Epson Stylus Photo 1400 Photo Printer

This is my 2nd Epson printer in 7 years. My first printer was the Epson Stylus Photo 1280 (bought in 2001) and after 7 years of flawless service,..it finally crashed and it could not be resurrected. Nothing last forever, but the Epson 1280 paid for itself in print sales many times over. I have 25 plus years as a professional photographer and the Epson 1280 was a dream come true back in 2001. (Anyone who remembers darkroom /color enlarger film based printing should know what I am talking about).

The next printer I bought (in June 08) was the Epson Stylus Photo 1400. This printer is very similar to the 1280 and the print quality is as good if not better than the 1280. The 1400 print quality (color reproduction)is definitley top notch but the only sacrifice is ink consumption. Since I sell my prints and get 10 times what they cost me to print, well,...I really don't care too much what the ink cost. I can print an 8.5 x 11 for $3.00 each and sell that print for $30.00. To me, this is the closest legal way to print your own "money" but you can only do this with a high quality professional grade printer like the Epson 1280 or 1400.

I would recommend this printer to any professional photogrtapher or anyone who demands exceptional print quality good enough for resale.

Have a great day.

I use this printer at work multiple times a day every day. Great quality, but I am ALWAYS changing cartridges. In the past I have had quite a bit of experience with other Epson printers and they all seem to use ALOT of ink. An epson representative once told me that with a single cartridge of black ink you should be able to get about 200 note cards worth of printing (black text). Not too good. I was printing onto 3x5 note cards. The thing I have noticed with Epson printers is that when the color is empty it will not allow you to print with only the black cartridge. You must spend the money on color cartridges even if you are only printing black text. Even more annoying than this is that you cannot refill Epson cartridges. Somehow the printer knows and registers the cartridge as empty and will not print. The software even goes as far as to not have any settings to allow you to use less ink (by lowering the print quality). Every single thing you print is at full quality. If you have the money to spend this is a good printer. We have an on standing order with our purchasing department for ink, that's how bad this thirsty beast is.

My old Epson Stylus Photo 200 died just when I needed to print flyers for the sale of our home. I ordered the 1400 direct from Epson because I needed a printer fast and it was cheaper than most new Epson printers.
Epson shipped the same day, but 2 day shipping instead of overnight, which I paid for. They quickly credited me with the entire shipping cost when I complained, so shipping was free.

Pros:
Setup was easy, right out of the box, on my Windows XP system. Print quality was excellent on the 8x10 test print of a photo of Monument Valley. My flyers are beautiful.

Ink easy and fast to get. Best price from Epson: buy 3 and get free overnight shipping. I was actually surprised to find, when I searched the Internet, that Epson has the cheapest prices, by quite a lot, on their ink. They ship the same day, if the order is in before 1:00 PM Pacific time.

Cons:
Ink use, especially LM, LC, and Y. Ink cartridges are smaller than R300.

(When printer didn't come overnight I went to WalMart and bought a HP D1520 for $36. I use it for all routine printing, and reserve the Photo 1400 for quality color)

Ink Use Tip: I noticed that the printer seemed to do a recharge cycle whenever I turn it on. So I have tried to leave the printer on all the time. I am not sure about this, but it seems to use less ink this way. I just print a nozzle check every few days if I have not used the printer.

Size: Its big, but I think any wide format printer is going to necessarily be big.

USB 2 Cable not supplied:
I went to Radio Shack and bought one, no problem, and of course found two more in a drawer after I bought a new one.

Summary:
All in all, I am satisfied. I will try to update this review after more extensive usage. The ink usage is expensive, but we are at the mercy of the manufacturer and if you want and need hight quality color you will have to pay the price in ink and paper. My advice, based on sad experience, is use Epson inks, not compatibles, and Epson paper when you need the highest quality.

Experiment with the driver settings, based on your own needs. Print only the quality you need. Use the black ink only/grayscale only setting, if printing text,etc only as in letters, etc.

I bought this printer to replace an Espon 1270 that I recently lost when my house went up in flames. This seemed to be the logical choice. Same basic functions. Same basic cost. Nope, not even close. When it arrived it was 50% bigger in size (almost 2ft wide) and uses 6 print cartridges instead of 2. The 3 things I really can't stand is that it feeds multiple sheets of paper no matter what I do. The online help says load fewer sheets, so as long as there is only ONE sheet in the feeder, it works fine. The second thing that really fries my schnitzel, is that I tried User Support 2 weeks ago and they still haven't responded. The third, is that when they say Window XP or Vista, that's exactly what they mean. The printer can't be used by any older software. My fault for not reading closer, but not all of my computers can run XP. So Epson, what happened? You used to make a great product. Talk to me, you are about to lose a loyal customer FOREVER. If I would have bought a $49 printer (any brand) I would have been much happier.

This printer replaced a four-color photo printer which gave
less than acceptable prints. In short, the photos printed
looked nothing like what was seen on the monitor.

The Epson Stylus Photo 1400 solved this problem, but it took a
while to figure out how to get the prints to match the monitor
output. The first attempt, which was to install and use the paper
manufacturer's profile, failed. Apparently other users had this
problem as well.

Epson's printer driver provides a number of options for photo printing,
but it's not always clear which ones should be used and what the
result will be prior to using ink and paper to find out. With Ilford
5x7 Premium Glossy, these options produced the desired result:

- Epson Ultra Premium Glossy paper
- Best Photo
- Photo RPM
- No Edge Smoothing
- No High Speed Printing
- Gamma 1.8

Hopefully your results will be as good with less effort spent
twiddling the driver options.