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However my printer is 3+ years old now, and this issue may have been addressed in the more recent models.The price listed here of $4000+ is about 3-4 times more than you should pay. I have had to manually reload the roller every time I go to use it. I'm not sure why this price is so high, but if you search alternate sources you'll find one for closer to $1500. I second all the positive comments about this printer. Quality is fantastic, ink usage is surprisingly thrifty, and mine will happily print on just about any media I put through it.One caveat is that the roller does not always auto reload the paper after it's finished printing.
Roll feed has to be done properly, but you get the hang of it and works well +98% of the time. This printer is highly recommended.---Alex No fuss.- The roll feed is excellent, and a necessity. And although not light, I have picked it up and moved it by myself, but I wouldn't recommend that if you can help it.- The color, just as I had read in other reviews, is outstanding. As I had read, this printer is indeed a bit cranky about the feeding of single sheets, as they often get pulled in at and angle and jam.
A surprisingly robust printer, to be sure.After using the Designjet 130nr for over a year, here are my observations:PROS:- For a printer that gives prints up to 24" wide, it's surprisingly compact. Having used Epson printers for many years, I feared how much it would cost to keep feeding this thing ink to make big prints, but it is amazingly frugal with ink, even with high coverage. Maybe lighten or darken the print overall slightly, but that's about it. Colors are pure and solid as well. I don't know how it does it, but it does. I am still shocked at how long a cartridge of ink lasts, even though most of my prints are 20 - 24" wide and usually 30-40" long.
(My Epson printers made these marks on photo paper as well).- The front panel LCD display tells you, roughly, the amount of remaining inks, and the status (good/replace) of the printheads. This one I guess you could call a desktop printer, because it will take up an entire desk. I sometimes print on standard 8 x 10" paper and it usually works fine, but not always. Epson printheads would clog within a week of non-use and I'd waste buckets of ink just performing lots of cleaning cycles to clear them, but this HP never seems to need cleaning cycles. You can have a printout of all the consumables, and it seems best to go by that than rely on the front panel display.Overall, this is an excellent printer, does what it is supposed to do and does it very, very well, with the exception of the wheel tracks. I bought this printer (used) and even though it was very poorly strapped to a wood pallet for shipping and i feared that its delicate alignments and parts would suffer badly, it actually survived the cross-country trip remarkably well.
This printer has given me very few problems that weren't easily taken care of. I've taken pictures with a 'cheap' 4MP point-and-shoot camera, then produced a large 20x30 print from the digital file, without any other software, and made unbelievable prints. On HP paper, the blacks are deep and solid, which is really necessary to achieve clean contrasts. Because of this, you will not be so afraid to print large and print often, as it won't be as expensive as you thought.- The printer can sit unused for months, and then still make an excellent print first try without resorting to head/nozzle cleanings, unlike my Epsons. Stick with the much cheaper rolls of paper; they load more easily, and will keep your costs down.- There are small wheels inside the printer that hold the paper as it is fed through, and they sometimes leave slight indentations along photo paper as it feeds through. Believe me, there are 24" printers out there that are HUGE. Read the instructions, and use care. That's not supposed to be possible with only a 4MP camera to make a good print this size, but the pictures produced by the 130nr printer driver are outstanding.CONS:- Paper feeding, as noted, can be a bit of a pain, especially single sheets.
That alone sold me.- Here is the cool part. It's amazing. But don't let that scare you off, it is manageable. However, the display is not always accurate, and I have run out of inks and had an occasional printhead reach the end of its useful life when the panel says everthing is good, so it's a good ideal to keep extras inks and printheads on-hand. But it is annoying, and shouldn't be necessary. Use rolls.- No real issues here insofar as setting up, getting good color, networking, or troubleshooting. This is really not acceptable for a decent printer, but it doesn't always happen (I don't know why), and when it does, the 'tracks' will sometimes disappear over time, or with a bit of work with a small hand roller. But I have a rolling stand for mine and the printer doesn't seem too big at all.
