Handling

The Epson SureColor SC-P400 has minimal controls, just six buttons on the front;. Power, Wi-Fi, Network Status, Paper feed, cancel and Eject, Ink replacement and Roll media. I would have liked to see the inclusion of a memory card reader or LCD screen.

Printing

The first test prints were produced using Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper with the “Printer Manages Colours” setting in Photoshop. This forces the Epson SureColor SC-P400 to use the canned profiles that are installed with the driver. Printing times are reasonable; using the High Quality setting an A4 print took 2 minutes 53 seconds, 3 minutes 15 seconds for a borderless print, an A3+ print took 5 minutes 45 seconds, timings were measured from print drop to final exit. Not the fastest printer, but quality is more important than speed.

The overall print quality is excellent and the glossy media maintained an even overall gloss, due to the gloss optimiser. When printing note that the gloss optimiser will only be applied to the actual image area, with borderless printing the optimiser is applied over the entire media surface. Colour wise I was particularly interested to see how the addition of Red and Orange colours compare to prints produced by the SC-P600 and SC-P800 (both printers use Light Magenta and Light Cyan colours as well as the dedicated light Blacks).

Looking at the test print in detail, the cotton reels maintained colour and detail in both the Black, Brown and White reels, all the threads are clearly defined. The yellow and red reels display vibrant dynamic colours. The Green and Blue reels have an almost 3D quality. The colour swatches are more vibrant compared to prints produced by the SC-P600 and SC-P800. Although the green is a bit too strong compared to the original file. The RGB and Grey gradients are very smooth from white to solid colour, no banding can be seen even under high magnification. This is due to the 1.5 picoliter ink drop size and Epson Variable Ink Technology. The overall print quality compares well to Dye ink prints using glossy photo media.

The Black and Grey patches are neutral to cool with no visible colour shift, each grey patch shade is clearly defined. The central B/W photograph is very good, detail has been kept in the shadow areas, there is a good solid black without any over inking under the arch, the stone work is well defined. The highlight areas in the steps have also kept detail throughout. Considering the Epson SureColor SC-P400 does not have dedicated Light Blacks, it has produced a very clean B/W photo. Most inkjet printers use a combination of colour inks to produce a grey tone, if this combination is not correct then a colour cast can be introduced, a good profile should cure this in most cases.

Although there are two Blacks, only the Photo Black or Matte Black is used at any one time. The Epson SureColor SC-P400 automatically switches between the Matte and Photo Black ink when you select the media type in the Print Properties. A small amount of ink is purged when changing between the two Black inks, this is to clean the print head and ensure the correct ink is used with the selected media.

The canned profiles are very good and produced great looking prints, I had to add an adjustment curve to lighten up the print.  The adjusted print displayed a more accurate rendition - a quick word about this. As a photographer we make adjustments to exposure based on how we want the final picture to look, the camera's metering in most cases produces a good exposure. The same applies with printing, the printer profile manages colours well in most cases, but every now and then you may need to make a slight tweak in order to produce the colours you want. The Epson SureColor SC-P400 did not accurately reproduce BW images, I tweaked the image with two adjustment layers, curves to increase the brightness and Colour Balance to add some warmth to the overall image. In an ideal setup, you should be able to print what you see on the screen, but in my many years of experience, this rarely happens, unless you use a custom profile.

One thing to keep in mind about printing with pigment inks is that they do not penetrate the micro pores in the media, as dye inks do, pigment ink particles lay on top of the paper.  When using Glossy papers this can cause a gloss differential which means when you look at a print from an angle you will see the glossy surface of the paper (white areas) where ink has not been applied and a slightly matte area which has had ink applied. The Epson SureColor SC-P400 uses the Gloss optimiser to fill in the white areas with a clear ink. This puts an even coating all over the image area, thereby eliminating any gloss differential.

Fine Art and Thick Media Printing

For single sheets of Fine art and speciality media the Epson SureColor SC-P400 comes complete with a rear manual feed guide, this has to be attached to the rear of the printer and will accommodate a single sheet of media. For thick paper printing on media up to 1.3mm thick, then use the front manual feed tray, which is located behind the front panel. With printing surface facing up align the front edge with two arrows on the tray. Media will be taken in once you send a print job, you should ensure that there is sufficient clearance at the rear (at least 320mm) as the media will be fed through prior to the start of printing.

CD/Label Printing

When producing DVDs for clients or as a gift, a printed label on inkjet printable disks will add a professional touch. Using the CD/DVD tray is simple, just place the disk in the supplied tray then feed the tray in via the front manual feed tray. Although each disc has to be fed in manually, which is okay for low volume printing, for quantity printing (50 - 100+) then a dedicated printer may be a better choice. The Epson Print CD software is more than adequate for producing simple layouts. For more complex designs you can use your image editing application to create the required layout and import this into Epson Print CD as a background image.

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