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Configuration (7.00)
The R2400 is the cheapest printer that Epson offers with the Ultrachrome K3 pigment inks, which is the same ink set employed on Epson’s wide-format printers—the Stylus Pro 3800, 4800, 7800, and 9800. Color printing is performed with cyan, magenta, and yellow inks, which are augmented with light cyan and light magenta. Three blacks inks—photo black, light black, and light light black—are included for better tonal range in black-and-white photographs. The photo black ink cartridge is manually swappable with an included matte black ink cartridge for printing on matte media. Epson states that the matte ink increases optical density on matte papers.
The inks are arrayed in the ink carriage and accessed via the opening in the chassis above the carriage. Users have to press the ink button to align the carriage with the opening.
Value (7.00)
Each cartridge sells for $14.24 on Epson’s web site, compared to $14.99 for pigment ink cartridges for the Canon Pixma Pro9500. The Canon cartridges hold 13 milliliters (ml) of ink. This comes out to $1.15 cents/ml for the Pro9500. Epson unfortunately doesn’t have cartridge capacity information available, which leaves us to speculate. Since Epson’s cartridges are similar in shape and size to the Canon PGI-9 ink cartridges for the Pro9500, this likely makes the price per ml roughly equivalent. HP sells larger volume cartridges for its Photosmart B9180. These 27-ml cartridges sell for $33.99, with a cost per ml of $1.26.
Ink management (7.00)
Ink levels are viewable within the print driver windows. A simple graphic displaying ungraduated cylinders with a corresponding ink level for each color. When inks are low, the driver displays a low ink window, indicating which ink is low by an exclamation point over that cylinder. The driver displays a message that the volume has reached 10 percent and that the printer will stop printing if the ink runs out. This changes to 5 percent as levels decrease. Buttons for buying ink that link to Epson’s website appear on the Low Ink Warning dialogue box that opens when printing.
The light magenta cartridge was the first to run out, well before the other cartridges. These warning occurred after we printed approximately sixteen 4" x 6" photos, ten 8.5" x 11" photos, five 13" x 19" photos, and fourteen sheets of 8.5" x 11" text and graphics. Four more 8.5" x 11"photos were printed before it was necessary to change the cartridge to ensure print quality would not deteriorate.
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