The Hi-Gloss ink set comprises six primaries: cyan, magenta, yellow, red, and blue, plus a choice of photo black or matte black, which both reside in the printer full time -- no cartridge swapping required. The eighth tank holds the gloss optimiser, which is applied when printing on glossy paper stock. This coating overcomes the tendency of the black pigment inks to become perceptibly less glossy soon after drying as well as preventing bronzing in those areas.
Like the R800, the R1800 feeds paper through an L-shaped path, loading from the top and exiting in front. This design is easy to manage, though more prone to collecting dust than are cassette or front-feed paths. It also provides a straight-through paper path for very heavy media, including CDs or DVDs. The Stylus Photo R1800 also offers roll-paper capability, which permits prints as large as 33 x 112 cm. The R1800, like the HP Photosmart 8750, handles large-size output via a series of extendable plastic trays that seem rather flimsy. To protect them, consider locating the printer in a low-traffic area. In practice, the trays do work well and have the advantage of being able to retract completely into the printer body when not in use.
The Stylus Photo R1800 does a reasonably good job with black-and-white output but creates composite greys, typically resulting in a slight colour cast in the print. For more neutral monochrome, you'll have to opt for the R2400. Though not quite neutral, the R1800's greys show less variability under changing light sources than do those of its competitors. It also displays a very good dynamic range and colour accuracy, as well as the best flesh tones of any of the photo printers we've seen thus far. Text looks extremely sharp, though under a loupe we spotted some minor irregularities. Also, graphics had some slight printhead banding in the gradient fills, as well as some slight jaggies in the curves.
Wilhelm Research's initial print-life estimates for the UltraChrome Hi-Gloss ink set on various specialty papers indicate stability ranging from 64 to 200 years when properly mounted in a frame, under glass.
In CNET Labs' tests, the R1800 was noticeably faster than the R800 -- conceivably the result of testing with different versions of the printer driver -- and thus far ranks as the fastest for printing text among the medium-format photo printers. It can't quite keep up with Canon for photo-printing speed, but it clearly outpaces the HP Photosmart 8750. It printed our 8x10-inch test photo (on Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper using the Best quality option) in two minutes flat.
In nearly 90 days of use, the printer operated flawlessly except for one incident. After several idle days, it nearly stopped printing red tones. Nozzle Check revealed that about 90 percent of the red nozzles were blocked, but running Head Cleaning twice fixed the problem. Unfortunately, Epson's printheads have a reputation for this type of behavior, as we noted in the review for the R800. You should make it a habit to run Nozzle Check after several days of printer inactivity.
Like its little brother, the R800, the Epson Stylus Photo R1800 produces very good colour photos, and if you're willing to put up with some finicky nozzles and imperfect black-and-white prints in exchange for speed and media flexibility, you'll find it a very solid choice.
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Anonymous
04/09/2007, 05:29 PM
rating
8/10
I’ve had this printer for almost 2 years and have yet to have a problem with clogged heads. I do however make sure I print at least one photo a fortnight during idle times. It will routinely purge 2% of ink from each cartridge if not used for a while which is a little disconcerting but overall is a great printer especially if you like printing large panoramas. On gloss paper the addition of the gloss optimizer is hard to beat.
Pros: Solid all round performer
Excellent gloss prints
Cons: Will regularly consume ink during inactive periods
Geninue ink seems more expensive than compedition
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craigrogers3
27/04/2007, 10:03 AM
rating
9/10
veryone complains about the ink use and it drives me nuts. Epsons have the best quality and horrible ink use because for the same reason, piezoelectric technology.
Every other inkjet company uses thermal technology which basically heats a pocket of ink to the boiling point and pushes out the remaining ink. This leads to rogue ink vapor and a fixed droplet size. Look inside a HP that has been around a while and you will see that the whole machine is coated inside with condensed ink vapors. When HP (Canon, Lexmark etc) need a larger drop they just squirt out multiple drops, a less effective method of control.
Epson's piezoelectric technology uses crystals that have variable flex depending on the current applied. This allows for fine droplet size control. Epson is the only printer company that can produce variable droplet size. This impacts the quality of the print and leads to Epson's quality lead. This also gives Epson more flexibility in the inks they choose to use since they don't have to make ink that can boil. This is why they were the first to produce pigmented inks.
The down side to this technology is that the print head are expensive to make and hence Epson is also the only company to make a inkjet that doesn't have user replaceable print heads. Anyone who has set aside an HP or Lexmark for any period of time knows that the ink starts evaporating if a head isn't used and the head gets clogged permanently. Epson is not immune from this problem but since you can't replace it they have to prevent the head from clogging in the first place. Their solution is to occasionally flush the head to prevent build up of ink solids. This leads to the 'mysterious' ink use people complain about. Each cartridge has a separate head and each head must occasionally be either used or flushed. If you were to use an HP your unused colors eventually would become clogged and you would have to replace the head or cartridge with head to get it working. It is a trade off.
Pros: top-class A3 printer
Cons: Ink Use Explained
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Anonymous
15/11/2006, 03:38 PM
rating
2/10
Waste of TIME, MONEY, and INK. If you love sitting around cleaning print heads this is the printer for you!
Pros: You get great quality prints if you ever get the print head clean.
Cons: No transarency.
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09/10/2006, 01:45 PM
rating
2/10
had two versions of the R!800 cconsistant head clogging
Cons: print heads consistantly clogs waisting ink. Averaged 50% of cartridge use for cleaning. Will never buy Epson printers again. Just purchased an HP 8750 printer as a replacement.
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