Print More,
It should be a tougher question than it is. But bottom line, for right now, if you're serious about quality printing, my recommendation would be to steer clear of the 360.
And that's a shame, because it actually has the capability to be a very fine printer.
And I should note here that I've seen and profiled several of both of these machines in many different environments.
The main issue with the 360 is that HP has chosen to make it a contone only printer. And what that effectively does is to take away the ability of someone who wants to profile it to get out of it every bit of its capabilities. In particular, the ink splits it's made into its contone process are so bad, that properly profiled, graininess from highlights to 3/4 tones is noticeably worse on the 360 than on its predecessor, the 260.
There are several other issues with the machine, but what they all boil down to is that it's made to be so idiot proof, that it's also expert proof, and it winds up being very much a lowest common denominator printer. If you're just printing middle-of-the-road stuff with it, you'll probably like the thing; but if you want all a machine's got to give, at present the 360 isn't going to give it up.
The 640 is capable of printing very high quality, but it does need to be correctly profiled to do so, and note that to some extent, if you run it with Versaworks, you're still limited quite a bit in taking full use of the light black channel, which can be very helpful in eliminating grey hue-shift on an eco-solvent machine.
By the way, I've got a ton of clients with 640's, and not one of them uses the white or the silver. You're right on there; don't waste your money.
Also, and in the HP's favor, I wouldn't worry about printhead cost.
One other note: Most people who have latex machines run them at 10 pass. And that's just as fast as you'd expect it to be. Speed demons, they are not. They're also still a pain to load compared to a Roland, and even though the 360 has solved the preheat-the-oven-for-every-print issue the old latex machines had, they still do have a longer warmup and drying time than any eco-sol. On the plus side, though, wrappers tend to love them because you can go straight from the printer to the laminator with no out-gassing time. But the less you're strictly using the thing for wraps, and the more for general purpose, the more all those things are probably going to bug you.
Myself, I'm so pissed at HP for locking away so much capability by making the 360 a contone-only machine, that if it was me, I wouldn't buy it just for that reason. For you, it probably boils down to just what you expect the machine to do.
Mike Adams
Correct Color
