the others and show up their
support
or the critics are not saying the truth? Any comments?

Click to expand...

I own an Epson 800. The photo print quality is excellent, but only with Epson's special paper. Hp printers I use at work (about 1 yr old) were always grainy. The Epson's ink cartridge life is resonable. HQ print mode is slow......

Kirk said:

In this forum it seems that 80% of you guys are in favor of
Epson printers. How come that all official reviews in various magazines
and on line sites are mostly in favor of HPs, while the users are for the
Epsons?
Are the EPSONites more enthousiastic than the others and show up their
support
or the critics are not saying the truth? Any comments?

Click to expand...

I think the answer is simple. Many of the reviewers do rate the HPs as tops but if you read closely you will see that the rating is on an overall basis.

When you look closely at most of those reviews you will see that the Epson receive some of the highest ratings in the Photo printing categories. This

site and many others like it are frequented by many digital camera enthusiasts that want the best photo printer and they believe (and I have come to
believe) that they are, in many respects, right.

A personal example. I have owned an original Epson Color Stylus for about 5 years and have just loved the Photo printing output but yearned for a

faster printer. An 8X10 took about 45 minutes in 720 mode. When my wife got an iMac we bought an Epson 740 an it has been outstanding. No

clogging on either of these machines (please, no flames from all of you Epson owners that may have had some clogging problems, I have not). Then

I decided to upgrade the printer on my Mac PPC Power Computing 150 clone. What to do? It was, for me, between the HP 970 and the Epson 900 (I

wanted speed!). I got the HP 970 and it seems to be a decent machine but I am plagued with jamming problems in the duplex attachment and it is

going back. In the meantime I wanted to print about 25 sheets of Photo paper with multiple pictures on each sheet for some friends to include in their

Xmas cards. After just a few sheets I ran out of the ink in the color cartridge due to my prior extensive use of color printing. I finished the job on the

Epson 740 and decided to compare identical pictures printed by both machines. But what was this? The famed quality of the HP seemed to be

inferior to the Epson which was now selling for about 1/3rd the price of the HP. I handed my wife both pictures and asked her to comment about

which was better. She picked the Epson. It just seemed to be a little sharper and the speed of producing Photos did not seem to be much slower
than the HP.

Knowing what I know now, I would not buy the HP because I could get a better picture printed for much less money with the Epson. I would probably

go for the even faster Epson 760 which has a 4 Picoliter dot size compared to the 740's 6 Picoliter dot size. For those who want a fairly fast printer

with outstanding text printing (the HP shines in this area), with a duplex processor (I understand that others have more successful machines in this

respect, mine is probably defective), go for the HP. But if you want an inexpensive superb Photo printer, go

You may want to also check out the correlation between advertisers and favorable reviews. H-P is a huge advertiser for computer magazines; thus, they tend to get more favorable reviews in those magazines (journalism sometimes falls by the wayside when business decisions have to be made).

Most professional digital photographers prefer the Epson Stylus Photo series because these models do such a great job with color depth and clarity. Magnify your prints and you'll see the differences between H-P and Epson. The best photographic prints begin at the microscopic level (dot gain, uniformity, registration, etc.).

Hope this helps.

The photo services idea is new to me. Could you point me to some of these servicers?
Thanks.

Shawn

Member said:

with photo services now appearing on the web (real photographic prints
made from your image file, at very low cost) I can see that the need for
photographic printers is going to wane.

Click to expand...

Chip Pryor said:

You may want to also check out the correlation between advertisers and
favorable reviews. H-P is a huge advertiser for computer magazines;
thus, they tend to get more favorable reviews in those magazines
(journalism sometimes falls by the wayside when business decisions have
to be made).

Click to expand...

I'vee been a PC Magazine subscriber since early 1984. I also subscribed
to PC World and PC Computing since their first issues. I continue to
receive each of these magazines monthly.

Rest assured, Epson also advertises monthly in each of these 3 magazines.
Usually with multiple pages of ads. So much for business decisions.

Dave