On Saturday, November 11th we were at the Epson Print Academy here in Salt Lake City, Utah. As part of the show, Epson set us up with one of the very few Epson 3800 Pro printers in the country (they say the printers should start shipping in two weeks - they're probably already on the boat from Asia) BUT we had to give the printer back at the end of the show. We tried to learn as much about it as we could in the 12 hours that we had it. We also cranked out as many sample prints as we could - grab one while we still have them.
| Our very first look at the new Epson 3800 Pro. The box is about the same as the R2400 but bigger. All 9 inks are there but this was one of the first shipped (air!) and it didn't have any drivers, interface cables or even a power cord. Luckily I was prepared and the drivers I got from Epson at the show. |
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| First look at the actual printer. Like the R2400 and R1800, once you take the foam blocks with the ink off the top, you can just grab the plastic bag and lift the printer out. Unlike the 4800 you can actually do it on your own without getting a hernia. That's a lot of blue tape. |
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| Like I said, that's a lot of tape! Everything was nice and safe so the printer worked perfectly. When Epson took the printer back the poor guy had to pull apart my tape ball and put as much of it back on as he could - that sucked. |
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Have a knife or pair of scissors handy - you'll be cutting open 9 blue plastic bags. Unlike the cartridges for the R2400 and such there isn't a little nick that you can easily open them. They need to be cut open - pro printer users will be used to this by now.
Epson, we want foil pouches. |
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| While loading the inks I decided to stop for a second and take a picture of the waste tank. It's decidedly smaller than the ones for the other pro printers but you're not supposed to need it as much, right? |
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| Inks are all loaded up. The door to the inks can't be open when the printer is running. It should be noted that there is not a lock/release lever. After all the inks were in, the printer started its charge cycle and I didn't have to do anything (other pro printers make you raise and lover the lock levers a few times). |
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Loading a 17x37 sheet. So far Epson has said you couldn't load anything longer than 22 inches. No one knew if it was possible, apparently in the previous shows they did it hadn't occurred to anyone to try it.
This would have been easier if the printer was up close to a wall so I could rest it on that instead of me, but I'm often told that talking to me is like talking to a wall so I'll do.
Where did I get a 17x37 sheet? I grabbed a 17 inch roll of our Micro Ceramic Luster and cut it at 37 inches (epson only does a 16" roll in their luster) |
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| Guess what? it handles 17x37 just fine - for that matter I also tried a 17x25 with a 16x24 printed onto it. Why didn't I put in a 16x24 sheet and do it borderless? Because once you select borderless the "User Defined" size option goes away. |
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This driver capture is actually from the docs on the installer CD - I forgot to take a screen capture while the printer was attached so it would have all the ink levels showing. By the time I was done with the printer, most of the inks were down to 1/2 and the blacks were down to 1/4 - half of our test image is black and white.
You'll notice that the first ink is grayed out - that's the Matte Black. It's "offline" because the last print was done with Photo Black ink. When the printer swaps blacks it changes which one is "offline" |
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| Here's the media type box - it's pretty clear what black will be used for each. You'll notice that plain paper is in both so you don't have to swap blacks just to print a web page. That's handy. |
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| Paper sources. You'll notice there isn't a roll option. When you select a thick media like the UltraSmooth it will warn you that it's switching to the rear feeder - though you could change it to the front one of you really wanted to. |
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| Paper sizes. I don't have borderless selected so there's quite a plethora of options available - including the User Define |
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And this is what you get when you select borderless. I did a bunch of 17x22 borderless prints on the Epson UltraSmooth - came out really nice. Once again, you can't do user defined borderless so no 16x24 borderless prints, you'll have to do it on a 17x25 and trim.
A pro printer that can do borderless 4x6 prints - now THAT's overkill. |
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| When you select user defined this box comes up. You'll see that the max size is actually 17 x 37.4. Minimum is 3.5 x 5. |
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| Like the other K3 printers, the 3800 also has the advanced black and white mode - I never used it though. |
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| When you save your settings you get a different box - it actually summarizes all the different things being saved and you can put comments. Note that it does not save paper size - it doesn't need to. You also have the ability to import and export saved settings. That's really handy when using profiles. |
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| The print monitor - it's bigger and white compared to previous Epson print monitors. You'll notice once again that the Matte Black is grayed out. Depending on what's going on it will sometimes show you the status of the drainage tank. |
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| What about ink usage? well, the 3800 has an intense job report. Previous printers held the last 10 jobs. The 3800's goes up past 22 - that's how many jobs I did. I did 3 borderless 17x22 prints on Epson UltraSmooth. One was a bridal and since it was mostly white it only used up $.98 in ink. A Black and white portrait and a picture of a jungle waterfall both used up $3 in ink 17x22 is 2.59 square feet. You can see the entire thing here or download the CSV it outputs here |
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