Epson Surecolor P600 Wide Format Inkjet Printer Review

Introduction

The Epson SureColor P600 was introduced at the 2014 Photograph Plus Expo and became bachelor in January 2015. Information technology is the successor to the Epson R3000. The P600 is a 13" wide enthusiast-to-professional person level photo and fine fine art inkjet printer featuring nine individual ink cartridges now chosen the "UltraChrome Hard disk drive" pigment ink arrangement. Like the venerable UltraChrome K3 system, the new inkset uses five, colour ink cartridges along with three black ones. Information technology is of interest to note that outside of the United States, Epson still uses the "UltraChrome K3" proper name in clan with the P600. A switching machinery allows you to choose matte or photo blackness ink, depending on the blazon of media being used. Pigment inks are designed to be stable over long periods of time, allowing prints to be displayed (under proper conditions) for many decades. The P600 descends from a long line of tiptop quality paint-based photo printers. Edifice on that lineage, Epson claims that the P600 offers the all-time black density to date from a paint printer by using "Resin Encapsulation Technology."

Just the Facts

xiii" Broad photo & fine art quality inkjet printer

Can print 3.v" ten 5" up to 13" x 550" banners

Nine Colors - Cyan, Yellow, Vivid Magenta, Brilliant Calorie-free Magenta, Light Cyan, Light Black, Light Light Black, Photo or Matte Blackness

Printing Technology - Advanced Micro Piezo® AMC print head with ink-repelling blanket engineering science, 8-channel, drop-on-demand, inkjet print head

MSRP $799

Ink Toll - About $30 per tank (25.9 mL capacity)

Rating - A "strong buy" for photo & fine fine art printing needs, especially for those who bask blackness & white printing.

Unpacking and Prep

The P600 ships in a large, robust box. The printer is well protected with packing material and the contents well organized.

The Epson P600 shipping box includes:

Printer
Roll Holders
CD tray (for printing CDs)
Starter Ink Cartridges
Manual
Power Cord
Driver CD

The printer ships wrapped in plastic sheets and anything that opens or moves is secured with tape. Note that, as is customary with nearly printers, computer to printer connection cables are non included.

Ink Install

The P600 comes with a total set of ink cartridges. Installation is straightforward. The cartridges fit into a bay on the front left of the printer. The bay is accessed past lifting the top chapeau of the printer. Like the Epson R3000, Pro 3880, and other wide format Epson printers, the P600 inks are connected to the print head via hoses.

It is unknown how much ink is contained in the starter carts. We were able to print 20 8.5"x11" profile targets and four thirteen"x19" images before changing the Photograph Black ink.

Epson P600 Ink Cartridges

Cyan (T159220)
Vivid Magenta (T159320)
Light Cyan
Yellow (T159420)
Vivid Low-cal Magenta (T159720)
Photo Black (T159120)
Matte Black (T159820)
Calorie-free Blackness (T159720)
Light Light Black (T159920)

Driver Install

Driver installation and setup were straightforward in Windows and the Mac Bone. We used the included CD for Windows and had to download the drivers for Mac from Epson's website. The installation included the driver, Epson's Print CD software, and a link to the P600 online user guide.

Software from Other Lands

We noticed a reference to Epson Print Layout software in the original P600 press release. The software is apparently non yet available from Epson America, but we did find downloads for Win and Mac from Epson Japan. Print Layout is a free-continuing plan equally well every bit an export plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom. It is quite remarkable, with print layout and templates for multiple images on a page. Printer colour direction is integrated into the primary command panel and it even features automatic soft-proofing based on the impress profile. That feature extends to the ABW system and volition soft-proof your images based on ABW settings. A detailed review of the programme is forthcoming.

Connectivity

The P600 tin connect using three methods:

Hi-Speed USB two.0
100Base-T Ethernet
WiFi

Wireless LAN

Standard: IEEE 802.11b/grand/n
Security: WPA-PSK (TKIP/AES) WPA2 compliant, WEP (64/128bit)
Frequency Ring: 2.4 GHz
Communication Way: Infrastructure mode, Ad hoc

You tin can also connect the P600 to Google Cloud Print and Apple AirPrint.

