Epson Stylus R1900 vs pixima pro9000 mark ii

I'm in need of a new printer and money is an issue. My limit is $500. I have currently an HP Design jet that's around 5-6 years old. great printer, but lately it's having a hard time grabbing the heavier papers and pushing them through leaving a lot of misprints, color bleeds etc. Works great for regular paper and documents.

Anyway, both these models are the same price and I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on which was better. I'm looking for opinions on their B+W photo quality as that is most important to me right now. Color is fine, but I've read that certain inks are better for B+W than others.

thanks.

I'm a big fan of this class in Canon printers.. I got the i9100, (Canon's 13" wide printer of 3 generations back..) and it is still running strong.

My Brother in law got the Pro 9000 and I am amazed by this machine.. same price as the i9100 was, but it's so much more advanced!

Can't help with the B&W question though I'm afraid, just wanted to drop a plug for the Canon.

The Canon will only do 19". The Epson should do 38" (or more).

Hey, I have the Pro9000, and the color prints it produces are fantastic - really nice!

BW prints turn out good, but I'm not jumping up and down over them. If BW is your main concern, I would look for one of the printers that is more focused towards that niche.

Tony-S wrote in post #8058500
The Canon will only do 19". The Epson should do 38" (or more).

You got that back to front, tony.

I think the 1900 only does 13 or so, actually, come to think of it.

The canon 9000 is a beast, I think it does 60"

According to their respective web sites, the Canon does 13x19 and the Epson does 13x44 inches.

well I went with the epson R1900. WOW! color is amazing, B+W is excellent for the money. both are 100 times better than my old hp 1220 designjet.

Tony-S wrote in post #8058500
The Canon will only do 19". The Epson should do 38" (or more).

they are both 13 wide printers.

The standard papers for 13" wide max out at 19" long.

None have a roll feed attachment but The canon most certainly will (and I am sure the epson will too) print to longer than 19".. they have a place in the driver for you to input the paper length.

If you ahev paper longer than 19" you can tell the printer to print to that size.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #8066839
they are both 13 wide printers. The standard papers for 13" wide max out at 19" long.

Red River sells 13" x 38" sheets.

The Epson takes up to 44" sheets. I did a little digging on the Canon support pages and here's the support info for the Pro9000 II:

The printer can handle paper sizes in the range of:
Front Feeder - 3.50 to 14.00 in for width and 5.00 to 26.61 in for height

Rear Tray - 3.50 to 12.95 in for width and 5.00 to 26.61 in for height

If a size is selected that is outside of the ranges above, there is no error, but the size and orientation of the printed image will be unpredictable.

Tony-S wrote in post #8060015
According to their respective web sites, the Canon does 13x19 and the Epson does 13x44 inches.

Oh, I figured you meant by the first number (width opposed to length)

I think I'm thinking of the canon 9000i..

The same two printers I considered. I read a lot of reviews of the two, and the Canon was rated better for black & white, while the Epson had better ratings for colour prints. I went with the Epson because colour was most important to me.

Other than that, it was a "six of one, half dozen of the other" kind of thing.

I also like black and white. I have 2 printers, the newest one a Canon 9000 Pro. I didn't really want another pigment ink printer (I was replacing an Epson R2400 that gave up the ghost). I wanted either the Canon 9500 Pro or the Epson R2880, but as I said, I didn't want a pigment ink printer and both of those are. The 9500 Pro uses 3 different types of black/gray ink and does B & W nicer than the 9000 Pro which has only one. One of the reasons I got the 9000 Pro was that I also have a HP 7160 which can use 4 different blacks/grays ink and does a great job with B & W. It just does not print wider than 8.5" paper and is slow.

I've got the R1900 and love it - and been in the UK it comes with the roll attachment love the colours and love the black and white prints from it though it can be a bit hard to find a paper stock outside of Epson's own that you like printing on.

I'm in the US and my R1900 also came with the roll attachment. I went with the epson because of the paper variety available with the epson inks. I've been using the Brilliant papers, specifically the Supreme Luster.
http://brilliantpaper.​com/

I've never liked the results I've got with the epson papers. with my old hp 1220 I used the Illford art papers and really liked the quality over the HP or Epson papers. At work I have an Epson Stylus Pro 4000 it takes 17" Rolls and even with that much higher end printer we had better results with the Brillant papers over the Epsons. So for me it works out because I can always "borrow" from our paper stock at work in a pinch.

Edit for my Error,. the Epson r1900 does handle roll papers (as mentioned above)
I was thinking of a totally different older Epson.

That is a great feature for the price!