The Epson Stylus Pro 4800 printer is aimed at professional printers who want to be able to work in large format. The Manufacturer's MSRP is $1995 USD, or for the Pro edition Bundle, $2500 USD. The bundle includes the Colorburst RIP, PostScript software, and an Ethernet card. Online, it is available from $1690 for the printer to $2700 USD for the bundle.
It prints on paper up to 17 inches wide, in sheets or from a roll, and comes with a built in cutter that can be used manually or automatically. It has eight ink tanks for UltraChromeK3 inks, a pigment and resin type ink. This is a bit of a problem which we will discuss later, because the printer uses nine different ink colors. The printer comes with a USB port, FireWire port, and an expansion slot for an Ethernet card. It has a 1 year warranty.
The printer is 34 x 14 x 30 inches, and weighs almost 85 pounds. An optional printer stand is available.
It was released with Windows 2000 or XP and Mac OSX 10.4 or higher drivers, and now also has Vista compatible drivers as well. People are working on Linux drivers, but I did not find confirmation of a stable Linux driver.
The Epson Stylus Pro 4800 produces archival quality prints that are light and scratch resistant and estimated to last up to 100 years for color and 200 years for monochrome prints stored in an album. It has advanced black and white printing capability, with a very dense black, comparable to what can be created in a chemical darkroom.
It takes about 19 minutes to print a 16 x 20 inch print, or just over 6 minutes to print a 8 x 10 at the highest quality. Lower dpi prints are produced in about 4 minutes for a 16 x 20 print and 8 x 10 inch prints in only 1.5 minutes.
