Printer comparison: Epson vs Canon

Here's a little home made resolution test. These images were created in Photoshop at 300dpi. Printed on Verbatim Gloss DVD at 300dpi in grayscale, then scanned at 300dpi in grayscale.

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Sorry for the multiple posts, having issues with the resolutions

Outstanding work, CDan...much appreciated



You have one of the best mid-range inkjets ever produced.
Your software is the limiting factor here, not the printer.

Wow, very nice side by side comparison..

Thank you very much! What are your saturation and other settings set too? I can't seem to get mine looking 100% correct. In addition now that you have played with both printers for awhile which would you recommend? My Epson R260 just died for the 2nd time.

Thanks!

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Last edited by needo; 07-05-2008 at 20:28.

Depends on your intended use. I use the R280 for discs and photos only, and IP4500 for everything else, and for discs too.

I use the Epson R230 with the unlimited ink cartridge configured and you know what i have unlimited ink as the six cartridges are attached to a specially designed 6 ink bottle setup as when your ink goes low as you are able to see the drop in front of you so you just fill it up.
You can follow the Epson Head cleaning procedures as the printer prints a max of 2000 cd prints before the head and system needs servicing and you can download the process tutorial on youtube. Happy printing, but just before i go the cannons have the same system too and is much, much faster in printing.

I replaced my Epson R260 that broke down 4 times in 5 months to a Canon Pixma IP4500. I am blown away by the quality of the Canon over the Epson in terms of color duplication, and speed. My only complaint is it is difficult to get the arrows lined up exactly right when printing a DVD due to the tray's arrow being vertical and the printer's arrow being vertical.

If you're talking about the alignment arrow on the tray, it's not important whether it is exactly aligned with the one on the slot. The printer does it's own alignment once the tray is fed in. Those arrows are only there to assure that you don't stuff it in too far.

No question that the Canon is WAY faster for most everything. Larger head with more nozzles.

I'll add that I recently had some clogging on the Epson, it took 3 cleaning cycles to get all nozzles open, which consumed 20% of a brand new tank. At least Canon lets you choose whether to clean the colors or just the black. The Epson purges ALL tanks.

Hmmm... My DVDs are not coming out perfectly aligned. They are close but not exact. I know its possible to run an alignment for the paper. Is it also possible to do so for the CD tray?

Has nothing to do with the tray, the printer aligns itself to the disc. In the Canon software, on the final print dialog, lower left corner, is the "print position" adjustment. Once this is set horizontally and vertically, it never needs to be set again. If you use some other software, you're on your own. The setting is in tenths of a mm, and should be adjusted one notch at a time. Keep in mind that a 0.1mm change left or right can also impact vertical alignment as a round image is moved over.

earlier i had canon ip3000, for which if multiple copies of cd printing were given, printer would continue printing next copy by either pressing resume button or clicking on ok button.

but in my new ip4500, printer only continues printing by clicking on the ok button everytime. incase resume button is pressed printing gets cancelled.

i use cd labelprint software.
any solution to this problem?

I've had my Canon IP4500 for a week now and have been printing like crazy. It hasn't missed a beat. Canon does not seem to drink ink like my Epson R260 did. I had to replace the magenta cartridge tonight (purchased from Amazon) and I printed over 20 items and it is still registering as full. And I am still on my original black, yellow, and cyan cartridges even though I have printed a lot. They are registering 25% full. The colors also seem to be a lot better. I really wish I went with Canon from the beginning.

Very elucidative Thank`s

I just bought a U.S. model Canon iP4500 and was considering modifying it for direct-to-disc printing because the Canon ink is more smudge-proof and less expensive than Epson. Since I would use the iP4500 exclusively for disc printing and the Canon 5-color ink system only uses the 4 dye-based ink tanks for disc printing, what will happen to the large black pigment part of the print head if it never gets used (except occasional clean cycles)? Makes me wonder if the Epson 6-ink all dye-based printing method might be a better match for exclusive disc printing because at least all the colors and parts of the print head would be in frequent use...

Cleaning cycles come pretty often, the pigment black will be expended then. I can't say with 100% certainty that the pigment is NOT being used on discs and photo prints, but I haven't seen any evidence that it is. I use my Epson with compatible ink for disc printing, only because it's cheaper. I'm too lazy to mess with chips and re-setters on Canon tanks. In any case, don't worry about it, your printer will be fine.

