Epson SureColor P700 13-Inch Printer

Over the past 20 years I’ve owned four Epson fine art printers. The R2880, 3800, 3880, and the P800. I was looking forward to some of the new features of the P700 such as the paper being centered when loaded, the black inks not having to be switched when going from glossy to matter, and an IOS app that allowed printing from an iPad. The P800 has wifi enabled printing from a different IOS app, but it isn’t as capable as the new one. I no longer had the need to print 17 inch prints so the 13 inch P700 would be fine. The first thing I noticed was that the build quality, that is the fit and finish of the plastic was not the same as the others I owned. All the things that could be opened or pulled out appeared flimsy. The initial setup was similar to the P800 so no surprises. The first problem came with loading photo paper. Once it fed into the printer and the printing started, there was a loud clacking, grinding noise and the printer stopped. I cleared the paper and then tried again with the same result. On the third try it worked. Over the course of the next hour I was able to make 3 prints out of 6 tries. I went back to the reviews of this printer on YouTube and there was no mention of this until I looked at some of the replies to those vids. The issue I was having was not unique. One person suggested looking at the forums on dpreview.com and that’s where I found that his was a frequent problem. Using Amazon’s return process I repacked and returned the printer. It was easy and the refund showed up quickly. I’m disappointed in Epson. I will continue to use the P800 but at some point, maybe when this ink set needs replacing, I will either go to Canon or utilize the print services of a local camera shop.