Normally, when a printer arrives for review, I expect to find a box about the size of a case of beer, brightly coloured, and covered with pretty specification lists and poetic lines praising the quality of the product found therein.
The Epson Stylus Color 3000 inkjet printer, boasting 1440 X 720 dots per inch (dpi) resolution, arrived in a plain brown box that looked like something you might bury a German shepherd in. The box says it all: it's big, it's down to business, it's big. . .
The $13,500 3000 is similar to the Stylus Color 1520. But unlike the 1520, the 3000 does not stop at A2 (13 X 19) size paper, but can accept long rolls for making images at almost any length, up to 16 feet by 13 inches wide.
As one would expect from a printer designed for professional use, the 3000 has four separate and very large ink cartridges. Most low-end inkjets have one black cartridge and one colour, which means running out of yellow ink, for example, will require replacement of the whole colour cartridge, even though the cyan and magenta ink wells may still be half full.
The 3000's tray design is much like previous Stylus Color printers. There is a holding tray at the front of the printer which has a transparent cover. Paper is fed into the printer from this tray and emerges from the front to be deposited on top of the tray's transparent cover. Because the 3000 handles everything from index cards and A4 sheets to A2 sheets, the tray has a clever collapsing design which allows it to contract when using smaller papers.
Although thoughtful, the collapsing feature made handling and replacing the transparent cover quite awkward when reloading the paper tray. I should think anyone buying a printer that can handle A4 paper would anticipate having to make enough room for a full-size tray. The collapsing feature is something I could have done without.