The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 is Epson’s smallest Large Format printer or biggest photo printer --it depends from which angle you look at it. The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 uses UltraChrome K3 inks, so the quality of the output is great, but this printer needs a very careful touch if you’re using it with heavy paper.

I tested the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 with Epson glossy paper and Innova Smooth Natural White Cotton that I purchased especially for this review. The glossy paper wasn’t a problem. As expected, the printer’s output was nice and vibrant. I did not expect to see bad colours, or washed out results. With regards to the output quality, I did pay a lot of attention to the bronzing though, because a lot of users have said that this printer either produces no bronzing at all, or does produce it in tiny areas.

After a month of intensive testing, I am in the latter camp. There is bronzing, but it’s hardly noticeable and it happens only occasionally. The bronzing part of the equation is on par with the Photosmart Pro B9180, but it’s a bit more than what you’ll see on a DesignJet Z 3100.

The colours are deep and rich, but to be honest only marginally better, richer and more vibrant than with the Photosmart Pro B9180 that I have tested extensively over a long period of several months. In fact, when I controlled the Photosmart Pro B9180 through the EFI Designer Edition RIP, I could make the colours even deeper and richer. I tested the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 with ProofMaster, a far more capable RIP ---that I’m about to discuss extensively here on IT Enquirer in a couple of days or weeks-- and couldn’t make it produce an equally impressive output.

The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 therefore only works well with its own driver. The reason for this is totally unknown to me, but I had the feeling the printer doesn’t just spray its blacks onto the paper. It appears to build up the blacks in small quantities --perhaps to avoid bronzing-- which makes controlling the ink quantities that go on the paper a lot more difficult.

Where the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 falls short is in build quality. Epson has clearly saved on the materials of this 23 kilograms lightweight A2+ printer. For starters, the plastics of the front trays felt flimsy. The front tray door fell open by itself if I stamped with my feet on the ground in front of the printer. I have never liked a tray design where the tray slides out at the back of the printer, because it takes up too much space that I can use better. Unfortunately, this is the tray design used by the Epson Stylus Pro 3800. It’s a design that made me think of small footprint printers, where the paper tray must be pulled up and out to load the paper. 

Help, My Printer is Eating My Paper!

Oddly enough, I didn’t have a problem with that old-style paper tray after all, but with the straight-through paper path. The Innova Smooth Natural White Cotton paper must be loaded in the straight through paper tray. So far, so good. But when you print onto this heavy fine art paper, the paper itself sucks up ink and becomes heavier.

Without a support for the paper in the centre, the paper will sag under the ink load. At first, I didn’t bother looking in the straight-through paper path, so I couldn’t see that such support was indeed lacking, not only in the centre but also at either side of the path. There is support there, but it has rather large square openings, I learned later after the printer had managed to devour and tear to pieces three of these expensive A2 sheets of Innova Cotton.

The remedy is to take a flat measuring ruler or a thin stick and hold that under the paper until the sides have passed the openings. At that point, the paper will just rest on the edge of the paper tray. It’s a detail, but one that costs dearly with expensive paper.

An advantage of the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 is that Matte Black and Photo Black don’t have to be swapped manually. The printer swaps the two types of ink by itself. It did take a few seconds before the swap completed, and that is something that I’ve never had to worry about with the HP photo printers that I’ve been testing so far. My conclusion therefore is that Epson must have realised that excellent ink quality and photos that jump off the page is not enough in this market segment. They perhaps wanted to release a new printer with more modern features, such as blacks that don’t have to be swapped to compete with the increasingly successful HP printers in this market niche.