My 4900 started acting strangely about a month ago. The deep blues were rendered as magentas. At first I thought it was a color gamut mapping error, but the soft proofs looked good. After a while, I thought to run a nozzle check. I had been lulled into a false sense of security by the 4900’s automatic nozzle checking; I figured the printer would complain if there were a problem. Wrong.
The nozzle check showed no dark cyan ink at all. I did a cleaning. No joy. Another one. Nada. I reseated the cyan cartridge. Nothing. I installed a new cartridge. Nope. I called Epson. They walked me through another cleaning cycle, then said: “Sure sounds like it’s broken, all right. Send it in, and we’ll send you a replacement.”
That sounds real simple, but when the printer weighs 130 pounds, the logistics are not trivial. The new printer arrived after a few days. It came on a pallet. I arranged to have some people with strong backs unpack it and swap it for the broken printer.
I connected the new printer via the Ethernet port, turned it on, created a reservation on the DHCP server with the Mac address of the printer, and power cycled the printer. It didn’t download the local networking information from the DHCP server. I programmed the network information manually. No change. I took a look at the Ethernet switch, and noticed there was no link light on the Ethernet port assigned to the printer. I swapped cables to no avail. I swapped ports with similar results.
I called Epson. They said: “Sure sounds like it’s broken, all right. Send it in, and we’ll send you a replacement.”
I am now waiting for the second replacement printer. I’ve got a show coming up, and I need to print images for it. Fortunately, the USB port on the first replacement works fine. I’ll limp along with that until the new printer arrives.
[Added: here are links to the rest of this tale of woe]
Hi thanks for sharing your 4900 experience. I am considering this model and somewhat
Bewidered that you have had so many quality issues. Did you finally get a replacement that worked properly? I hope so!
It seems the Epson X900 models are dogged with head failure issues and its hard to know whether to pass and wait for the next generation?
I did finally get a 4900 that worked, and it has functioned reasonably reliably ever since. The more use it gets the better it does.
https://www.kasson.com/bleeding_edge/?p=59
Jim