Thu Oct 28, 2004 7:16 pm
You have it about right .. I have the 9900 but friends of mine have the 2200 and we have done a lot of comparisons.
Both are great printers. Both produce amazing prints. You will not be disappointed with either one and if I had one I would not think about trading for the other.
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The speed of the Canon is amazing compared to the Epson.
A 13x19 (that's what you want it for) is 27min on the Epson and under 3 min on the Canon. Bad news is you will probably waste more ink/paper on the Canon since it is so easy to print another copy. If you print like I do, I tend to print 5-10 sheets in a batch. That would be (at the top end) the difference between 5 hours and 30 min of printing time.
The paper handling is great on the Epson. For me roll paper is not that interesting but it is a cool feature. I would like the ability to print bigger panoramas on the Canon.
Printout quality is great on both printers, The Canon wins for the average color picture and the Epson does better black and white. Most of the time it is up to the user to decide which is better (it's pretty darn close).
The ultrachrome inks (Epson) give longer lifes, but I tend to print on Kodak archival paper so it evens out. The Ultrachrome inks do look a little different under different lighting (nothing to scare you just be aware of it).
I like the Canon ink system better than the Epson system since it is easier to check out and make sure it is not cheating you out of ink. The EPSON system counts drops and shuts down when the cartridge is "Empty". Also Canon has used the same cartridges for a long time so I can expect that my next printer will still be able to use any cartridges I have left over from my previous machine.
Epson printers clean themself a lot more and for a lot longer than the Canon. This means the first print of the day is going to cost you a lot more time and ink for the Epson.
Time is a biggie with me and was the biggest decider, the cleaning time of every Epson I have is frustrating so it was probably decider #2.