Not. Half. Bad.
Written: Jan 26 '03
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Pros: Spectacular output, cheap cartridges, quick printing.
Cons: Takes ages to boot up. Large. Very large.
The Bottom Line: Cheap ink. Good printer. Sounds like a winner to me.
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| zero_'s Full Review: Canon BJC 6000 InkJet Printer |
The Canon BJC-6000 is one solid piece of gear. Not only solid in terms of output quality, software package, and speed. No, solid in physical terms. You see, I found mine in the trash. Someone had unceremoniously dumped it there, presumably because they had broken the clip off of their black ink cartridge and were unable (or too stupid) to get it unstuck.
Of course, no geek worth his salt travels without a pair of hemostats and a multi tool. I remedied that little problem right quick.
And the trash find BJC-6000 works like a dream. To be honest, I was very surprised with the quality of this printer.
I cannot comment on the package or bundled software. I have neither. However, I can comment on the driver software itself (helpfully available from Canon's website). It's quite feature packed, with numerous diagnostic tools, spooling options, and settings. A little daunting for the beginning user, but the defaults are good enough for most printing tasks.
The BJC-6000 has an interesting multicartridge design. I rather like its cartridge setup, as a matter of fact. It uses one cartridge each for black, magenta, cyan, and yellow. This is unlike many other inkjet printers, which have one cartridge for black and one that does all three colors. In addition to having less color ink capacity than the 6000, printers like these can run out of just one color of ink and leave you having to replace the whole expensive color cartridge even though two thirds of it is still just peachy.
So, obviously, none of that. The print heads of the 6000 are also built into the machine itself. Many modern inkjet printers have their print heads built into the cartridges rather than the printer. This is why ink carts for so many printers cost a bloody mint. Cartridges for the 6000 only cost about ten bucks a pop if you shop around. Unfortunately, each ink color is sold separately - That's 40 bucks for all four carts. That's still cheaper than what you'd pay for an integrated-head black and color cartridge for a comparable inkjet printer, mind you. In addition to their simple (and transparent) nature, the 6000's cartridges are very easy to refill. Each has a tiny air hole in the top so the ink can drain (think holding your finger over the end of a straw to keep the soda from dribbling out), which can easily be used to refill the cartridge with any of a number of retail printer refill kits. Hey, anything that doesn't need a hole drilled in it is fine by me.
There are also available photo ink cartridges, with three off-tone colors for more accurate photograph reproductions, and high capacity black ink cartridges. That's approximately three times more black ink than you'll need in a lifetime, for reference.
Now, on to the quirks. First and foremost is this printer's size. It's a standard feed-from-the-top design, but this printer is unusually wide and slightly deeper than most of the consumer market printers around today. I consider this a fair tradeoff, but some people have small desks. Maybe we could start a charity for them or something. In any event, the BJC-6000's got a large footprint.
Second and most irritating, however, is how long the 6000 takes to grind its rear into gear when you first turn it on. Up to a minute and thirty, depending on how soon you try to throw a print job at it.
After it warms up, though, the 6000 spits out the pages right quick. In plain black text-only mode this thing can easily crank out a page in less than fifteen seconds. Maybe even ten. I've never timed it. It moves them pixels when printing in standard color mode, too, but slows down considerably in maximum quality photo mode. Most printers, do, though.
Speaking of maximum quality photo mode, the output of this printer is simply amazing. This is easily one of if not the best consumer inkjet printers I've had the pleasure of using. My Lexmark gets close, but that's about the extent of it. The only thing I've personally seen that tops it is a true high dollar photoprinter - which isn't exactly something you're going to be using to print out your book reports. For an all purpose job the BJC-6000 is really something.
Most pleasing to me, though, is how close this thing can print to the edge of a page. Within a quarter of an inch on the ends and an eighth of an inch on the sides with an 8.5x11" page. That's pretty darn good, all things considered. Full page photos are certainly within your grasp with this printer. Needless to say, I cranked out quite a few playing with this thing.
The BJC-6000 also supports ExifPrint through software so you can print directly from the Canon camera of your choice. It doesn't have the snazzy plug-into-the-printer feature of the newer and shinier Canon models, though. You have to plug your camera into the PC the printer's attached to. That's not a whole lot of skin off anyone's noze, if you ask me.
I get no one's complaints about paper handling on this printer. I was feeding it the backs of half printed and half crumpled sheets that had already been run through the laser printer at work and it sucked 'em up and spit 'em out just fine. No jams, no crooked sheets. I ran one standard evelope through the thing and didn't have any problems, but I haven't tried to load a stack of them yet.
The kicker is you can't buy these things retail anymore. Ink cartridges are cheap and plentiful (the same carts are used in many Canon printers), but the printers themselves have to be bought secondhand or from the web. The upshot of all that is that they go for pretty cheap nowadays. You can probably snag one for 60 bucks or so if you play your cards right on Ebay. If you can find one, spring for it. Highly recommended.
Recommended:
Yes
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
zero_
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Robert "Zero" Drendall
Location: Claymont, DE, United States
Reviews written: 102
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
Providing your semi-regular dose of extreme verbosity since somewhere around the turn of the century.
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