Epson R3000 or Canon Pixma Pro 10 ?

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HI Guys. I've had a personal Epson R2400 at work for a few years now as I quite often do some printing at work during my lunch hour or after hours, and it's been a very reliable old beast. Recently however, we had a flood from our upstairs water cooler, which dumped a few gallons through the ceiling tiles onto....you guessed it, my printer which was absolutely doused with water, and as it was connected to the mains at the time (even though the printer was switched off), all the main circuit boards have blown, with some quite impressive black char marks on the circuit boards, and about 2 pints of water being drained out.

Well, work have said they will replace the printer (up to £500), which I thought was very fair. So I've been looking for a replacement and two seem to jump out (A3 types only). They are the replacement for the R2400 in the Epson R3000, or the new Canon Pixma Pro 10. Both of these are around the £500 mark (and I'm happy to add a little cash of my own to get the best one), so looking for some advice please.

Looking at the specs, both seem to have USB, Ethernet (and importantly - as I've always wanted it for printing from my Ipad), wireless printing. The Canon has 10 inks (although one seems to be a gloss optimiser), where as the Epson has only 8 inks (same as my R24000), however the Epson runs 26ml ink tanks but the canon only 14ml tanks, although they appear to be much cheaper (WEX prices - £13.95 Canon vs £21.99 Epson), so it seems a wash, as the Canon tanks are about half the capacity, but cost nearly half the price of the Epson ?

Other than Inks, both printers seem to pretty much have the same capabilities, although the Epson appears to have a slightly smaller footprint.

Has anyone used either of these two printers or compared them, and can offer any advice, or anything that I haven't considered ?
 
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I'm looking at A3+ printers myself. From what I can see once you get into the pigment ink type printers, which the pro-10 and R3000 are, they all produce pretty much top class results in the right hands. Even the A3+ dye based printers do. What makes me feel less comfortable about the Pro-10 and Pro-100 (dye based) is their paper handling. It seems that once you go away from Canon papers and use 3rd party papers such as art types etc you lose the borderless print ability, with the printer forcing a large border (3cm or 3.5cm). Also the Canon printers don't seem to handle long media so if you wanted to do a pano longer than 19" you'd be stuffed. It seems Canon have released a firmware update for the Pro-1 to address this issue (not sure by how much) and maybe this will happen with the Pro-10 too but it is a gamble.

The Pro-10 has a permanently loaded photo and matte black ink with separate ink channels so changing uses no extra ink, the R3000 also has both loaded but uses a common ink channel and will waste ink flushing the line when a change is needed. An irritation I think, but a costly one too as going from matte to photo black it uses around 3ml of ink. The number of inks is less of a concern as they can both produce stunning prints.

The other printer to throw into the equation is the Epson R2000 from what I can see you get just about the same as the R3000 but a bit cheaper, though the ink carts are smaller and it doesn't print black and white as well as the R3000 does.

I'm leaning towards one of the Epson printers at the moment simply down to the paper handling, being able to use just about any type of paper appeals, even if I have no immediate need. I'm also considering the much cheaper dye based A3+ printers as these are significantly cheaper to buy and offer extremely high quality prints but are also more expensive to run.

Good review of the Pro-10 here http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/printer/canon_pro-10.html
and R3000 here http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/printer/epson_r3000.html
 
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PaulButler said:
The other printer to throw into the equation is the Epson R2000 from what I can see you get just about the same as the R3000 but a bit cheaper, though the ink carts are smaller and it doesn't print black and white as well as the R3000 does.
Click to expand...

Can't comment on the R3000 or the Canon printers but I can on the R2000. I found it rather frustrating when I owned it. It seemed to work fine with Epson's own papers but I wasted quite a few sheets when using 3rd party stuff. It seemed to struggle with thicker stuff as I got a few head strikes and sometimes the paper "slipped" towards the end of printing. Also, for no apparent reason, I kept having an issue with the first sheet from a print session coming out VERY pink. Subsequent prints gradually got better until it would be back to normal. Wasted loads of ink and paper on it.

I now have the A2 3880 printer and haven't had any issues. Apart from when I fed in a sheet that was slightly bent along the edges but that wasn't the printers fault.
 
Very happy with my R3000, can't comment on the Canon, but others rate it highly. Print quality is stunning, especially monochrome prints which as far as I can tell are totally cast free. Cartridges seem to last a long time which is good. Haven't tried printing on matt paper so haven't needed to swap between matt and gloss cartridges.

I'm sure either would be a great buy!
 
pro 10 or a older canon 9500 of ebay cracking printers
 
R3000 top notch
 
I have an R3000 and highly recommend it. If you do a ton of printing though I'd get the R3880 instead. It's a lot more expensive, however the ink tanks are bigger, so if you print a lot the difference in cost could pay back quickly. The Red River Paper site has some pretty good information on printing costs from various printers http://www.redrivercatalog.com/cost-of-inkjet-printing.html

For the amount I print the R3000 was the much better choice. Just remember it's a pigment ink type printer so can clog if you leave it for a long time between print jobs. If I print 1-2 times per month I never get a clog.
 
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When you take into account the amount ofd ink you get withthe 3880, it's not that much more expensive than the 3000!:)
 
I use the R3000 with Fotospeed tubeless inks and paper, works extremely well. Friends have recommended I move up to the larger Epson, I probably will when this one dies.
 
I suppose it is a trade off between Epson ink loss when changing cartridges and Canon 3rd party paper borderless printing issues...the print quality in all the reviews I have read does not seem to be that different and neither is price...take your pick
 
I've had an epson r3000 for coming up on 3.5 years now. The original printer worked without issue for 35 months before failing (ink splodges all over the place when using photo black, I had replaced the ink cart to check that). Thankfully it came with a free 3 yr warranty (an incentive when I bought it) and Epson replaced it next day after contacting them and sending photos of the issue.

I've no regrets in buying the r3000 and both myself and others have been very happy with the prints from it (I have sold a few recently) using various gloss, lustre and matte papers.
 
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