Epson t673 inks on Epson 1500w

[giorgos90]

Hello, i own an Epson 1500w a3+ printer with aftermarket cartridges and im printing on epson premium glossy photo paper. Until now i used to buy ink from a local shop and fill the cartridges. Although i dont have any major problems with this, i would like to try the original epson t673 inks to use with my 1500w printer. As far as i know my printer is identical with the new l1800 (except the ciss) which uses the t673 inks. The think i would like to ask is if these inks will be compatible with my 1500w printer or i will need the l1800 icc profile? Also, if i need to use the l1800 icc where i can find it? I have search a lot on the internet but i couldnt find anything.

Thank you.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you may try that - there shouldn't be a technical limitation by the inks, but I need to make some comments. The L1800 is based on the 1500W hardware to a degree, but the 1500W uses the genuine Epson Claria inks, the L1800 does not , so the driver may use some compensation for slight ink differences when it comes to the color tone or saturation. There is a price and performance difference between the Claria and L1800 inks when it comes to long term light fastness under light and UV exposure. You are using third party inks, and most likely as well non-Epson papers, both have visible impact onto the color reproduction by the printer. Color profiles are there to correct that and standardize the color output of printers and alike, they need to be made specifically for your ink/paper/driver settings combination. The Epson driver uses embedded icm-color profiles via the ICM option, but they only should be activated if you actually use Epson inks and Epson papers.
You find ink suppliers like precisioncolors who supply inks and sets of icm-profiles for those papers they either carry or recommend. Premium paper suppliers offer as well icm-profiles for their papers for use on a range of Epson or Canon printers. But the number of possible combinations of printers, inks and papers is endless, so you need to get profiles for yourself. You either can do that by yourself e.g. with a profiling package like ColorMunki, or you get such profile(s) made by a company, lots of ink suppliers offer such service, some even offer you a free profile if you buy an inkset from them, it depends on the country of residence and which of such opportunities are available locally.

 

[giorgos90]

Thanks for your reply. Now i understand. I dont want to spend 90 euros for claria ink each time i need to print photos, and i thought that the closest to claria inks in terms of longevity and color reproducing would be the t673 epson inks. With the ink i buy from a local shop and with epson premium glossy photo paper, colors begin to fade after one-two years, but now i searched and i found that t673 will not be much better for longevity. Although i dont think that any 3rd party ink will be better or same as claria ink, i will try to find some comparisons between them and decide what to buy. I dont want to use pigment inks because i am not using the printer that much and im afraid of clogged heads. Thanks again.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

which inks can I use on a 1400/1500W - that's quite a popular question in this forum, and quite detailed tests had been done by forum members, here are some recent links
https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/fujifilm-dl-ink-source-for-eu-ers.11246/page-2#post-96247
You are right - there is not very much visibility overall about the fade performance of refill inks, a situation which led to all that testing, and more. As described there there are some good ink options for use in Epson photo printers like the tested Fuijfilm Drylab or Epson Surelab inks, these are more expensive than other typical refill inks and perform much better than those, they are a kind of genuine inks but much more affordable than the Claria inks which are not available in any larger size cartridges. The L800 inks are better than the L300 inks but not as good, but cheaper than the Claria inks. It's all balancing price against performance at the end.

I would not recommend pigments on glossy papers with the 1500W, you are getting into the problems with bronzing and gloss differentials which you cannot overcome with an 1500W since that model would not let you use a gloss optimizer. If you plan to print only on matte type papers everything should work out fine, if you keep the printer busy on a low level there shouldn't much of an issue with clogging, I'm printing about 2x per week a very small image like 3x4", a reduced profiling test pattern which should cover all colors from light to black and saturated to unsaturated.