Looking for a 13" wide printer for under $500

I love my 1900. And the black and white performance is good, for me. YMMV

ChasP505 wrote in post #10806198
Yeah, I saw that too and that would be MY choice, except for its lackluster B&W performance. If B&W is not an issue, the Epson 1900 is the best in this price range.

It's what I'd buy of the choices listed. But I already have an R2400, and got in on Craigslist for $400 with ink in it and another set of inks. It's been working perfectly for two+ years.

About inks: I don't have any idea how other people print, but I go for several weeks or a month, and then I might print a hundred prints in one sitting. I've checked my records, and in the past two years I've bought two complete sets of ink from Atlex. I don't print on matte paper, so I have no need for one of the nine inks, and a box of 8 is about $100, shipped to my door. While they may be $15 in stores or from Epson, they're $11.64 from Atlex. That makes 3 full sets of and a half set of inks I've used, counting the ones that were in the R2400, which may have been half full. That totals about $350 in ink costs for more than two years of printing (of course, that's one data point: YMMV), which I personally don't think is a lot to spend. It is, by the way, about half of what an R2400 cost new.

I was in a local camera shot/printer (Roberts Imaging) looking at printers. The department I work for has two (very) large format Epson printers that are fantastic, but get used all the time.

The guy at Roberts recommended the new Canon 9000/9500 over Epson because of the printer heads...if I remember right...basically the new canon printers don't have long tubes that store ink, and the printer cartridges have the ink heads on them so there's no worry about maintenance and clogging heads . I may be off on the technical details, but that's how I remember his explanation!

I was leaning toward an epson 1800 or 2400, but the price of the Canon 9000 is hard to beat for personal use.