A picture speaks a thousands words. Printers are basically known for printing more of words, and less of pictures. If there was a printer that could print a thousand words, in the form of images, then it’s the Epson L1800.
I’ve known printers to have black ink catridges, or toners, for laser printers. Some have multiple ink cartridges or toners in the form of red, yellow and blue inks.
Some printers come with black and colour cartridges and toners to economise on the use of ink, such that, rather than printing black from a combination of colours, the blank ink is drawn directly from its own toner or cartridge.
The Epson L1800 does not stop at 4 inks, but goes ahead to have 6 of them. There’s the usual black, cyan(blue), magenta(red) and yellow. It also comes with an additional light cyan and light magenta inks.
The purpose of using 6 inks where 4 could have worked is to achieve the best quality of image printing possible, with the printer producing really vivid and sharp images.
Another aspect of the printer that makes it suited for photography and image reproduction is it’s ability to handle borderless printing. This means the printer has the ability to entirely print on a paper’s surface, leaving no unprinted margin, if that was your intention.
One thing to note is that Epson printers now ship with an “Ink Tank System†rather than the usual cartridges. The ink tank system is basically a series of containers for each ink, with pipes feeding the ink to the printer.
On exhaustion of a particular ink, one does not have to throw away the cartridge or toner and buy a new one, as has been the standard. Instead, one buys an Epson ink bottle for the particular ink, and refills the container. The advantages of this system is the cost, since it eliminates expensive printer refill components and basically supplies the same in an easy, do-it-yourself means.
While one may opt for dirt-cheap non-Epson inks, the compromise will be on quality of the image, especially for the L1800, given it’s a printer made for imagery. The advantage of the 6 ink system would be lost here.
Coupled with high quality inks, this printer also comes with ability to print high resolutions in terms of the amount of dots of ink on each inch – for the statistically inclined, the specification sheet says the L1800 can do 5760 x 1440 dots per inch.
For paper sizes, the L1800 is able to handle paper sizes up to A3+ and including A3 and comfortably prints all with a 0 margin.
If you are a photographer, or the quality of your image is of great importance to you, the Epson L1800 is a printer that you will fall in love with, and comes highly recommended.