Opinions on workforce pro 4020

Hello, I am an old member who had to register for a new account. For a long time I was heavily into printing photo quality pictures using both Epson stylus photo r200 and Canon ip4000. Now for the longest time I have had not much need for color printing and thusly have only been using a mono laser printer for all of my printing. Now I would like to get back into printing borderless photo quality prints at home. I am thinking about getting the epson workforce pro 4020 because I have an opportunity to get it for free from www.toshibadirect.com due to a credit I have from a warranty claim on another product. I am wondering what are everyones thoughts on this? I would like something that I can get after-market easily refillable ink tanks for. Anyone have experience using refillable tanks on the workforce pro 4020 or a similar model? If so, what tanks did you use? I also could order one of many Brother model printers. My understanding is that epson is much better than brother. Am I right? Does anyone prefer brother for photo printing? I know it's a lot of questions, thanks for taking the time to read this and for any answers you can give

If I wanted to do photo printing I wouldn’t pick the Pro 4020 for the job, you would be better off with a Brother printer than that one..

Thanks for the suggestion. They have many models of brother printers to choose from, including lots that print up to 11 x 17, so that may be a good option. I just need to do some research and make sure they have easily refillable ink tanks for brother printers! I refuse to spend money on the OEM cartridges. $30, $40 or over $50 is just highway robbery to me, especially for something that I am sure costs a very small fraction of that to make.

I have a WP4090, which is essentially the same printer as yours. Same printhead, same carts. I'm using it with refillable cartridges with dye inks instead of pigment (for better results on glossy paper)... The original OEM ink is pigment based so I use a custom profile for the dye ink. With the profile, it does OK for photos. Not stellar, but nothing to be ashamed about either. I get very good detail in the prints. Photos from my older Canon IP4500 were simply a bit more saturated (Profiles showed larger gamut).

If you're interested I'll print something out, scan it and upload it here. If you don't have any profiling tools, you can get pigment inks comparable to the original oem ink. You can also get dye inks from Mike at Precision Colors. Mike's stuff is usually good even without a profile. I don't know if Mike has any but if not, refillable carts are available from many vendors.

I've owned a 11x17 brother printer, and it was not nearly as good as this Epson WF PRO (plus it broke down real fast). One thing.. none of those printers are photo printers.. they are home/office printers that are capable of printing a somewhat decent picture every now and then.

If you want a photo printer, you're probably better off getting a photo printer (like an Epson Artisan or a Canon Pro).

Looks like scaning a print is not that great an idea.. it doesn't do the printer justice.
The actual print has much better sharpness, vivid colors and neutral grayscale (no parts turned green). The scan doesn't look anywhere near as good

I would still recommend a real photo printer, but this may show you the workforce pro is capable of doing a photo print every now and then.

and here is the original image

Yes scanning requires a scanner profile to show true colors, else it is comparing apples to oranges. I'm not advestising but my brother MFC-5895CW prints as good as my Canon 6700D photo printer (1pl vs. 1.5pl). The only downside is that gamut is smaller and it takes up to 200gsm paper, where canon takes 350gsm no problems.

Brother has way better rastering, no wonder because it has piezo head. It has Wi-fi, LAN connectivity options. So shame on you Canon why even Pro models does not have LAN ports? What about LCD screens on Pro models? What about automatic maintenance head cleaning cycles that would use less ink than manual head clean and would prevent clogs? Brother has all these as laminated print head IMHO way better than EPSON teflon coated mumbo jumbo.

Oh and I would like to note that there is still a requirement that ink matches printer linearity curves to make good ICC profiles (Quality should be confirmed by RGB certification). That's why some say some paper + ink combos just does not work. They are right.

The only way to avoid this problem is to use RIP driver and adjust the linearization curves before the actual ICC profile is made. Since there is no RIP for A3 sizes Brother, Canon printers the only option is to use EPSON.

P.S. PrintFAB is not a true RIP, it uses OEM driver to drive the printer, so far even with custom driver that allows some linearity adjustments it is not worth to use. When it will allow true adjustments then it will be an option.

Gary Ambrose said:

Hello, I am an old member who had to register for a new account. For a long time I was heavily into printing photo quality pictures using both Epson stylus photo r200 and Canon ip4000. Now for the longest time I have had not much need for color printing and thusly have only been using a mono laser printer for all of my printing. Now I would like to get back into printing borderless photo quality prints at home. I am thinking about getting the epson workforce pro 4020 because I have an opportunity to get it for free from www.toshibadirect.com due to a credit I have from a warranty claim on another product. I am wondering what are everyones thoughts on this? I would like something that I can get after-market easily refillable ink tanks for. Anyone have experience using refillable tanks on the workforce pro 4020 or a similar model? If so, what tanks did you use? I also could order one of many Brother model printers. My understanding is that epson is much better than brother. Am I right? Does anyone prefer brother for photo printing? I know it's a lot of questions, thanks for taking the time to read this and for any answers you can give

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I just purchased a Epson Work Force 4020 and am returning it. It is not able to print Microsoft Publisher correctly. For example it took a publication which consisted of an 8.5 x 11 sheet, divided into four quadrants of the same image and printed it as 2 oversized, off center
images on 2 sheets of paper! Other files with solid color backgrounds had black or white dots in the background. One thing of importance to you is it DOES NOT print borderless pictures but leaves a 1/4 in white border. It does do beautiful B&W text. I wish my R800 was working as it did a perfect job on anything I printed. I hope this information helps you.

there are varíous things to consider, it's a pitty that there is no RIP software for any of the mentioned printers, Epson, Brother or Canon, and any software like PrintFab is for me not much more than a bandaid to overcome that gap. But to get back to the printers, Epson office printers typically work with the Durabrite pigment ink, good on regular paper, but not so good for fotos on glossy paper. Such office style printers, as well the Brother units with 4 colors CMYK, use the black, always pigmented on regular paper, but mix the black from CM on glossy papers, which leads to some problems like a color tint of the 'black' and and a not so good black level. Canon introduced for that reason already long time ago an additional photo black. You may, with Refill, use a 4 color CMYK dye inkset on Epson, that works quite fine, and then you should print with a matt/Inkjet paper driver setting onto glossy papers to use the real black ink as well. And always get a matching ICC profile for your ink/paper/driver setting combination. With 2 sets of Refill cartridges you can easily swap between a dye and a pigment ink set. With Brother printers you can something similar, with refill using a separate dye black, and printing with the matt/inkjet paper setting (with an ICC profile) onto glossy paper. That gives pretty good results to my experience with Brother printers. Brother printers have an advantage over Epson office units, they print with 1 to 1.5 pl drops , and Epson with 3 pl, (that's visible with some coarseness of the dithering of halftone colors if you look pretty carefully and close to a printout). And some Brother printers don#t have so many nozzles for the colors, so foto printouts take longer. So actually with a dye black refill for a Brother you can acheive quite a good foto print, as good as with a Canon, and as well quite godd with the refilled Epson, better and more flexible than the manufacturers want to sell it to you.