Okay, let’s get this in the open up front. This is not my first Canon printer and probably will not be my last. For two and a half years I happily used my Canon i850 printer. It never failed me. Well… until I finally wore it out. Since I was never disappointed with it, of course I didn’t hesitate to look for another Canon to replace it.

When I bought my i850 it was an easier decision. They had four basic models: a portable, a basic model, a nice midrange, and a heavy duty one. The i850 fell into the middle of the road, which was just fine for my purposes. But now; we are talking twenty plus models including the i860 which replaced my previous model. But instead of just ordering that model, I decided to take a look at what they had to offer, and what I needed it to be able to do for me.

This is when I took my first serious look at their PIXMA line of printers. My first thought was “Why do they look like big black box?” I mean I hadn’t read anything about the printers other that what I had seen on the Canon website. So I wasn’t aware of why the printer was shaped the way that it was. Here is the fast and dirty reason why they look the way they do. The PIXMA line unlike the Canon “i” series is a little more production printer, and a little less basic home printer. By this I mean they are just a little bit more of a workhorse than the average inkjet or home photo printer. This includes the muti–paper trays (one on top and one underneath), built-in automatic or manual duplexing, and they run noticeably quieter than most inkjets printers. The odd part is they do not cost anymore than the average photo inkjet printer,

Since everything I had read about these printers was positive, and I had luck with my previous Canon printer I decided to give one a chance. Then comes the neat logical question; which of the PIXMA printers to buy. The 3000 was slower than my previous printer so that one way out. So started looking at the next couple of printers in their series: the 4000, the 5000, the 6000, and the 4000R. The 4000 was more in-line for what I was looking for, speed, capabilities; and price. The 5000 model although faster and more heavy duty, it was overkill for my needs. The 6000 series includes digital film readers and a small little LCD display to preview images before printing from your smart media, since my digital camera doesn’t use digital media it is a feature that was not a selling point for me. The 4000R includes a 10/100baseT and wireless network support, two features that I do not need and a price that is way too high for me to drop money on without heavy thinking. So I decided to go with the 4000.

So the printer shows up. As with all of the other printers that Canon makes, this unit was quick and easy to set up. Install the print head, the five ink cartridges, two black and three colors, and of course install the drivers. It should be noted that even though this printer supports both parallel and USB printing neither cable is included with the printer. Not a problem in my case since I was already replacing a USB printer.

So I fired the unit up along with my favorite graphic software and started to play. Photos, graphic files, various paper stocks and of course multi-page documents to watch it print on both sides of the paper without me having to turn the page over and feed it through again. Everything worked they way that I expected it to, and they way it was advertised. Well, that is not entirely true. Nowhere on the Canon website, or the website of the company that I bought the printer from for that matter, was there a mention of the fact that it could duplex. The odd part is you would think that would have been one of the cooler features they could have mentioned. There is also no mention of the auto turn on and turn off feature that many printers do not have, or the fact that it has an ink monitoring system that actually works.

Everything that I printed out met or exceeded my expectations. Photos came out crisp clean and better than most printers out there. I learned this with my last Canon printer and the output quality has not gone down with this model. In fact it has gotten somewhat better with this printer since it has the two black ink cartridges; one for photos and graphics and one for black text.

I have seen that people have mentioned there is a long cycle time between the time the printer receives a print job and the fine it starts printing. This only holds true for the first job that you send to it during a sitting. If you are sending five or six separate jotas to the printer, you will only have that delay on the first job you send it. This was also true with my previous printer. To me it is really not that big of a deal. The actual print speed, and the quality of the printout more than makes up for it the little delay that you see during the start up.

In case anyone is wondering, I have not always bought Canon printers. I have also owned a series of Epson, HP, Lexmark and may the mistake of buying a couple of Panasonic and Okidata printers over the years. Unless something seriously changes in how Canon makes printers, or the quality of their output, I plan to keep buying them in the years to come.

On a side note. Even though the print cartridges for this printer are affordable compared to most printers; If you are looking for an extremely good deal I suggest ordering from http://www.megatoners.com. I have probably ordered forty or more cartridges from them and have never had a problem.


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 119.00
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh