Epson R2400 first impressions

I can safely say that initially I'm very pleased with the results. Reproductions on both glossy and matt paper are very impressive indeed. The product was well packaged and very straight forward to set up.... However, it took me ages to work out how to get the list of possible papers to display anything other than the bog standard photo papers. It was only after some serious googling that I tried chaning the black cartridge from Photo Black to Matt Black. Then I saw a completely different list of possible papers. However in the process of changing the inks, the printer does a whole re-calibration routine or something that uses a whole heap of ink. Even though I'd only made a couple of prints, after changing the cartridges, all bar the Matt Black were showing a quarter used. Whether this is just an inaccurate reading or not I'm not sure, but I haven't yet dared to change the blacks back again. I'll be printing primarily on Matt fibre papers anyway.

Once I'd got all this sussed, I tried printing some test images on the sample Epson Archival Matte paper that came bundled with the printer. The quality of the print itself I was very impressed with, but I seemed to get lots of streaking / smudging along one edge. I tried various different settings but to no avail. I then popped over to Jessops and got some Harman Matt FB paper 310gsm (which is very nice BTW - read more here), but still I got the smudging.

(This hasn't scanned very well, but you get the gist)

It was only when I tried loading the paper in the top of the printer (I had been loading it in the front as per the "thick paper" instructions), that I saw the option to "Fast Print", and lo and behold the streaks have gone. Therefore I can only deduce that for some reason in the blacks, the printer is putting too much ink down on the page.

This doesn't seem to happen using the glossy papers and the Photo Black cartridge, so maybe I'm doing something wrong. But I've scoured high and low, tested every possible configuration and used a stack of paper already. However after all that, I am still very impressed with the results of the print once I do actually get rid of the streaks. I'll be trying some A3 paper shortly for a display I have coming up, so it'll be interesting to see how they pan out.

If anyone has any pointers on getting the best out of fibre papers on this printer, I'd be very keen to hear from you.