Canon or Epson Printers?

[Ripper]

For printing photos. Why?

[Voltron]

I had an epson printer, and it broke within a year, I don't know about canon. I have on of their cameras though, and it's really nice.

[zapvor]

epson. but canon too.

[Ripper]

I'm buying either the Canon Pixma iP-3300 or the Epson Stylus C87 Plus.

[Nuke]

My daughter has the Epson Stylus 84 and is not happy with the crap they pulled with the ink cartridges. These cartridges contain a chip, to make it harder for after-market suppliers to make generic carts. Worse yet, when any color runs out, the printer will demand a new cartridge and NOT print, even though you may only want to print black-only. And worst of all, the chip in the cartridge maintains a page counter, and stops printing when you hit some maximum page number, even though the cartridge still has plenty of ink left. All despicable tactics to force you to buy more genuine Epson ink cartridges. Nice printer, but really shameful treatment of customers.

[LuckyR]

Canon and Epson make great printers (and over the years I have owned one of each), however for me (I often go long periods of time without printing anything), I went with HP since their cartridges apparantly do better against ink drying out on the printer head.

[NogaroS4]

Canon..had too many bad experiences with Epson ink and also nozzle heads drying up and no matter how and what you use to clean it doesnt go away and thus rendering the printer dead.

[AAAA]

My daughter has the Epson Stylus 84 and is not happy with the crap they pulled with the ink cartridges. These cartridges contain a chip, to make it harder for after-market suppliers to make generic carts. Worse yet, when any color runs out, the printer will demand a new cartridge and NOT print, even though you may only want to print black-only. And worst of all, the chip in the cartridge maintains a page counter, and stops printing when you hit some maximum page number, even though the cartridge still has plenty of ink left. All despicable tactics to force you to buy more genuine Epson ink cartridges. Nice printer, but really shameful treatment of customers.

I had the exact same problem. However you can buy non Epson branded refills at some PC stores. My next printer will likely be either a Canon or Hewlett Packard.

[Nuke]

Yeah, the embedded chip only slowed down the generic cartridge after-market for so long. But it's really shameful that the printer won't print even though there's obviously plenty of ink left.

[PrinceO3TourOS]

Always Canon :D it's better quality than Epson ;)

[isuk@tennis]

don't go into a brand war argument nonsense....
look into specific models and look for reviews of those various models from the same publication.
some models will be better in some sense and others better in another aspect.

i have an HP myself a cheap one $150 and i printed 8x10s alot of the prints came out very nice sharp and color looked close to what i wanted from the picture. assuming you use high weight photo paper and not cheap on ink.

same goes for when buying a camera. don't get caught up in brand wars unless you already have an SLR and don't want to invest in another lens system

[mucat]

In general, Canon has better printers, like other said, Epson has very bad ink management, though both can produce equally good quality photo.

FYI, I am using an Epson now and I am happy with it.

[Joe Average]

You might also consider the new Kodak printers. This is what David Pogue of the NYTimes had to say about them in an article (5/17/07) "Paying More for a Printer, but Less for Ink."

"The base model is called the 5100 ($150); the 5300 ($200) adds a color screen and memory-card slots, so you can print your camera photos without a computer. And the 5500 ($300) adds faxing, a document feeder and double-sided printing. All of these machines contain the same printing guts and accept the same cartridges.

These machines print beautiful glossy photos relatively quickly: a borderless 4-by-6 print pops out in about 55 seconds.

That’s not as fast as rival models (some manage a 4-by-6 in 32 seconds), but there’s a big difference: Kodak’s machines accept so-called pigment inks. They take longer to dry, but they also take longer to fade — as in 90 years, even when exposed to the air. The dye-based inks in most inkjets begin to fade away in as little as one year. In other words, if you’re willing to wait 20 more seconds to print a photo, you might gain 89 years of viewing pleasure."

[dufferok]

The Epson R1800 or R800 are both excellent printers. These printers have some of the highest ink archival rates, per Wilhelm Imaging Research (google their website for more info). I sell prints from wedding, portrait and sport shoots using the Epson R1800.

I've used Cannon and HP printers. Cannon is coming along in the printer world; however, I prefer the print quality and archival life Epson provides. HP makes excellent laser printers but not a fan of the HP photo printers.

Epson has a new line of Photo printers out now; however, the ink for these printers are quit costly. Wait for prices to drop before jumping into the new models.