Review on Effortlessly Print, Scan, And Plot With The Epson SureColor T3170M 24" Multifunction Printer & Plotter by Blake Clemons

We've been using the 3170 and 5170 for a while now. These printers have been reliable workhorses for printing of both posters and photos. You'd think with only three colors (plus black), photographic printing would leave something to be desired, but the output is more than good enough to result in frame-worthy photos so long as you start out with an image of high enough resolution to be blown up to these sizes. The wifi is dependable, firmware upgrades are automatically applied, and the overall touchscreen interface has been bulletproof for us. Both color and monochrome images are reproduced faithfully.One of the major differences between the two printers, beyond the obvious difference in paper width capabilities, is that the wider (and heavier) 5170 comes with a stand. The largely metal stand requires about half an hour to assemble, has casters on the legs, and incorporates a catching basket for collecting the output. A stand is available for the 3170 separately.One problem we've encountered is that of finding the proper paper rolls. You need 2" core paper, and while this is available from Epson, paper is often mis-identified if you buy it from typical sources. Sometimes 2" cores are specified as having 3" cores, and sometimes the reverse. Should you accidentally end up with paper wound around a 3" core, that won't work, and you'll need to rewind the paper around a 2" core. I'd recommend keeping a used up paper core available so that you can do this should you have to. We've had great luck with matte paper and are just beginning to work with standard glossy photographic paper. Either way, at about $100 for a 100 foot roll, you end up with your paper costs being only a dollar per foot of length. The real cost is the ink - the carts that come with the unit go quickly and you'll definitely want the high capacity ink cartridges. These can be tough to find; even Epson is out of the magenta as of this writing, and revain doesn't stock them. The set of high capacity inks along with an ink maintenance tank (and you'll need that after your second ink cart replacement) runs about $230. We've found the inks to last through about 80 feet of the two foot width and 50 feet of the three foot width paper, give or take. The 3170 and 5170 share ink cartridge specs, so we keep a full set of spare ink on hand that can be utilized in either printer. We leave the printers on 24/7 so the printhead doesn't dry out, and even if not used for 4 to 5 weeks, the printers have had no trouble on the first print after extended downtime. After many months of use, we haven't had to run a maintenance cycle on either printer.Both the 3170 and 5170 have been manufactured in limited numbers and are likely hand built at least to some extent. Epson has provided very good support. Both units work perfectly with MacOS under Mojave and Catalina, and we've been printing straight from Apple's Photos application without needing any drivers or software beyond what's already included in MacOS. We used this even to print out a 2' x 10' photo that was composed by stitching together several landscape images; this turned out well enough for wall mounting. The most difficult part of the process has been figuring out how to best mount a 2x10 foot photograph!One final note: with the 3170, you can easily print out 24" x 36" posters and photos. These are very quickly and easily framed if desired using off-the-shelf materials and poster frames. The larger output of the 5170 generally requires custom mounting work. Ultimately, despite the rather expensive buy-in, these represent a cost-effective way to generate high quality poster-sized output. Overall, these are impressive printers that are complex yet robust, and each is more capable than one would think given the limited color spectrum with which they work.