Canon announced the imagePROGRAF Pro-1100 printer this week, the long-awaited replacement for the imagePROGRAF Pro-1000, which was first released in 2016. The Pro-1100, which, like its predecessor, can print up to 17 inches wide.
Priced at $1300, the new printer shares the same chassis and printhead as the Pro-1000, but includes a slightly updated vacuum-feed mechanism that Canon says helps prevent skewing and increases the accuracy of the dot placement. The feed mechanism in the previous model was the best in the industry at the desktop level, and I expect that the Pro-1100 will be the same. (It’s worth noting that Canon still doesn’t support roll-feed with their top-tier 17″ printers.)
The Pro-1100 has a new ink set (Lucia Pro II) that Canon says improves print longevity and black density, especially on fine-art (matte) papers. It has 11 inks (10 printing), plus a Chroma Optimizer designed to minimize bronzing on glossy paper types. The ink cartridges have a hefty 80ml capacity, similar to Epson’s SureColor P900.
The printer has started shipping in small quantities, and should be available more widely this fall. It will go head to head with the P900, which is currently at the same price point. Epson’s model boasts an excellent ink set and decent paper handling, and, while it’s only four years old, it is solidly entrenched in the desktop photo printer space. The Pro-1000, while a bit long in the tooth for some, was an excellent printer, and it will be interesting to test this new printer to see how the print quality matches up (to both the Pro-1000 and the P700/P900). If it does, the Pro-1100 might actually pull a bit more market share from Epson.
Mark Segal has a review of Epson’s Surecolor P5370 over on PhotoPXL. Segal’s review is exhaustive (95 figures!), and covers everything from the new chassis to the utilities supplied with the printer to gamut profiles and more.
Segal also speaks to the “which printer should I buy” question—P5370 or P900.
So first things first – if I’m in the market for a 17” professional printer from Epson, which of these two should I buy, or put otherwise, is it worthwhile spending the extra USD 750 for the P5370 versus the P900? It depends on (i) how much you print and (ii) whether you make many photos requiring the use of roll paper. If the answer to (i) were “not much” and to (ii) “no or hardly”, then you want a P900. Conversely, you would want a P5370.
Epson today announced the SureColor P5370 professional photo printer, a 10-ink, high-volume printer with a maximum print width of 17 inches. When it ships early next year, the P5370 will replace the SureColor P5000, which has been the keystone of Epson’s 17-inch pro printer line for years.
The P5370 uses the same UltraChrome PRO10 inkset found in the SureColor P900 and P700 models (see review): 10 inks (9 printing), with separate channels for Matte and Photo Black inks. The ink cartridges are a whopping 200ml in size.
The printer has a 100-sheet front-feed paper cassette; a built-in roll feeder (for 2- and 3-inch roll cores) with an automatic cutter; a top-loading, single-sheet manual feed path; and a front-loading, straight-through paper path for media up to 1.5mm thick. It has a 4.3-inch touchscreen LCD, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, and both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi.
Yes, the P5370 shares the excellent, long-lasting P700/P900 inkset, and offers similar — but slightly better — connectivity options and a (bigger) touchscreen LCD, but make no mistake: this is a tool for professionals looking to create finished gallery work, portfolios, and short-run photo projects. For those groups, the P5370 should be a revelatory workhorse.
To say that this printer has been overdue is an understatement. The P5000 was a fantastic high-volume printer, serving both the photo community and publishers in the print industry (with slightly different inksets for each group), but it suffered slightly as a photographer’s tool, with the single black ink channel that necessitated switching when you wished to change between Matte and Photo Black inks. We’ve also been waiting for the release of the PRO10 inkset at this level in the market. As good as the SureColor P900 is as a fine-art photo printer, it lacks the durability and sturdiness of the SureColor 4800/4900/5000 line, and the we expect that the P5370 will be similarly constructed.
Epson expects to ship the SureColor P5370 in January, 2024. The printer will be $2,095; pricing for the ink cartridges wasn’t available at press time. I, for one, can’t wait to get my hands on one.
