Question about Epson R220 / R300?

[franco]

I'm in the market for a printer to print on my DVD-R discs and am wondering what is the difference between the Epson R220 and R300?? If the R220 does the job just as well then I have seen it at a good price in the UK and would go for that.

The other issue is the ink cartridges. It seems if you buy them from ebay they cost about £7 in the UK (Roughly $12). Now that the price of these cartridges is so cheap would it be as economical to replace them as to buy one of these continuous ink systems?

I have seen some info on the CIS, but what I don't know is how much ink you get in the one-off cartridges from ebay and how much you get in those bottles with the CIS.

I would be printing quite a few discs and, like anyone else, I hope to keep the price as low as possible per disc.

[psx_pirate]

The difference between the R220 and R300 is ...

R300 can connect directly to a digital camera and display the images on a small built in screen, you can then zoom into a particular part of the photo (or leave it as it is) and print it direct without having to have your pc swiched on ... R200 can only print from a pc

also i think the R300 requires a USB2 connection to the pc whereas the R220 is USB1.0/1.1

other than that both printers are similar ... they use the same cartriges etc and produce the same quality prints.

As for the cartriges i always use the compatitable cartriges ... i buy mine at computer trade fairs for 5-6 gbp per set (5 colours + 1 black) ... a cis system maybe useful if you plan to do a lot of printing ... you can get a large number of disc prints from the cartridges (over 100 discs ... not bad for £5 or £6 ), so i find its not worth the trouble of installing a cis for the amount of printing that i do

[wayne421]

I have the R320 at work and the R220 at home... quality of both are identical (and quite excellent).

The R300/320 has slots for flash memory such as CF, SD, miniSD, and so forth, and a small LCD screen to view the pics on each card.

The R200/220 is just a regular printer on your USB port.

Unless you need the card slots, I'd say save your money and get the R220.

(The R220 is a newer hardware revision of the R200, and the R320 is a newer hardware revision of the R300. Try to get these instead of the original R200/300 as they have minor fixes/improvements.)

W

[franco]

Thanks for the replies guys. What about the ink? Say if I am printing 100 discs every 3 months or so, would I save an awful lot more by buying the continuous ink system instead of the third party cartridges from ebay??

If anyone is printing in those quantites what do you end up paying per disc using the two different systems??

[wayne421]

I've had the R220 for about 3 months, with light to medium usage. So far I'm still on the original cartidges. The R320 at work is about 5 months old and we use that several times a week for photo printing, and we just replaced the black cartridge this week (the color carts are low but not empty yet).

I haven't experienced this personally, but I've read that it's best to leave the printer on all the time instead of turning it on/off due to the amount of ink used in 'charging' the print heads. I leave mine on 24/7 so maybe that's why I haven't been using much overall.

I'm very pleased so far. The compatbile carts, say at Supermediastore.com or whatnot, seem to get positive reviews from others in the forum, and it saves you some cash when replacing carts. I always used compatible carts in my old Epson 880 and they were fine.

I can't speak to the exact disc-page-ink cost ratio, but as I said, so far it doesn't feel like it's any more expensive than any other printer I've worked with.

BTW, the disc printing quality of these units is fantastic. We also have a $2000 disc duplicator/printer at work and the R220/320 blows it away in disc printing quality.

W

[Rich86]

The difference between the R220 and R300 is ...

R300 can connect directly to a digital camera and display the images on a small built in screen, you can then zoom into a particular part of the photo (or leave it as it is) and print it direct without having to have your pc swiched on ... R200 can only print from a pc

also i think the R300 requires a USB2 connection to the pc whereas the R220 is USB1.0/1.1

other than that both printers are similar ... they use the same cartriges etc and produce the same quality prints.

As for the cartriges i always use the compatitable cartriges ... i buy mine at computer trade fairs for 5-6 gbp per set (5 colours + 1 black) ... a cis system maybe useful if you plan to do a lot of printing ... you can get a large number of disc prints from the cartridges (over 100 discs ... not bad for £5 or £6 ), so i find its not worth the trouble of installing a cis for the amount of printing that i do

A couple of comments here . . .
The R300 does not have a built-in screen to display images. It does have a lcd display to indicate printer status, menu controls, etc. The R320 is the same printer as the R300 - but includes the small color display screen discussed above. The R320 is not a newer/improved version of the R300. It just includes the optional color display panel.

The R300/320 printers will operate just fine on a USB1.1 connection - although slower than on a USB2.0 conneection, obviously.

I considered both the R300 and R320 when I bought my R320. I went for the little color display. I've never used it, since I process all my pictures, printing etc. via the computer. I have been very satisfied with my Epson R320 so far.

If I was in the market for a printer today, I'd look seriously at the newer R340, which appears to be the replacement model for the R320. The R340 also includes the small color display - but located in a much more usable place on the printer (front/center instead of rear right corner).

[franco]

Hmmm, from doing a lot of searching on these forums I am inclined to go with the Canon Pixma printers, but it seems Canon has stopped making the Pixma 5000 and some other models so that people would not be able to buy 3rd party cartridges.

I am in the UK and can't find anywhere that sells the older Canon printers for about £60 or £70 The one that seems to show up everywhere is the Canon Pixma iP4200, but you can't buy cheap cartridges for that.

[Skith]

Some tips to save ink usage (especially with epson printers):

1) Don't turn the printer off (epsons)

2) Print something at least once a day that uses all colors, it doesnt have to be much. You can make a small gradient page in an image application and use that, this will prevent excessive print head cleaning (which wastes ink).

3)don't print at the maximum insain resolution, it is a waste of ink unless you are doing a gallery exhibit. 720pi produces stunning quality on modern printers.
You and most other people will be hard pressed to notice a difference unless you closely examine the printed images.

4) OEM cartridges (the ones included with printers) typically only contain 1/2 to 1/4 of the ink included in retail cartridges.

5) shop around for cartridges if needed, you can often find manufacturer cartriges cheaper online, and if you buy in quantity you can save. (I personaly don't trust most third party discount inks to hold up in terms of quality over time. That is probably because I am somewhat of an archival worry-wort).