Stunning blacks... wowza (Epson T0961)

Member Name: davomrmac

Product:	Epson T0961
Date:	27/04/09 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dense blacks that reveal a lot of detail

Disadvantages: You have to swap cartridges depending on the type of paper you use

This ink cartridge is used in Epson's photo printers that use the K3 inkset. This has a lot of advantages as a whole, such as a wider colour gamut (more colours are able to be printed in layman terms). They also offer superb longevity, so your prints will last a lot longer. Epson quotes up to 108 years for color and over 200 years for black and white prints. This is fantastic and lends itself well to archival prints.

Now, the photo black featured here has a lot of good things to say about it, though I will save the 'but' until the end of this review. I use my photo black in the Epson Photo Stylus R2880, it can also be used with other compatible Epson printers too. It can be used for all media types, glossy media, silk and matte papers. On glossy paper it really reveals all the finer details and helps to produce deep and dense blacks. It is also worth noting, that when I compare prints on my earlier Epson printer, the ones produced with the 'photo' black in the R2880 seem to visually stand off the paper. They have this appeal where the images really does pop colour and retain detail in the shadow areas.

Now for the negative. If you own such a printer, you are advised to use the matte black cartridge when printing onto matte paper. For fine art prints this is supposed to increase the black optical density. This is all well and good, but it means each time you swap out the ink cartridges to change paper type you waste a little bit of ink in the process. I cannot quantify how much, but if it is between 25p and 50p worth this is still quite a bit.

Evaluating the cartridge by itself though, shows that the 'photo' black does have its place and it does lend itself well to many different paper types. The blacks it produces are very dense and this particular range of Epson cartridges are reasonably priced for once. If only they could develop a system to prevent the need to swap cartridges, Epson would be onto a winner.

Summary: Superb ink and reasonably priced

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