Epson 9600 compared to Epson 9800

[miprints]

For 1.) photographic and 2.) poster printing, how much better is the Epson 9800 over the older Epson 9600?

Has anyone here upgraded from a 9600 to a 9800 and can give some insight on how much better the upgrade made their lives?

Trying to decide if I should look at used 9600s in my budget or wait until I can justify a 9800/9880 and not look at older machines. (yes I'm all over the map in my search as I can't justify the quality I want with the current limited work I have in large format prints which pays very little at present; not sure if there is work but it's nice to have in the shop for when one of my customers wants a one-off large poster to be able to do this for them too.)

 

[xfactor printing]

I don't have much experience in the area of wide inkjet printers, but here's my take from looking at them. Hopefully someone else comes along who has more direct and better experience to share with you.

A major improvement was made between ultrachrome and ultrachrome k3 inks for gloss prints. On glossy paper the 9800 prints will suffer far less gloss differential, bronzing, and metamerism than the 9600 prints. (areas which have high ink coverage no longer have different gloss than low ink white areas; the gloss level of adjacent colors match each other much better with the k3 and newer inks, etc.)

If you're printing glossy prints, look at the 9800.

For matte prints you might consider the 9600 as it shined on matte art papers IMHO and less difference there.

The 9800 however is still noticeably faster than the 9600.

But if you want speed, look at the hp z series which are possibly twice as fast for a given print!