Best 13" printer for refilling... canon pro9000, i9900 or epson/hp ??

[twntrbv6]

I'm looking for the best dye ink refillable 13" printer. I don't need perfect prints for display, I will use cotton paper and oem ink in a pigment printer for those (very pricey though...).

Important is 3 things:
Refilling ease- I would rather an easier refill obviously than some complicated procedure requiring the dexterity of a surgeon...
Overall reliability- with the best proven non-oem inks.
Print quality- (not as important as the first 2) ideally the best possible with the best quality generic ink using probably costco photo paper- obviously the print quality will be worse and will fade compared to cotton paper with oem pigment ink (which has a 10x higher print cost though...) but I need a printer just for bulk cheap printing too...

There is the new canon pro9000 for $350 from Adorama and used i9900's for about the same price on ebay. They differ in that the cartridges are chipped for the pro9000 but not the i9900, print quality similar. A new pro9000 would be really nice with full warranty if the refilling procedure isn't too troublesome and there are some proven non-oem inks.
Then there is the newest epson r1400 dye ink printer, the older epson 1280/1290, etc, these have less colours though.

What refillable 13" printer and non-oem ink have people found to be the best- if equivalent btw I'd rather go for a new printer, ie. rather the pro9000 with warranty over the i9900.
I really appreciate some opinions of what any of you have found (especially the gurus), I'm sure it will save many newbies a lot of hassle, Thanks!

ps: I won't consider a continuous ink system- I believe they might be more trouble, more fragile, and I'm not going to be printing enough to justify the cost.
pss. Would the pro9000 complain with refilling because of the chips in each cartridge?

 

[ghwellsjr]

The best dye ink (easily) refillable 13" printer is the Canon i9900. Actually, the newer chipped pro9000 is just as easy to refill but the printer will know that you are refilling and disable the ink level monitor which means you have to periodically remove the cartridges from the print head and examine them. You may also have a warranty issue if you refill. For these reasons, I don't own any printers with chipped cartridges.

IMO, the best third party ink is made by Inktec. It showed the best fade resistance in this test:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1003&message=12198835

 

[Grandad35]

twntrbv6,

I have a pair of i9900's (one is a spare), and have been using them for over 2 years. They are reliable and easy to refill. They also produce great color with Kirkland paper and 3rd party bulk ink (using a custom printer profile).

As I understand how the chipped carts work, refilling them causes the printer to set an internal flag that voids its warranty. It also disables the low ink level detection system as long as you refill, so you must moniter the ink levels on your own. IMHO, this makes the i9900 a better choice for refilling.

 

[WhiteDog]

Costco paper is not available in 13". I assume that you intend to use the printer for composing and proofing. If you print to the margins on 11x17 office paper, or in generic art paper, you can get about the same print area at a very low cost. Look at the Inkpress line for good quality at a fair price.

The refilling process is cheap and fairly fast. I am noticing that there are fewer suppliers of bulk inks compared to a year ago. It looks like the trend is running to cheap refilled (non-chip) cartridges at a few bucks each. I have no idea if they are any good, and you can't determine the brand of the ink content, but you may want to look at that.

I can understand where you are coming from, but running two printers can get quite complicated unless you are doing 90% of the printing on the draft machine with no fussing about quality and the fine prints in very low volume on the pigment machine. If you so far do not own either of these machines think serioulsy about going to the next level with a larger Canon.

 

[pharmacist]

I have the possibility to obtain a second hand Canon 9950 A3+ (13") printer for 500,- here in Belgium from a graphics stuff store owner, including about 50 after market carts. Is this a good deal ? The owner says he had used it for 7 months and printed about 50 sheets with it (can I actually check this could be true or not ?). The newer chipped Pro 9000 cost only 50,- more in the Benelux.

 

[Grandad35]

pharmacist,

Used (and occasionally new) i9900's (same as i9950's) are available in the US for about $500:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Canon-i9900-Ink...4QQihZ001QQcategoryZ67370QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/Canon-Inkjet-i9...5QQihZ016QQcategoryZ67370QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

New Pro9000's are available for $400:
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PIXMA-P...7?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1180608253&sr=8-2

 

[pharmacist]

Very nice Grandad, but don't forget at least $ 150,- shipping cost + insurance + last but not least: the custom fees (let's say: 21 %) and import taxes etc: It doesn't make any sense I'm afraid to have one from the States, besides: the US Pro9000, is there a CD-tray included for direct printing on CD/DVD ?

 

[ghwellsjr]

The i9950 comes with a CD/DVD tray but the i9900 does not. If you keep looking, you may find one of these for sale in Australia. I have seen them in the past. You will want to search eBay for the i9950.

 

[Tin Ho]

I would go for pro9000 if it is new and comes with one year warranty. That one year warranty can mean another pro9000 free.

 

[pharmacist]

Yesterday I purchased a used Canon i9950 which is in excellent condition. It was 300,- (Let's say $ 400,-) including a whole package original OEM carts (sealed), Tetonal A3+ High Glossy Photopaper (20 sheets), 100 sheets A6 Canon Glossy Photopaper Pro, 50 sheets A4 Photopaper (unknown). I already printed one sheet of A4 Canon Photopaper and the result is awfully stunning ! The guy who sold it to me bought the latest pigment based Cano Pro9500 and was not able to get good results with the pigment ink on the shiny photopaper (giving it a dull result) and gave it away for free (worth at least $ 200,- including 12 extra original Canon carts) for the price he was demanding for it.