Suggestions on a good large format color inkjet printer to chose

FLAAR now has three separate web sites on wide-format printing:

Thus the material on this page has been replaced with newer material from 2004 on the following web sites:

Hewlett-Packard DesignJet 2800CP, 3800CP large format color inkjet printers

Our first wide format printer was an Encad NovaJet Pro 36. We loved the output until we compared the prints to the output from an HP 2800.

Our first RIP was an EFI. We loved this until we learned we had been duped by slick PR releases. It turns out that software RIP offered more features and could be updated at any time. Software RIP can run multiple printers. So we don't use any more EFI products now for six years.

What are the downsides of the year 1999-2000 series of HP DesignJet printers? Grain pattern is better than Encad but the newer HP 5000 is even better. The Epson 10600 has a superior dithering pattern but is too slow for serious production. Plus there is a high risk of horizontal banding defects with many Epson models. Ink costs are high; and piezo printers are picky about what paper you can use. Hence any printer with a piezo printhead may be excessively costly to use.

The HP 2500 and 3500 may have banding defects too. You can sometimes get rid of the banding if you add an aftermarket RIP such as PosterJet. We would also recommend Wasatch SoftRIP.

The grain pattern of the HP is consistently one step ahead of the Encad. Even the latest Encad printer (NovaJet 1000i, new as of 2004), you get a better print from an HP 5500 and a superior print from any Canon or the HP 30 or 130.

Although we still have the HP 2800, we replaced it for daily use by a 60" HP DesignJet 5000ps at Bowling Green State University and replaced our HP 1055cm with a 42" HP DesignJet 5000ps at Francisco Marroquin University. The HP 1055cm had perennial banding problems. But the HP 5000 offers a consistently higher quality with only banding perhaps once a month when the humidity is high.

In early 2004 we began to replace some of our Epson printers by the impressive Canon imagePROGRAF W8200, the first Canon printer to offer pigmented ink.

During summer 2004 we are replacing our printers with the HP DesignJet 30 (at Francisco Marroquin University) and DesignJet 130 (at BGSU). These two new printers have a much better thermal printhead and improved longevity for a long-life dye ink.

HP DesignJet 2800CP, 3800CP large format color inkjet printers

This snapshot is in the former FLAAR studio in Essen-Werden, Germany. We are preparing prints for various exhibits back at our university in Guatemala. On the floor is a print of Tikal Temple I, shot with a Hasselblad, scanned on a Creo EverSmart Pro flatbed scanner. The new model in that range is the Creo Select.

The colorful prints (rolled up) are 35mm color slides of Maya textiles at the market in Chichicastenango, Guatemala. These slides were scanned on a Creo EverSmart, but this time the Supreme, the top model of Creo . If you are going to enlarge your prints to a large size then it helps to start off with a good scan, in this case from Creo , a leading international company for high-end scanners of true professional prepress category.

At IPEX 2002 tradeshow in Birmingham, England, we recently inspected several impressive flatbed scanners from Fujifilm Electronic Imaging. We just spent 10 days looking for scanners (and wide format inkjet printers) at DRUPA 2004. We are updating all the FLAAR Reports with information from DRUPA.


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