I love this printer!
Written: Jan 10 '05
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Pros: Cheap, high-quality, fast, quiet printer!
Cons: Duplex (double-sided) printing doesn't work quite right. Mac support a little lacking.
The Bottom Line: This is a wonderful every day printer that exceeded most of my expectations.
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| togasaki's Full Review: Canon PIXMA iP4000 Thermal Inkjet Printer |
Most people like to think about their printer as little as possible and have it just work. I guess I'm one of those people. I like printers that run worry free and last a long time with little maintenance.
The Canon iP4000 fits the bill.
When I was shopping for a printer, Canon had just started shipping the iP4000, so it was the top of the PIXMA line at that time. I was looking for a general purpose printer that could do a good job with photos, but be a workhorse in printing regular documents as well.
I find that most of my printing is printing stuff off the web, whether it be driving directions off of MapQuest, or PDF files downloaded from a web page. I also belong to an investment club, so I often have to print out many copies of a stock study, so it helps to have a fast printer, which the iP4000 definitely is! The duplex printing also intrigued me, since it's always good to save paper when printing all those stock studies. I usually end up printing on both sides manually, so having the option to do it automatically sounded like a time saver.
One of the biggest maintenance issues with any inkjet printer is getting the ink, and here's one of the key reasons why I like Canon so much. They standardize on the same ink cartridges across many of their printers, so it's easy to find the ink cartridges you need in almost any store.
It wasn't always like that. My previous Canon printer was the BJC-8200, and at the time I bought it, I had a really difficult time finding any stores that carried those cartridges. Even if they carried Canon cartridges, they would be for different models.
Luckily for me, Canon was just starting to standardize on the print cartridges for the BJC-8200, which used the BCI-6 series of inkjet cartridges: Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Photo Cyan, and Photo Magenta (6 cartridges in all). So as time went on, the ink was easier and easier to find, until now practically every place carries them, since most of Canon's photo quality inkjets use these cartridges.
On a side note, I've learned to use just genuine Canon cartridges, since I'm convinced that using a third party brand I bought at MacWorld Expo in SF last year caused my print head to clog up, and it's the reason I was in the market for a new printer. Why not get a replacement print head? Because even on EBay, it was $50, plus another $75 for the genuine ink cartridges, and that's pretty much the price of a new printer. It seems like printers are like razors these days, you get the printer for free and pay for the ink cartridges, just like razors and razor blades.
The PIXMA iP4000 also uses the BCI-6 cartridges (sans the Photo Magenta and Photo Cyan), and it adds the BCI-3e black cartridge. I was hesitant at first to move to a printer that didn't have the Photo Magenta or Photo Cyan colors, worrying about the quality of the photos I would be printing. But reading the reviews convinced me that this printer could hold its own when printing photographs.
The one thing missing for me was the ability to print on CDs and DVDs, which it sounded like the European version of this printer was able to do. This led me to consider the Epson R200 for a little bit, but when I looked at both printers in the store, the overall quality difference between the two printers overcame the need for a feature that I would use sparingly at best.
I ordered the PIXMA iP4000, and when it arrived it didn't disappoint. It was very easy to set up, like the BJC-8200 I had, and the instructions were very clear. It was ready to go in a matter of minutes.
It had software for both the Mac and PC. I have both (I use my Macs most of the time), so this was a big plus. The one thing I noticed though is that the software isn't as complete for the Mac, and you don't get as much printer information on the Mac as you do on Windows. For example, on Windows, you can tell how empty each ink cartridge is, but on the Mac, it only tells you when the cartridge is empty, at least as far as I can tell.
For example, when I'm on my Windows XP system, a popup warns me when a cartridge is running low on ink, and I can see the ink levels of all the cartridges (full, low, almost out, empty). But on my Mac, it doesn't tell me until I'm out of ink.
However, I am able to access most of the print options through the Page Setup dialog on my Mac, which is better than I could do with the BJC-8200. I can select the paper type, fiddle with the color balance, choose special effects, borderless printing, and duplex printing. However, there seem to be many more options available through Windows.
Some of the options that I see in Windows and not on the Mac include: Stamp ("DRAFT", "Confidential", "Internal Use Only"), selecting a background design, maintenance (print head cleaning, deep cleaning, nozzle check, and print head alignment), status monitor (tells you how full the ink cartridges are).
I hope one of these days, they include these basic options on the Mac side as well. So many artists and photographers use Mac that it would be a shame for them to use PCs because the Mac doesn't give them enough control when printing!
In any case, it's an improvement over what I had before, and the printer itself is wonderful to use. As the reviews I read said, it's output is high quality (for the price), and it's very quiet and fast. I was really impressed by the print speed and noise level. It really does make it much more enjoyable to print stuff, because you see it much quicker. If you are experimenting with how printouts look, it's now much easier to go through iterations of different versions without disrupting your workflow by having to wait long periods of time for the printer to finish.
I mentioned earlier that I print out stock studies for my investment club. Here was the place where I found one big flaw in the printer. I was excited about the duplex (two-sided) printing, specifically for printing out many copies of the stock reports. Unfortunately, I discovered that the duplex printing feature isn't all that it's cracked up to be (unless there's some setting that I'm missing).
I wanted to print out ten copies of a two page report, so I turned duplex printing on, and selected 10 copies in the print dialog. Sounds simple enough, right? Well what happened was a disaster. It printed out in duplex all right, but what it did was print out ten sides of page 1 first and then ten sides of page 2 next. This resulted in the first four pages having page 1 on both sides, the fifth page having page 1 on the front and page 2 on the back (like I wanted), and then four more pages with page 2 on both sides! This is ridiculous, and I can't think of any case where you would want the duplex printing to work this way.
Where duplex printing does seem to work is when you print out just one copy of a document. That seems to work just fine. For multiple copies though, it looks buggy. I haven't tried it on Windows, so I don't know if it would result in the same behavior as on the Mac. But it's definitely buggy on the Mac.
I don't use duplex printing very much anyway, so this is just a minor complaint. I've been extremely satisfied with this printer and recommend it without hesitation to others. I think Canon is doing a wonderful job of developing affordable, high-quality printers for the masses.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 140
Operating System: Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
togasaki
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Member: John Togasaki
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
I teach tennis and I play competitively in tournaments and leagues at the 5.5 level.
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