The P600 has three paper feed options:

Top Tray

The top tray tin can concord twenty to 100 sheets of paper, depending on the thickness of your media. The feed mechanism is more than robust than expected and easily fed the Aurora Art White and Natural papers, both 14mil thick. If you employ mostly matte or cotton fine art papers, clean the feed roller later on using the contents of each box of paper. Help on that process is in our support eye.

Front Unmarried Sail Path

The forepart single canvass path is designated for fine art papers and poster board. You would use this path for media effectually 15mil or thicker.

To activate the single sheet path, button on the greyness bar higher up the paper output tray. This will crusade the tray to lower and extend out.

Follow the printer's on-screen instructions to load affiche board and fine fine art papers.

Roll Feeding

The P600 can use xiii" wide rolls with a 2" diameter core. Rolls are supported by two adapters that connect at the back of the printer.

The P600 transmission states the maximum impress length is 129" while the Windows driver shows the maximum as 590.55". Curious, we set upwardly a banner file 12.95" x 240" and printed it on a 20' curlicue of Blanco Matte Sail. It printed successfully from both Windows and Mac. Press a 20' or 40' banner is for most quite rare, just it is overnice to know you can.

The P600 tin also print thirteen" wide banners and long prints without borders.

Printer Driver Bout

Go an in-depth view of the software-based controls for the Epson P600.

Windows Commuter Bout
Mac Driver Tour

Printer Screen Displays

New to the P600 is a touch screen display that can exist angled for easy viewing while standing. A number of features tin can be controlled via the panel. Among the features:

Paper loading guide
Ink level display
Black ink modify command
Printer settings and maintenance
Wi-fi setup and control

You will find a number of useful settings and tools. Hither are some highlights:

Black Ink Switch — Black Ink Change Setting

Media Load Guide

The media loading guide is helpful when using the curlicue and single sail paper paths. It too allows you to specific the media type and size at the printer. Acquit in mind that these settings are overwritten by your commuter settings during the print process. All in all, we would use this particular control only for loading rolls and specialty media. Leave the media setting and paper size selections to driver settings.

BK Ink Auto Change

Turning this feature off prevents the printer from automatically switching black inks based on your media setting. Instead, you will get a notice on the printer panel when a swap is required. You can confirm or abolish the bandy.

Black Ink Modify Setting

Save ink during each swap past turning the "Salve Ink" setting on. According to Epson, the feature saves 2mL of ink when switching from Matte to Photograph black with no savings going the other way.

Paper Skew Check

If you lot use the forepart fine art or roll feed path, you should consider turning off the paper skew check. The printer has sensors that cease a print if the newspaper is not "foursquare" in the machine. In our opinion, the sensors are a scrap too sensitive. They volition annals an error fifty-fifty when y'all may not be able to perceive any skew.

If yous purchase a P600, spend time to pace through each menu of the command panel. You will be glad you did.

Print Speeds and Results

Quality Settings

Every bit mentioned in the printer driver tour, impress quality choices are Level 3 - 1440x720dpi, Level two - 1440x1440dpi, and Level i - 5760x1440dpi. For virtually impress jobs, Level 2 is recommended as the best mix of quality, speed, and ink economy. If y'all are printing quick proofs and are looking for best ink economy then choose Level 3.

Below are some close-up images of the prints made on 68lb. UltraPro Gloss two.0 at each quality level. Y'all tin come across how the P600 lays downwardly ink dots to create different levels of quality.

Annotation: We similar to stress that viewing images this shut only illustrates dot placement and tightness of image quality. What really matters is how you perceive image quality at standard viewing distance, which is commonly a fleck less than arm's length for snapshots upwardly to near 8x10.

Print Speed

An 8" x ten" file at 240ppi (shown above) was printed at each of the above settings.

Print Quality	4x6	8x10	13x19
1440 ten 1440 High Speed Off	ii:02	4:20	10:22
1440 x 1440 High Speed On	0:56	one:59	4:36
5760 x 1440 High Speed On	1:47	3:21	nine:22

Custom Borderless Capabilities

Like the Epson R2000 and R3000, the P600 offers some custom borderless print capability. Borderless widths are chosen from a fixed menu in the Windows driver. The Mac commuter does non brandish the available sizes or clear instructions on their use. We explain the process in the Mac commuter tutorial linked below.

