Seb, I sure can understand your concern in that respect to these printers, as I have and still do worry about those dilemas. The Canon I had for about 6 months and never had any banding or any problems at all for that matter. there had been times when I had not printed for a week or so and no clogging. The 2200 so far has been great right from the start, and no banding or issues after 60 8.5x11 sheets. . .mostly testing andsettings. Inks seem to last a bit longer with the 2200, maybe because the tanks are a bit larger, and ink is cheaper. The 9900 ink tanks would run 10.95 and 11.95. . .the 2200 I find the tanks for 9.95. So far, from the 60 or so sheets printed, I have replaced the light magenta, light cyan, then black, and now just replaced the cyan and light balck( which are still full at this time)
Funny thing is if I try to use any profiles, like from epson or another paper company, the prints usually come out darker and not very accurate. I must be doing something wrong. But when I print with no color management at all, Prints come out like what I see on the screen. Sometimes they are not quite as popping and brilliant as on scrreen then just up saturation and brightness a bit and it gets going. For b&w images, I find that I have to dial in a - 3to6 magenta to nuetralize the grays, as the 2200 seems to be a little heavy on the magenta.
I just got some sample fine art papers and other types and will see what I like . Something I could not think of doing with the 9900.