Going down this same road and agreed all around. There is an updated AR? I'm not sure we've ever updated our copy.
I'm going to try out a higher end ink with AR. I've noticed that the dots on 2880 are much better looking than the ones on 1440 setting, in fact they look to be about as good as it's going to get in terms of clean shape. The catch is you can't control droplet size at 2880...derrrr. So the films I get at 2880 with AR are shady....as in, not outright opaque.