Learn more nearly the characteristic:

Windows Driver
Mac Driver

Blackness & White Performance

The Epson P600, similar a number of printers before it, can print with three black inks - Photo or Matte Black plus Light Black and Light Calorie-free Blackness. Using the printer driver's Advanced Black & White (ABW) mode, the three blacks are used together, although non exclusively, to make a print. The ABW organization can produce truly neutral grayscale prints. Since this is a commuter-based arrangement, no ICC printer profiles are required.

ABW also has choices for cool, warm, and sepia-toned prints. Using the ABW avant-garde feature allows for fine-tuning of tone, brightness, contrast, and more. However, whatsoever changes to these settings cannot exist soft proofed. As a upshot, test prints are required to perfect the output.

If you are press a toned B&W image and desire to replicate that tone with ease, impress the file using a printer colour profile instead of the ABW system. Keep in listen the file must be converted to B&W in your photo software earlier printing. Using a profile will more accurately reproduce the desired tonality when printed.

Above is an instance of the ABW system and a printer profile at work. The original paradigm file has a warm tone. The result using ABW (print on the left) is neutral and quite stunning. Using a printer profile (impress on the right) maintains the image's warmth and is more authentic to the file..

Conclusion

Afterward making dozens of prints with the new P600, it appears to be a worthy replacement for the Epson R3000. We do non encounter it equally a game-irresolute device and that is not a slight confronting the P600. Photo inkjet printers have become and then proficient it is difficult to run across how they will get noticeably better. The typical prosumer and pro-level printer can hands friction match and, arguably, exceed traditional impress lab-quality. Any additional improvements are for the 5% oversupply that just likes chasing perfection - not that there's anything incorrect with that.

We asked Chromix, the official profile provider to Red River Newspaper, to evaluate the dynamic range of the P600 versus the R3000. From their answer: "The comparison between the R3000 and the P600 is very close. They almost expect like the same press engine. The differences I mention below are all very pocket-size, and probably would not exist noticed by the human center in actual employ. The native printing of the printer is very smoothly linearized and neutral, without any biases toward ane color or another which makes for more than consequent profiles and printing. There is consistently more gamut in the 3000 than in the 600, but it is a small-scale advantage."

For reference, Chromix compared the profile / gamut for select Red River Paper products. The numbers in parenthesis are total gamut size as measured by profiling software.

68lb. UltraPro Gloss two.0 - The P600 has slightly more than gamut in some saturated yellows (719,000), while the R3000 has a slightly larger gamut everywhere else (763,000).

66lb. Arctic Polar Satin - The P600 has slightly more gamut in the most saturated yellows (739,000), while the residuum of the gamut is pretty much identical to the R3000 (757,000).

60lb. Polar Matte - The R3000 has slightly more than gamut in the saturated yellows and reds (697,000), while the P600 is slightly meliorate in other areas (695,000).

Aurora Art White - Hither the border seems to get to the R3000 for slightly more gamut all the style around. (715,000 vs. 680,000)

Positives

Lab quality output on luster, gloss, photo metallic, matte, fine fine art, and baryta-fiber based inkjet papers.
Bold and true to life color saturation.
Minimum gloss differential and almost no bronzing.
Larger ink tanks mean fewer interruptions to replace empties.
Custom borderless options are available - excellent for 13x38 and 8.25x25 pano sheets and pre-scored carte du jour stock offered by Red River.

Quibbles

It would be a beneficial if the printer did not apply ink during the blackness ink swap.
Fully customizable borderless printing would be prissy.
The actual cost of press is non much unlike than printers with smaller ink cartridges.

Epson P600 Compatibility with Crimson River Paper Products

Red River Paper offers over twenty premium inkjet papers for employ with the Epson P600. We make prints on each newspaper to verify impress quality and offering custom profiles for more consistent and accurate results. Meet the Recommended Photograph Paper for the Epson P600.

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Source: https://www.redrivercatalog.com/infocenter/epson-surecolor-p600-review-introduction.html