Intro

The Stylus Pro3800 is one of Epson's high-end printers that accept paper as large as 17" wide. The Stylus Pro3800 is the ideal printer for both enthusiasts and professionals, producing the best print quality at its price. For proofing purposes Epson offers a professional edition that has the same hardware but also come with professional RIP software.

Despite all the major improvements that have occurred in home photo printers in the last few years, big time prints still require a big printer. But, even though it's a lot larger than most home printers, Epson's Stylus Pro 3800 manages to fit the same print engine as that of the company's much revered Stylus Pro 4800 into a unit that can fit comfortably, if a bit snugly, into a home office.

Design and Features

The Stylus Pro3800 is packed with features - wide tonal range, long-lasting prints, excellent black-and-white printing and accurate color prints with support for a wide array of paper types. With the front panel flipping down and sliding forward to become the output tray, you just need to be careful with the ink cartridge door, as you can only open it through the printer controls. So, trying to force it open manually, could lead to disaster.

The Stylus Pro3800 has a small monochrome LCD screen, a set of controls and a power button. The screen displays various information like ink status, the type of black ink currently in use. It also provides direct menu access for maintenance and paper handling, along with status reports for actions performed by the printer.

Besides the regular paper input tray, the printer can hold up to 120 sheets of plain paper or 60 sheets of Epson photo paper (depending on the paper type). There is also provision for fine art papers, which can be inserted only one at a time and is called Manual-Rear paper source in its driver.

The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 provides a maximum resolution of 2880x1440dpi with a minimum ink droplet size of 3.5 picoliters (some printers go as small as 1 picoliter) and the MicroPiezo print head offers 180 nozzles per color, which is a little low for a high-end printer. The interesting part is that Epson is using the Active Meniscus Control (AMC) technology, combined with new control algorithms, ensure that the prints achieve more precise ink placement.

The printer holds nine cartridges of Epson's UltraChrome K3 Stylus inks - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Matte Black, Photo Black, Light Cyan, Light Magenta, Light Black and Light Light Black.

Performance

The Stylus Pro 3800 is not the fastest printer - a 6x10 print took 2 minutes and 8 seconds with the printer quality set to 1440dpi instead of its highest 2,880dpi option.

Service and Support

The Stylus Pro 3800 comes with a one-year warranty and also provides online access to drivers, FAQs, and documentation and an interactive troubleshooter.