This enables you to view your print as it’s being created and gives greater peace of mind that you’ve applied all the right settings. Another really nice touch is that the printer has a translucent section in its top panel, with the option of switching on internal LED lighting. For example you can easily alter paper and quality settings as well as keeping tabs on ink levels, as well as seeing how much time is remaining for the current print job. Other improvements over Epson’s previous large-format printers include the addition of a 4.3-inch color touchscreen, which is really useful for adjusting settings and keeping track of printing status. The 4.3-inch full color (looks can be deceiving) touchscreen is a useful addition, for keeping tabs on settings and printer status. As such, there are four black/grey inks and six color inks, aiming for superb fidelity for both mono and color photo printing. The 10 inks featured in both the P900 and P700 include Photo Black, Matte Black, Grey, Light Grey, Cyan, Light Cyan, Yellow, Vivid Magenta, Vivid Light Magenta and Violet.

The ink line-up itself is totally pigment-based, as preferred for robust, long-lasting quality, especially on matte and fine-art media where there’s no protective coating between the top-most inked layer of the media and the outside world.

Thankfully, like the smaller P700, the P900 finally features a dedicated channel for each of its 10 inks, so there’s no need to share. The procedure is both time-consuming and costly. For many users, it was a major frustration because each time you swap between matte media and glossy/semi-gloss/lustre photo paper, you need to purge the print channel and refill it with the alternative ink. The older models were very good but typically featured an ink channel within the print head that was shared between photo black and matte black inks. The Epson SureColor P900 follows on the heels of the older Epson P800 (opens in new tab) and previous A3+/13-inch and A2/17-inch printers.

As you’d expect from an A2 printer, the input and output trays add quite a lot to the overall size of the machine, once you extend them for printing.

Epson ink test