Press release reproduced below. Epson also has a very handy Sales Reference Guide (PDF) to the SureColor P5370, which includes more detail and comparison with the P5000 and the P900.
Epson Introduces SureColor P5370 17-Inch Professional Photographic Printer
Replacing SureColor P5000, New Printer Delivers Creativity Without Compromise
LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. — Empowering photographers to produce the finest exhibition quality prints, Epson has introduced the new 17-inch SureColor P5370 professional printer designed to meet the demanding needs of professional and production photographic markets. Incorporating technological breakthroughs and enhanced reliability to produce prints as the artist intended, the new printer has an improved printhead, new ink set with an extended color gamut in dark blue hues, plus an advanced print engine for productivity, including sheet and roll capability. The SureColor P5370 is being debuted and shown at the Palm Springs Photo Festival.
Vincent Versace, a recognized pioneer in the art and science of digital photography noted, “When I have a large volume of prints to make and time and reliability is of the essence, the SureColor P5370 is my go-to printer for meeting deadlines while maintaining the highest photographic print quality.”
Touting a refined design, the SureColor P5370 combines an improved advanced MicroPiezo AMC printhead with Epson Precision Dot Screening Technology to consistently produce prints with smooth tonal renditions and capability to reproduce the details captured with today’s high-resolution cameras. Featuring a new 10-color UltraChrome PRO10 ink set in high-capacity 200 mL cartridges, including Violet Ink, the printer delivers an extended range of blue hues and a wider color gamut. With dedicated channels for Photo and Matte Black inks, there’s no ink switching, helping to save time and reduce ink waste. The printer’s built-in Carbon Black Mode increases Dmax, allowing for rich blacks and exceptional contrast on glossy paper.
Offering flexibility and increased productivity, the printer includes a built-in roll feeder, auto cutter and a high-capacity cassette that accommodates up to 100 cut sheets from 8.5″ x 11″ to 17″ x 22.” In addition, to further support today’s workflows that leverage both Epson and third-party media, the SureColor P5370 includes Epson Media Installer, a software application designed to help control parameters for successful printing with a variety of media, including thick fine art papers.
“Listening to market needs and incorporating customer feedback, we integrated the latest printhead and ink technologies that are optimized for photography into this new printer so professional photographers can maximize productivity, reliability and consistently produce the finest exhibition-quality prints,” said Marc Aguilera, product manager, Epson America, Inc. “Designed to meet demanding needs, the SureColor P5370 is an evolution to the beloved SureColor P5000, adding improved reliability, deeper black density and wider color gamut in blue hues.
Additional SureColor P5370 features include:
Intuitive operation — a new large 4.3-inch color LCD touchscreen and interface allows for easy setup, control and maintenance
Expanded connectivity — Ethernet, USB and, now included, WiFi connectivity
Advanced software support for enhanced productivity — includes Epson Cloud Solution PORT2 for fleet management and Epson Print Layout software for simple print production
Availability
The SureColor P5370 will be available in Q1 2024 through Epson Authorized Professional Imaging Resellers for an estimated MSRP of $2,095. For additional information, visit http://www.epson.com/p5370.
Over the past year, I had been hearing reports that Epson had quietly fixed some of the paper handling issues I (and others) had run into with early production models of the SureColor P900 and P700 photo printers, and I wanted to see if the rumors were correct. So, in late 2022, I ordered a new P700 and a P900, one from B&H, the other from Amazon. Epson also loaned me a P700 to test as part of this project, so I felt that I had a good sample from multiple sources.
After months of printing hundreds of photos, ranging from 4×6 to 16×20–and through two recent printing workshops where the three printers were in constant use–it is clear that appears to have fixed the paper feed issues, and I have updated my review of the P900 and P700 to account for the fixes. Epson won’t go on the record to say that something in the feed assembly has been fixed, but they have told us in the past that they are “always looking at ways to improve” their products.
