I took on this review assignment because I've had considerable history with printing, both silver and digital, and printing with Epson printers. Over the past few years this interest has led me on an odyssey through various printers, profiling, and a considerable amount of (early) frustration.

I had an Epson 4880 that worked great for about 8 years. It finally started having some issues so I bought the Epson 4900 (the 4880 had been discontinued). At this writing the 4900 is dead after about 6 months of use. And it wasn't a fun 6 months.

It is an excellent printer - beautiful gradation on the colours. Bigger than one thinks, but not difficult to set up and install. Excellent service from Pixmania and suppliers in Germany.

We thought the Canon Pixma Pro-100 was big, but then the Epson Stylus Pro 4900 arrived. Let's just say it took two of us to lift it out of the box, and we could barely find a desk big enough to accommodate it.

Loved it at first, not anymore. We needed a wide format printer, the previous (now unavailable) model came highly reccomended. We have had this for only six months and when we turned it on yesterday after a few weeks of being idle we got a service message that read: Service Required, The printer's...

This professional wide format printer is fantastic but will be overkill for most users

Very nice machine, very good price, timely deliery and easy set up. Would recommend to anyone interested in this type of machine.

I have been using the Epson Stylus Pro 4900 printer for about a week, which gave me plenty of time to familiarise myself with it. I couldn't wait to see how the 4900 would perform against my faithful Epson 4800. It uses 11 UltraChrome HDR ink cartridges, and includes the new orange and green inks.

Fast printing; Fantastic quality on photo paper and fine-art paper; Paper roll does reduce the cost of your printing

Large and heavy; Manually loading from top feeder could be easier

If you're a professional photographer or print-maker, you no longer need be dependent on third-party labs and equipment, even if your requirements are as exacting as they are ambitious. The Epson Stylus Pro 4900 is massive by the standards of any printer we've ever reviewed before, at 430x840x770mm.

Although there is no denying that the quality of print that comes out is extremely good, this is nothing more than an overpriced paperweight. Just over a year old and ours requires a new part which costs only a little less than what we paid for it.