Epson XP-15000 Printer review 30 March 2018

This printer’s full name is  Epson Expression Photo HD  XP-15000 and it’s model designation is B641A or C11CG43501 depending on which part of Epson’s information material you read. 

However it is most often identified in Epson marketing and product documents simply as XP-15000.

There are broadly speaking two lines of Epson ink jet printers, consumer and professional photo.

The former generally use dye type inks and are modestly priced.  The latter are generally larger, more expensive, take larger paper sizes and use pigment inks.

The XP-15000 sits at the top of the consumer/dye ink lineup available in Australia.  It uses Epson Claria ink.

It works well as an everyday office printer  using  plain A4 paper. However it can also make very good looking prints up to A3+ (329 x 483mm) size.

It is thus ideal for the amateur photographer who mostly uses a printer for general office work but who would from time to time like to print a favorite photo for display at a decently viewable size.

I had until recently been using an Epson 4880 printer for my photographic requirements. But after nine years of faithful but expensive service the 4880 finally died so I had to consider my printing needs anew.

Although the 4880 is a fine printer and makes excellent prints it is a professional model and really needs to be used daily or the nozzles get clogged requiring much head cleaning. This uses a lot of ink which is very expensive.

I wanted a model which would meet all my general office printing requirements but be able to make fine photo prints on occasion. My printing size preference is A2+ but I could not find anything to meet my needs at that size.

So I opted for the XP-15000 which takes the smaller but still decent A3+ size.

Description  The XP-15000 is very compact ( width 48cm, depth 37 cm, height 15cm) and light ( 8.5 kg) considering the output print size. 

It fits on my desktop in the same space as a consumer A4 printer. 

The penalty for the light weight is, yes you guessed it, lightweight construction. As a result the paper handling parts of the device seem a bit flimsy to me. They work just fine but I would not place this printer in a general office environment with miscellaneous unsupervised users. It is more suitable for the careful individual user.

Plain A4 paper feeds from the lower tray. Photo paper up to A3+ loads in the upper paper feed, printing side facing the user.

Extension and retraction of the print output tray is motorised. The instructions say it can be moved manually with care but mindful of the lightweight construction I let the motor do this.

There is no roll feed and no option to add one.

I have read it is possible to cut a length off a roll and feed this manually for making panoramas. I have also read that this produces skewed feed. I may try it someday but have not yet done so.

Price  I bought the printer online from Epson Australia for AUD499 with free delivery. It comes with a set of inks.

The 6 color Claria Photo HD ink cartridges come in two sizes, standard and XL. Epson provides no information as to the actual volume of ink in either. The XL inks cost AUD32 each in Australia with free delivery.

Inkset  There are 6 inks. We have the usual Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black and Gray, but also Red.  How red fits into the color mix I really don’t understand but obviously the Epson boffins do because the colors print out very well.

There is no separate Matte Black ink.

Setup  I downloaded the setup file from the Epson Australia website. The printer came with a setup CD which I did not use. Setup went reasonably smoothly using either USB connection to the computer or Wi-fi. I did find quite a few discrepancies between what the setup screen on the computer indicated and the actual readout on the printer control screen. However I muddled through this without too much trouble. As I often find with electronic equipment the instructions in this case were not as helpful as one might have hoped for. But following the prompts got me through without too much bother.

The Epson Australia website is well designed and easy to navigate. All required drivers and operating software are easy to locate and download.

Operation and Speed  You can read the published specs elsewhere. All I need to say here is that the printer runs at average speed with plain A4 paper including 2 sided printing and prints photos decently fast. Speed is not a problem.

The XP-15000 does not do scanning.

It is commendably quiet in operation. By way of contrast the 4880 sounded like a haunted house with a great cacophony of groans, rattles and clanking noises. 

Media and printing profiles  As you might expect at this point in the market the XP-15000 offers a limited set of media options for photo printing.

The supplied printing profiles cover all the essentials however including Matte, Velvet Fine Art, several versions of glossy and semigloss and Premium Luster.

I note however that Epson Australia does not offer Premium Luster or Velvet Fine Art media for the XP-15000.

I checked on the Ilford website and found no printing profiles for the XP-15000. I guess that means you are limited to Epson papers. I find this no hardship as these are excellent.

I use Epson Premium Semigloss 250 for everything and find it delivers top quality photo prints. I find no reason to hanker for anything else.

Photo quality  This, in a word, is excellent. Prints have very good highlight and shadow detail, deep blacks, good midtone contrast, good color fidelity and very good sharpness. Overall color rendition is well saturated without going overboard.

When making photos I have found no faults with ink application or paper feed or anything else.

I have not seen better looking prints come off any other printer.

Photo display life  Prints made with  Claria dye inks do not have the same display life as those made with pigment inks. This may be an issue for prints intended for very long term display up to 200 years or more.

However I suspect that for most of us this will not be a significant problem, given more modest expectations of display life.

Problems ?  The only thing I have encountered is the printer’s tendency to spit out an extra sheet of plain A4 paper when doing office printing. This is mildly annoying but no big deal. I just slip the extra sheet back into the paper cassette.

Summary  The XP-15000 does exactly what I wanted it to do. It functions as my everyday office printer using plain A4 paper and it also makes excellent photo prints when required.

Recommended.

Update 24 August 2018  "Dry up" and Dry down"    Having used the printer for several months I have discovered an issue which can be quite noticeable with black and white prints.

Epson's pigment ink printers produce prints which are virtually dry as they exit the printer. Their appearance changes very little thereafter.

But prints from the XP-1500 which uses dye inks emerge slightly wet and change appearance  significantly as the ink dries. The initial change is a "dry up" appearance with mid tones appearing slightly lighter. On some prints this is accompanied by a slight magenta cast presumably as the inks dry at different rates. (I print black and white as full RGB color to make toning easier should I wish).

Subsequently there appears to be a "Dry down" appearance in the dark tones with increased contrast.

The speed of the drying process depends on atmospheric conditions but can take an hour or more for completion.