EPSON SURECOLOR P900

Supersize your photo prints with Epson’s latest and surprisingly compact A2/17-inch printer £1,080/$1,249

The Epson Surecolor P700 A3+/13-inch printer (£679/$829) might seem an obvious fit for this group test, competing against the Canon PRO-200 and PRO-300 models. However, while the A2/17-inch P900 is more expensive to buy, it gives relatively supersized output from a printer that’s only about the same size and weight as the Canon A3+/13-inch models, and its 50ml cartridges have twice the capacity of the Epson P700’s cartridges, resulting in savings on ink costs.

In previous large-format Epson printers, the photo black and matte black inks shared a common channel in the print head. You’d therefore need to purge and refill the ink in the channel every time you swapped media, wasting time and money. The P700 and P900 put that to rights, with dedicated channels for all ten inks.

Handling is excellent, with an additional pull-out feeder at the front, ideal for fine art media and relatively thick poster board. It also allows for extra-long cut-sheet media, while a roll paper feeder is available as an optional extra. As well as a useful colour touchscreen, the printer features a translucent top panel and interior LED lighting, so you can keep a check on your prints as they’re being made.

Performance

There are up to five quality settings available, depending on media type, but the highest settings are typically very slow and give a virtually imperceptible increase in print quality for most images and papers. Print quality is excellent, for both colour and mono output, although the Canon PRO-300 just has the edge for really deep blacks and, without a Chroma Optimizer cartridge, the Epson’s output on glossy paper looks less smooth.