The two most expensive printers in this round-up, the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 and the Canon Pixma Pro9500 MK II, are about neck and neck in terms of quality output. But, if we were going with our gut, we might just pick the Epson over the Canon.

No printer at this level is easy to use – but the Epson is easier to use. It also has a clear edge in speed. Our test print of colour patches was output in a little over 80 seconds on the R2880 – that’s half the time that the Canon Pixma took to output the same file on the same settings on the same paper.

When printing photos on premium, glossy paper, the output is close to the original files. We printed photographs at A3 and A4 as well as test patches on all the machines. The R2880 came up with results that weren’t too lurid – that seemed real. Let’s not forget, commercial film processing habitually ramps up the colour gamut to produce images that are more “vibrant” – meaning more saturated. The Epson R2880 lets you make your own mind up and the results are pleasingly cool and measured without being washed out.

We also printed scanned illustrations on to art paper. In this department, the Epson faired less well – printing a little fuzzily onto the sample Fine Art Photo Rag stock supplied. We switched the paper out to some none-profiled, acid free watercolour paper and achieved better results – but the Pixma Pro9500 seemed to win this round, with sharper lines and harder edges.

Epson has packed several tech innovations from other models into the R2880. The lauded UltraChrome K3 system – initially implemented in their highest end range – is responsible for the R2880’s lifelike colour reproduction. One bugbear we have with the system here is that you need to manually swap between Photo Black and Matte Black cartridges for different print jobs. It seems like that shouldn’t have been an insurmountable design problem to overcome automatically; an extra tank space, a software switch in the driver. Easier said than done though, of course.

Overall, a superb machine if your budget can stretch to it.