Thankfully, printers have gotten a lot better in the past few years — at least when it comes to photo printers. The Epson SureColor P5370 (Epson P5370) is one of those special ones meant just for photographers and brings with it a bunch of very attractive features. Besides the only $2,095 price point that will attract any serious photographer, one can fawn over the 4.3 touchscreen LCD, the new carbon black mode, and the awe-inducing quality you’ll get when using Epson’s great papers. Most of all, though, you’ll be amazed at its presence.
When I talk about the presence, I really am talking about its weight. The new Epson SureColor P5370 weighs something around 120 lbs. That’s how much I used to weigh in college. But unlike a human that’s easy to get a grip on, a printer is more or less meant to plant its x on a table and never move. Once you do that with the Epson SureColor P5370, your back will thank you.
Noteworthy Features of the Epson SureColor P5370
- Can print up to 17×22 inches, which is a favorite of our staff.
- 10-channel MicroPiezo print head, which ensures that the ink will come out easily with less waste.
- Droplets as small as 1.5 picoliters — which truly no one really knows how small that is.
- Dedicated channels for matte black and photo black ink. So the printer doesn’t need to switch back and forth.
- 10 color pigment ink set
- Epson is rating the durability of the print to 200 years with their high end Legacy paper.
- It can print on 1.5mm thick paper
- It also takes rolls
- Gigabit ethernet but no Bluetooth
- USB 3.0
- Wifi 2.5 GHz and 5 GHz
- The new carbon black mode is designed to work with glossy papers that will give the black levels some of the deepest you’ve ever seen.
- New software that also makes it easier to print and get the ICC profiles for different papers
- At $20.49, it’s more expensive than the P900, which we’ve also reviewed.
To most of the new photographers who care about masquerading as one for YouTube or social media — they probably won’t care about this. But for those of us who care a lot about being in galleries and museums, the Epson P5370 might be everything you need.
Printing itself isn’t all that difficult once you understand the products that you’re working with. Thankfully, they’re also far easier to set up these days than they were many years ago. For lots of photographers, it’s just not as sexy as a new lens. For those of us who really love seeing our images in a completely new way, the Epson SureColor P5370 could be everything you want and need.
Something else to keep in mind: it’s huge. It’s almost a meter on one side and pretty wide otherwise. The printer is designed to live on a desk of some sort. Personally speaking, I know that this won’t even fit in my office. In fact, after I was done with our briefing with Epson, I truly wondered why it was so large. My guess is because of the new print head. But I’m not sure, as I’d have to see it in person. As it is, review units won’t even be available until 2024 — nor will products for purchase.
We’re pretty hyped that Epson has come out with a new printer for photographers — which means that printing is still alive and healthy. That, perhaps more than anything else, should excite you.