The Epson 3800 pro is 27 inches wide, 10 inches high and 15 inches deep (when completely closed up). The top-loading high-capacity paper tray can hold up to 120 sheets of paper letting you load an entire package of photo paper. The Epson 3800 can accommodate cut sheets from 4"x6" up to 17"x22".

Much like the Epson R2400 and R1800 (which share similar design elements) the 3800 Pro has a secondary top loading manual feeder for thicker fine-art media ranging from letter (8.5"x11") to 17"x22".

The front paper feed path allows you to load extremely thick media (up to 1.5mm - 59 mil) with paper sizes from letter up to 16"x20"

All nine inks in the UltraChrome K3 ink set are loaded at the same time (with previous printers you were required to swap the matte and photo black manually - resulting in ink waste) and the printer comes with a full set of FULL cartridges. Each ink tank on the Epson 3800 holds 80ml of ink and the tanks are pressurized by the printer to allow for extremely fast printing.

The maintenance tank on the 3800 is front loading - except to plug in the power and connect the interface (USB or Ethernet) you do everything from the front of the printer. This is quite handy for limited space environments.

Size comparison of the 4800 and 3800. The 3800 is 30% smaller by dimension than the 4800 and 51% lighter at 43.2 pounds

The Epson 3800 Pro comes standard with USB and 10/100 BaseT wired Ethernet networking. Using USB you can position the printer up to 15 feet away from your computer. Using Ethernet networking you can position the printer up to 600 feet away (by using a hub) and have the printer available to all PCs and Macs on your network

The Epson 3800 uses an advanced print head design called AMC (Active Meniscus Control). AMC gives the print head extremely accurate droplet placement capabilities with droplets as small as 3.5 picoliters. The print head is 1 inch tall (or 1 inch wide, depending on how you look at it) with 180 nozzles for each of the 8 colors (1440 total).

The Photo/Matte Black channel switches between black ink types automatically depending on the paper type you select in the print driver so you'll always be using the proper black ink for your paper. With previous printers, if you had the Photo Black loaded and wanted to print on matte paper you got an image with less density and richness.

Through some impressive plumbing this switch only uses up a limited amount of ink (the 4800, in our own tests, used up $40.73 of ink, 93.4ml, each time you switch ink). Switching from photo to matte uses ~1.5ml and takes roughly 2 minutes. Going from matte to photo uses ~4.5ml and takes about 3 minutes. The entire process is automatic and you may not even notice it's happening.

Along with a new nozzle and head design, software changes have added an all-new radical algorithm for determining dot placement and screening, resulting in an extreme-level of photographic image quality.
These allow the printer to produce extremely fine photographic prints even in bi-directional and lower resolution print modes.
The driver now compensates for various ink densities between resolutions - allowing for a single ICC profile to be used per media type (no more need for a separate 2880 and a 1440 profile, you just need one!). The 3800 is also FAST:

Epson Driver Print Mode	4” x 6”	5” x 7”	8” x 10”	11” x 14”	16” x 20”
SuperFine - 1440 dpi HS	1:00	1:14	2:03	3:18	5:32
SuperFine - 1440 dpi	2:00	2:29	4:08	6:39	10:59
SuperPhoto - 2880 dpi HS	1:53	2:19	3:50	6:04	9:46
SuperPhoto - 2880 dpi	3:51	4:43	7:47	12:15	19:40