The software/print driver that comes with this printer will enlarge (scale up) prints and artwork to make large prints, and it does an incredible job of enlargement. Just standard replacement of consumables (inks and printheads, both easily performed).- Ink seems to last a VERY long time. Some say that good color calibration is necessary to get good color, and that may be true generally, but I haven't had to do much of anything to mine. Also, rolls of paper are MUCH cheaper than an equal amount of single sheets.
One time I was not watching and the paper curled back and jammed the paper cutter (a big mess). The manual is not clear and lacks in depth information.Still, the printer does do a good job when it works. Good luck, if you need to contact them.6. I usually bring my laptop into the printer room when I use the DesignJet.2. I have serious problems when using Illustrator, such as artwork only partially printing.4. Therefore, I end up having to stand around while the printer prints which can be over 20 minutes.
My first job was a 5 foot by 24 inch poster and it looked fantastic. This printer is very frustrating: 1. As mentioned, the roll paper does want to stay rolled. The software drivers are very buggy for some applications.
This lead to a lot of trial and error and ends up wasting expensive paper and ink.3. Often there will be a problem and the log does not show any error. The quality is good, but not very accurate.5.
You're better off searching the Internet, because their technicians are clueless. The control panel display on the front of the printer is worthless. HP tech support is awful. In fact, I have to slide plastic shims into the printer to help the paper out of the printer.
I've tried different color profiles, but they all tend to print too bright. The log files are also not very helpful. This really defeats the networking option. The limited information is no help when a problem occurs.
Besides the page layout and setup can be kind of confusing on the get go. What the nr stands for is "network ready." If this is what you are looking for I can find nothing wrong with this printer and you should buy it as soon as possible. I am the administrator for this printer and I now have nightmares of hearing this thing start up and knowing I havn't printed anything on it from my computer. This version costs $1892.00 the SAME EXACT printer in every way except the network ability the Designjet 130 costs $1292.00 We even purchased this version knowing full well what it did and now we regret it because unless you work in an office of completely computer network savvy people you don't want this available to print from to the general office population.
WARNING. If its worth saving $600.00 and a few gray hairs I think the regular 130 is just fine. I think its best used by one user and people in the office submit "jobs" to that person to print. This is actually a GREAT printer and I highly recommend it however the main reason I am giving it a negative is to get your attention.
We have had repeated trainings and meetings about using this printer and it never fails we get someone once a week who doesn't realize they are printing their office memos on a 2ft by 4ft sheet of paper. Again, there is no change in print quality it is only the LAN unit that comes attatched into the system already. This is the Designjet 130nr. However, for most buyers they don't really want or need to be able to hook this up to a network.
It took me some time to get the hang of the various paper feeds and the printing interface. As bad as other people's experience has been, I've been able to have my two issues taken care of within a couple of days. The DJ130 prints beautiful photo-quality large-format images. I'm not sure if that's because I paid for an extended service plan. Take the time to wait on hold with tech support if you can't figure out an error code or you if don't understand something. It required ordering the part again, but it was up and working again within 2 days of my call. I've read other people have had to work to get accurate color from their set-ups, but not with mine.Keep in mind the printer needs some assembly, and it's pretty big, so don't expect to take it out of the box and start printing right away.
I was told it is important to keep it plugged in all the time, because it performs maintenance functions to keep the ink from drying in the print heads (or something like that).There are hard to understand error codes when there is are certain problems. So I end up going a month or so without using it, then print a bunch of stuff for a project, then it sits.
Then about 6 months later I had another problem, and they sent a tech to come fix the unit. The more experience you have with computers and large format printers (none, in my case), the easier it will be to figure out.I don't use this printer for anything other than large format printing, and I have come to only use it with paper rolls (not sheets).
Premium Plus Satin paper is highly recommended.I have had a couple of problems with the printer, but HP service has been great for the most part. But now that I'm familiar with it, it seems fairly straight forward.
I have had to get through a few bozos, but it didn't take toooo long to get results. At first set-up the unit had a problem, and I was sent a replacement part after going over my issues on phone support.
And I haven't had any problems since.The prints from the printer have been highly accurate without the use of a color profile (in Photoshop).
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