Epson - Stylus Pro 3800

I have four printers in my home printing lab.  Epson Sure Color P900 - this is my workhorse printer for black-and-white and some color, depending on the tonal range and the paper.  Canon Pixma Pro 100 - much cheaper ink, but I am less happy with the black-and-white results, though I think it does extremely well with images that are predominantly, red or green.  Epson XP7100 - my day to day home office printer that does extremely high-quality 4 x 6 glossy prints with minimal fuss.  Epson Stylus Pro 3880 - much more expensive to run on Epson inks than the P900, but much more flexible in terms of utilizing third-party in including a wide gamut set of dedicated gray scale ink.  I do my own exhibition printing and have access to a 48 inch wide format Eason roll printer.  I share all of us because this is doable, if you are serious about high-quality printing and want the precise control over what paper and output you achieve, but be prepared for a significant financial investment in ink and paper.  I also have the benefit of being taught digital printing by a highly accomplished photographer who, like me, was a skilled dark printer before moving to digital. He also just happens to have work in multiple famous museums and collections, so his printing skills are indisputable. But even with that knowledge, sometimes it takes me two or three prints to completely dial in an image. 

I can't speak to the 8550 but for my photography business I used Epson since 2010 and every iteration of the 'new upgraded' printer actually got worse on many fronts.  All 17" printers ... First one was the 3800, pretty great reliability until it just suddenly died (mainboard related) so i got the 3880. For such a small iterative upgrade it seemed to have a lot more issues with clogged nozzles and just general pain in the ass printing issues.  Then came the P900... Amazingly they decided to remove the firmware functionality that let you print ink usage reports AND the printer status software stopped showing actual percentages of ink remaining and instead just showed a small bar for the level so when it was running low you never had a clue how many more prints you could do. Also, they removed the physical buttons for navigating menus on the printer itself and replaced it with a touch screen... Totally unnecessary. All that said, it does still work, though i have flashed the firmware and installed inks i can refill myself because i got tired of the cost of Epson inks. Oh yeah, earlier last year they had supply chain issues with their light magenta ink and as you can expect, if you are out of one ink cartridge you can't print at all, so for people using the printer for business you either have to put business on hold or go buy a new printer that you can actually get ink for. Last October i bought the Canon 4600 44" printer and i absolutely love it. It's just so much more end user friendly, both in use and cost.

Try the epson consumer line of pigment printers. E.g. P700 or P900 (or older P800, 3800). These are much more robust against clogs (maybe because they are consumer oriented) than other epson models. I won't say they never clog, but it's rare for me. Usually I print in bursts, doing a lot and then nothing for a month or two. AFAIK there is no way to avoid the canon cleaning cycles short of printing something every few days (there is a lot of info online on the timing). Epson also has a different set of annoyances. Pick your poison.