Does anyone have any experience of Large format (e.g. A1) printers. The reason is that my wife has a couple of shops (ice-cream parlours) and we were looking at how much it would cost to knock out posters for particlar promotions and events. I see there are a few sub-£1000. Are these a viable option?
Based on the consumables cost for doing a full colour print you may be better off getting friendly with a printing shop to do these for you. What models were you looking at?
Unless you're going to be doing lots and lots of printing, as saspro suggested, you might want to use a print house instead. If you are going to be doing lots and lots of printing, look for a printer that uses a continous ink system, or one that can be upgraded/hacked to a continuous ink system - this will cut down on ink costs dramatically.
Allthough this idea has gone cold, I still would throw in my two cents for those interested in getting an DinA1 printer. A reasonable entry-level A1-printer costs around €2500. To name the three biggest companies and their entry-level models there would be the HP Designjet Z2100, the Epson Stylus Pro 7700 or the Canon imagePROGRAF iPF6300. To make it worthwhile compared to a copy-shop, you need to print some 200 A1-posters a year, and then it's still questionable, if you can achieve the same quality with these entry-level printers. The more advanced models with better ink and electronics etc cost €6000+, like the Epson Stylus Pro 9900 for example. So for a small business or private person, that doesn't print alot I wouldn't really recommend these large printers.
