I have had several Epson inkjets over the years. The first was an old one my uncle gave me. It may have been an 800, but I’m not sure after all these years; it had one ink cartridge with four colors. It clogged all the time.
My previous printer was a 1900. I did have to run test cycles and cleaning from time to time, but it was much more usable than the previous one.
Now I have the R3000, and sometimes it goes through tests and cleanings before printing, but automatically, so I don’t mess with it. I don’t print with it very often, but I’ve never had a clog that I had to do anything about. It has cartridges for matte black and “photo” black that use the same nozzles, so switching back and forth would use a lot of ink. Plain paper, CDs, and probably something else can use either black, so I just use the photo black all the time. Consequently the matte cartridge is old, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it would present problems. It’s not worth wasting both inks to test it out.
I’m still amazed at the quality of prints I get on first try printing out of Photoshop, but using “Printer manages colors.”