Yep, agree..going to $300 won't do you much as the Canon i960 is still the best recommendation that comes to mind. Altho for $300, the Canon i9000 is a medium format printer that allows you to print up to 13" x 19" borderless posters. It's essentially the i960 but bigger.
For better prints, it would take $450 in which case I would recommend the Canon i9900 medium format photo printer. It's not only bigger, but is better -it uses 8 inks..new inks for red and green.
All of the above printers support borderless prints and are extremely fast. ~5Xs faster than Epson & HP? Epsons use pigment ink which is more resistant to fade, but more picky about the paper it uses.
For the i960, indeed third party ink can save you tons of money. But not just any generic ink. Check out the printer forum at
www.dpreview.com for more info. And it's generally most compatible with Canon paper.
If you want to see how the prints look, I scanned in a 8.5 x 11 print off of my older Canon i950. Printed on cheap $0.20 matte paper. Keep in mind it's a scan, so as good as the scan looks, the actual print looks better.
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/openg/echeon/Scan%20Sample.jpg