what large format printers?

fairly new to the printing game. Ive been looking for a large format printer mainly used for posters, stickers (buying a contour plotter soon as well), and banners in the 5000k price range and 44" size range, i like the designjet z3200 and i believe the 5500ps is nice too?, its going to be used for graphic design so it will need pretty high dpi, are their any other printers that i should look into by other brands? also should i look into refurbished printers? ....soo many questions but I don't want to overload yous, Thanks!

 

In the $5000 range Epson, HP, and Canon all make nice prints now. I prefer Epson and HP for ink durabiity on the paper. My (possibly biased by historical inks and printers in each line) opinion is that Epson stiill has the most durable, permanent print. The HPZs are such nice printers though. The canons may be less costly per print but I find the HP and Epson prints still more continuous tone and slightly nicer to my eye. The canons aren't bad and I considered one due to a slightly lower cost per print for posters.

Refurbished? Tricky.
With a printer like the epson where heads are expensive, I'd want to save at least $2000 over retail for the brand new printer. The new printer comes with sealed inks which are worth a lot of money, and often free shipping. I believe the HP print heads are less expensive and also have a planned replacement in less prints so a bit less there would do it.
How about warranty? Any quality issues can be really frustrating and expensive to solve. If you plan to put high volume on it, you could look at it as having to troubleshoot at some point anyway, but the cost of a clogged nozzle can easily add up to $100 of lost paper, ink, and time, so don't jump at a used or refurb untit unless it's a really good deal.

 

I do like canon, as well as epson, I just found a site aectec.com with all refurbished equipment by hp professionals and free lifetime ink? also a 3 year warrenty on them which seems good but I havent heard anything from this site so Im not exactly sure how legit it is..

another question to throw out there...how easy are these to hook up for a mac computer? Ill be working with adobe programs so hopefully its not too tricky.

 

Free ink for life has to be a scam. They would go broke providing OEM ink for free. At $1000 per set for current graphic arts machines, there is a lot more money in ink than in the machines themselves. Either ther is fine print really limiting it to cad-type printing, the ink is extremely cheap non-oem stuff, or they won't be in business long enough to meet "lifetime" supply I'm afraid, IMHO.

 

We purchased a 5500ps from aectec and have been very happy with it. Their tech. support is outstanding also. As far as the free ink for life, as was stated earlier, they would go broke. If you can get it in writing, and that's the machine you want, they are a good company.

 

I would go for an HP, I've had nothing but problems with other brands.

 

why not go with a refubished solvent printer, you can do car wraps and outdoor banners as well as anything else you want. you should get a refurb one with a contract for about 5000 + the monthly contract payment