Best printer for artists in a networked Mac lab?

September 11, 2013 11:31 AM

What would be the best price-conscious inkjet printer (probably at or below $600 though if that's unrealistic, let me know) that can be networked easily to Macs in a school setting for artistic purposes (think high print quailty in color and b/w, low cost ink refills, possibly a high quality scanner as part of it, ideally able to print bleeds or pages larger than 8.5x11")? I've been told that Epson and HP might be good brands for this, but Brother's been mentioned as well...
posted by vegartanipla to Technology (5 answers total)

You'd have most of your needs met by the Epson R3000, an older model of which I've used in a studio. Ultrachrome inks, 13" paper path, roll feed available. Really nice prints when you use good paper and set your files up properly.

You're probably asking too much to have an included scanner and cheap ink if you want the print quality to be legitimately good. You also probably won't be able to print bleeds at full size, though with a tabloid page you can manually trim to letter size.
posted by a halcyon day at 11:38 AM on September 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

If accurate color reproduction is your goal, I would highly recommend looking at a Xerox Phaser solid ink printer. I've had the good fortune to work in an office with a couple of these, and the results are dead-on accurate and gorgeous. They blow-away inkjets. Plus, they speak Postscript natively, which is a huge plus when working with networked Macs. This allows more accurate color management.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:41 AM on September 11, 2013

Are we talking print quality being the most important feature in this budget range? Or do you need to hit all of these features? Assuming you're most interested in getting gallery-quality prints, you'd probably be better served by getting two different printers. One is a cheap and fast with a scanner. Printer 2 is for your special, final prints, not everyday use.

Epson Stylus Photo or HP DesignJet are both good product lines, see what your price will get you within them.
posted by fontophilic at 12:09 PM on September 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

This reddit comment from a year ago seems to have some good information on various inkjet printers.
posted by exogenous at 1:08 PM on September 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

An Epson Stylus Photo capable of large format/roll media with a continuous ink system might do just the trick...
posted by stenseng at 1:48 PM on September 11, 2013 [1 favorite]