SureColor P900

Canon and Epson are probably going to be your best to brands to pick from if you want true professional print quality at home. Canon makes their Pro line of printers (pro 200/300/1000) and Epson has the P700 and P900. Each will have their pros and cons, but overall you'd be happy with any of them most likely. These are not your regular inkjet printers you'd buy at an electronics/office store. They are proper professional photo printers. Canon Pro 200 will print up to 13" wide, so it would work for you very well. I think it's about $600 USD. The real question is, is buying a pro printer worth it for you? It's a combination of cost/savings vs a print shop and then the control you'll have over your prints. If this is for just printing your photos for personal use, then it's probably not going to be worth the cost. Printing A4 prints at print shops isn't THAT expensive. But buying a $600 printer and then spending a bunch of money on ink refills and potential wasted paper/ink, probably won't be a cost effective option for you if that's the goal. You'd either need to print a lot to hit a break even point for personal use, or just be that demanding in regards to your prints to want more direct control over how they come out, to make buying a pro printer worth it.

I’ve got the P900 and I am really enjoying it so far. I’ve made maybe two dozen prints but the quality is incredible. It was fairly easy to set up. My two points of guidance are: 1) Don’t buy it used or refurbished. I bought a refurb from B and H and it was a nightmare. 2) Paper is also not cheap. The epson brand photo paper is ok, the nice Hahnemuhle stuff is pricey.

I used a Spyder to calibrate my monitors prior to printing and I find that from monitor to print the match is phenomenal. I have had a couple of prints seem a bit bluer initially but once the pigment fully dried I felt better about them. I’ve also been satisfied by the contrast. However, I’ve been using the Epson Premium Photo Matte papers and some Hahnemuhle mattes from a sample pack. So I can’t speak to full black and super dynamic contrast. Glossy prints are just not my aesthetic.

Canon all the way. P900 is awful. I own one and cry inside everything I have to use it.

The Epson P700 is one of the best options, print quality wise. The two main downsides are small lightweight flimsy construction of the printer, and unexpectedly high cost for ink. The latter is easily fixed by going for the bigger brother P900. It's 17" and accepts larger cartridges, bringing the price per mL of ink back into normal regions. Fixing the flimsy construction problem isn't possible within your budget, at least not if you want to keep the "the best photo printer" quality requirement. You can get more robust printers, but not nearly as good ones unless you pay much more. The real fix is the P5300, which contains the same print technology, but in a sturdy metal chassis. It's built like a tank and requires two friends to help you move it around.

I think your numbers are off. An A3 print does NOT cost $5 in ink on a printer like the Epson P900. If you said 0.50 I'd believe it. The same for maintenance. Mine does daily nozzle checks to stay "fresh", and maybe 3 simple head cleans per year, plus 1 power clean in 2 years. This may be equivalent to about $70 per year: approx 1 cartridge of "wasted" ink (wasted = put to good use), a maintenance cartridge for the power cleans, a 500-pack of office paper for the nozzle checks, and electricity to keep the thing running.

> I’m not sure if they’re too professional for what I need. For *"making zines and photo books"*, I wonder if they are professional ENOUGH. They are good for a few one-offs now and then. But then you don't even use much ink. Quality paper and time spent at the printer will dwarf the cost of ink. For higher volumes you should look into sturdier printers, and print technologies beyond inkjet on specially coated paper. BTW, if ink cost is your #1 priority, the P900 uses larger cartridges and the ink will cost almost half the price of P700 ink (per ml). A similar calculation can be done for the (more sturdy) P5300 vs P900.

Pro P900: - smaller, lighter - less frequent printhead cleaning / maintenance - prints any length, including rolls (with optional adapter) - can handle totally flat posterboard Pro Canon 1100: - sturdier Contra P900: - flimsy - pizza wheel marks on some papers - optional rollpaper adapter is not very good Contra Canon 1100: - banding visible on some papers - paper size limits - frequent automatic headcleans cannot be skipped I have the P900 and am happy with it. If I were to buy again, I'd go for the newer P5300. It's the same printhead and ink, but with bigger cartridges and sturdy mechanics. Money aside it's a no-brainer, better than both P900 and 1100. But it didn't exist back then.

For as disappointing as it may be, it's totally understandable and natural that a company that specializes on printing at scale can do it way cheaper than you can do one-offs at home. The same is true for furniture production, sewing clothes, baking bread, and almost everything else. Owning a (good) printer is useful to save time (in the sense of latency), or to waste time and money on (hobby), or to extract maximum quality that commodity print companies won't deliver. If you want a good photo printer around 1K, I recommend the Epson SC-P900.

I have a Epson p800 which is stellar. Picked it up open box for half msrp. The newer p900 has a slightly wider gamut but I think it’s comparable. If you don’t need to print 17 inches wide the p600 or p700 are also good options as they go up to 13 inches wide.