Try as you might, it’s difficult to get past needing a printer. Documents need printing, and photos, too.
Heaven forbid you happen to have kids in school, because someone at one point is going to want something printed. It could be homework or photos from a holiday, or just simply lyrics from the latest sing-song movie sensation so they can practice with their friends.
We might live in a mostly paperless world, but try telling that to the people who need prints the most. Or who want them to be bigger than the usual sheet of A4 paper. The moment you need to cross that threshold, there’s a good chance you’re spending up over $700, and typically closer to the thousand dollar mark.
Epson might have an answer in its latest printer, the XP-980, a printer offering slightly bigger than A4 without technically being an A3 printer. It’s a curious addition because it’s designed to handle the 11×17 paper size Americans use without actually being an A3 printer for what most of the rest of the world uses, Australians included.
The XP-980 will take 11×17 paper in its tray, but can support A3 technically at the back where you can feed paper in the rear, while handling A4 normally like everything else. That technically makes the XP-980 printer capable of the bigger A3 prints, just not traditionally.
Outside of this, the printer uses a six-colour system with a resolution of 5760×1440, while the printer also supports built-in scanning and copying, making it a multifunction of sorts, albeit without the fax, a feature no one really uses or includes in consumer devices anymore.
Unlike Epson’s large EcoTank printers, this variety uses the regular slim cartridges, and so you may need to buy a few of the Claria Photo HD inks, which cover black, light cyan, light magenta, magenta, cyan, and yellow. However, it is like the brand’s other EcoTank models with regards to how you connect, offering wireless control, including printing from iPhone, iPad, and Android, and there’s a 4.3 inch touchscreen, too.
Australians can expect to find it in stores shortly, with the XP-980 set to cost $399, putting it well under where A3 printers normally sit.