Thanks for the reply, Dan.

Just a note to report that I have had increasingly severe problems with nozzle clogging on the Epson R280. I just expended a complete set of full tanks doing cleaning cycles, (that's only about 8 cycles plus the tank replacement purging cycles). My guess is that the Epson wants to be used daily.

As soon as I run out of ink, this printer is headed to the trash can. That's less than 9 months of light to moderate use and the head is crapping out. Not to mention the obscene amount of ink used in cleaning cycles.

I try to leave all my printers including my Epson's on 24/7 and that seems to help for me with the print heads clogging up.
I also have a old HP 990 that I pretty much use for everything else except photo and media printing. It's one of the very last tank like HP's with the bigger tri color and Mono cartridges. I try to buy remans whenever I can as it's WAY cheaper for both printers and so far the print quality is the same.

I'm surprised you had this problem with a x80 series printer, but maybe they are very different between models. One of my old home printers was an R340 and it was a replaced with an R380. The R380 was amazingly better at not clogging even though I might not use it for weeks, uses less ink when priming the nozzles, and it and the R280 had a better designed CD print tray.

Hey Dartman, is your HP one of the old school laser printers? At work we still have HP and Apple (made by HP) printers made 10+ years ago that are working perfectly and are super cheap to run.

It's just a inkjet, but it was the last of their top of the line models that still used the 45 and 78 carts and the larger old style case with the almost industrial guts. I've had to lube up the guide rail the printhead/cart runs on and replace ink every so often and cleam things once an a while and that's about it for it.
I'd buy another one if I could find a low hours one in good shape. It prints text almost as good as a laser, automaticly aligns itself with new carts and picks the proper paper type without any help, plus it can auto duplex.
It also does a very nice job printing color pics to regular paper, something most of my lesser printers just dont do very well.

It was fine for the first 6 months, then slowly progressed to having more problems. Usually the issues start when changing tanks. After the purge cycle, all the colors are messed up and need more and more cleaning cycles to clear. Doesn't seem to matter if it's OEM or compatible inks. Doesn't matter if it's left on 24/7 or shut off. It's a cheap printer, my expectations were low. But it just eats too much ink and causes too many problems.

I got a Canon IP3500 at the Egg for $50 shipped, which is less than the tanks alone retail for. That will be the everyday printer and the IP4500 will move over to photo and disc duty.

Hello !

I'm looking for suggestions before buyng an economic and possibly small cd/dvd printer.

The printer I want to buy will be dedicated only to cd/dvd printing and perhaphs to some photo, no text or similar (for that purpose I've the lasers at work ).

I don't plan to use it everyday or for large amount of disks, so a tough printer, resistent to ink dryness, will be preferred.

Using some Google I've found the Canon pixma 4xxx series should print directly on cd, but looking at these section it seems that - at least for some countries - these printers were not provided with the necessary cd/dvd tray. And, anyway, I hadn't undestood clearly the difference between model 400, 4300, 4500 and 4600, if any difference can occur.

From this discussion I've found that the Epson also produces good printers for direct CD/DVD print, but they seem more fragile and to provide results with less saturation/definition, with a price comparable to Canon units.

So, my final asking to the experts here around is for a suggestion before buying the wrong item, or an item without the necessary cd tray.

Best wishes to everybody and merry christmas/new years day , sorry again if this was not the right place to ask for a suggestion.



Gyxx

The company I work for has been getting more Epson printers lately for disk printing however you brought up some good points. The Epson definitely seem to have low saturation in the default setting (using the Premium setting and white top TY DVDs), this problem is easily fixable by cranking up the saturation in the file or in the print menu. However it is my opinion that different batches of white top TY DVDs require different settings. The old Epsons sure had a problem with ink dryness, so did our old Canons but they weren't as bad. The Epson x60 series was better, and the x80 series is much better. Now about the only time the x80 series printers clog is when we have to air ship them (probably has to do with the pressure in the airplane), which is much better than our old Canons.

In the past few months I've encountered a new problem with the Epsons, 3 of about 60 or so ink cartridges haven't worked. We take the old cartridge out and take it to the recycle bin, pull a new ink from storage, and when we put it in the printer still see it as empty. I've never had this happen on any other brand or any Epson but the x80 series. 3 out of 60 isn't a lot but it's still wasted ink because the printer won't use it and wasted money.

We bought Canon printers in the U.S. and they did not come with the required parts.