With the updates, it is clear that the P900 (17-inch) and the P700 (13-inch) printers provide the best combination of print quality, paper handling and usability found in the dedicated photo printer market today. Canon’s imagePROGRAF PRO-300 (13-inch) and PRO-1000 (17-inch) are each quite good printers, but they feel like last-generation machines compared with the P700/P900 series.
I’m finishing up a more detailed overview of the current photo printer market, but if you’re looking for the best combination of photo print quality and cost today, the P900 is it. Yes, you’ll pay more for it than the P700, but the more-efficient ink costs will pay for the upgrade in a couple of years. The review has all the gory details, of course.
Canon’s imagePROGRAF PRO-300 is a $900, 13-inch desktop photo printer with nine pigment inks. Introduced in mid-2020, not long after Epson’s announcement of the 13-inch SureColor P700 (and the 17-inch P900), the PRO-300 replaces the Pixma PRO-10 at the top of the Canon’s 13-inch photo printer lineup. It boasts a comparable feature set to Epson’s P700, including flexible paper handling, black-and-white and borderless printing, extensive connectivity options and more. After a few months of testing, I can say that it’s a solid printer with excellent print quality for its class. Like most photo printers at this level, there are a few rough edges in places, but overall it’s a good value, and quite competitive with Epson’s offerings.
[February 2023: This review has been updated, with a new conclusion, based on testing a group of newer SureColor P700 and P900 models. You can find out specifics on why here.]
Epson bills their SureColor P700 and P900 printers as models that can create “exhibition quality” photographic prints, and that is most certainly true: the quality of the prints that they can produce is second to none in the sub-$1500 market. Replacing two five-year-old models, the SureColor P600 and P800 respectively, the new printers have some important enhancements, including a new inkset that expands the printers’ gamut; enhanced blacks when printing on glossy and other photo papers; and the removal of the decades-old reliance of using a single black-ink channel to switch between photo and fine art media. The new printers are also small and light, which should make photographers with tight workspaces happy. All in all, the P700/P900 represent the pinnacle of desktop-based photo printing that is available today.
In my Stylus Photo R2880 review, one of the biggest questions I get is not about the quality of the printer, or even comparisons with HP and Canon printers in the same price range. No, it is: “How does it compare with Epson’s Stylus Pro 3800?”
This is understandable: while the R2880 is a very good printer, it does suffer from a few issues, notably the smaller ink tanks and the necessity to swap the matte and photo black ink cartridges when you want to move between matte and glossy papers. The 3800 also requires a switch, but the process is automatic and requires no user intervention. The 3800 does waste a few dollars of ink per switch, which is troublesome, but given the rarity with which people change paper type—and its high-capacity (80ml) cartridge size, this is a lesser issue for many pro users.
Right now, the Stylus Pro 3800 is under $1,200 at Amazon (a savings of $100 or so), while the R2880 is priced around $650 ($150 off the list price). If you’re looking at the two printers, how do you choose between the two? I think it’s pretty straightforward: what follows are some of my thoughts, based on fairly heavy usage of both printers (and nearly every other photo printer in the $300 to $5,000 price range).
At Photokina in Germany, HP today announced the Designjet Z3200 Photo Printer, a wide-format inkjet printer for professional photographers and designers, with a new ink formulation, speed and paper-handling improvements and other enhancements over previous models.
The Z3200 is the successor to HP’s the Designjet Z3100 Photo Printer, which, when it first shipped late in 2006, was one of the most innovative photo printers we had seen in a long time. The Z3100 utilized 12 pigment-based inks (including a gloss optimizer) to produce high-quality, gallery-ready prints, but it was the printer’s embedded spectrophotometer (from X-Rite) and seamless integration with networked Macs and PCs that set it apart from competitors like Epson and Canon. HP spent considerable effort streamlining the process of printing: everything from unboxing the device to profiling and adding new paper types had been thought through by HP’s hardware and software engineers. The result was a printer that created top-quality prints and was a joy to use, day in and day out.
At