Canon i960, The Choice for Non-Panoramic Home Photo Printing
Written: Apr 15 '07
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Pros: Print Quality & Photo Speed, Individual tanks, Optional Duplexer, Intuitive Driver
Cons: Paper Handling somewhat deficient, Slow Text Printing, Expensive Inks
The Bottom Line: If you're looking for a non-panoramic photo printer, this is the way to go because of its excellent photo quality!
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| jstergis's Full Review: Canon I960 InkJet Photo Printer |
My grandmother was looking for a new printer. Her Deskjet 670C had finally bit the dust. I was thrilled, as I hated that printer. I have a Canon S9000 printer that prints magnificent photos at very good speeds. She was interested in being able to print photos, so we veered toward Canon instantly, picking the i960 for around 200$.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
First off, as always, this printer doesn’t come with a USB cable, so make sure to have one on hand. It came with the printhead and all 6 cartridges (not starters-the full deal). All I really had to do was put in the printhead and take off some tape before I could plug it in, both easy tasks. I was surprised that there were two USB ports on the back of it. One is for USB 2.0, another is 1.1. I’m guessing you would plug it into 1.1 so XP won’t annoy you that it can work faster all the time. I don’t know if you could use it on two computers at once, some day I’ll take my laptop up there and give it a shot.
There is a spot for a duplexer on the back of it, we don’t have one. I think it’s around 100 dollars for it, but it is a nice option to have. I sure wouldn’t mind it.
SUPPLY PRICE
Ink runs about 10$ at Newegg.com (BCI-6 series, 6 tanks). I buy it from there as shipping is free and it beats retail stores. The inks only seem to run around 400-600 pages, what they’re rated for. She generally goes through about one ream before they need replacing, giving it an average cost of 8.3 cents per page. To me, this in intolerable, as I go through several boxes of paper per year in my Brother HL-2040, but for her it’s fine.
PAPER HANDLING
Canon rates the input tray for 100 sheets of 20 lb. Paper, and they also include a 4X6 tray you can place on the printer that holds (in my experience) 20-25 sheets of photo paper. I don’t really like how it handles paper, it snags sheets way too fast and feeds them crooked a lot of the time. On glossy photo paper it grabs them a bit slower, so it’s usually fine though. Never had it jam, I just don’t like how it feeds crooked sheets! I believe the output tray will hold around 50 sheets.
DRIVER/PANEL STATUS
The driver is well-laid-out. It is almost exactly the same as the S9000 driver. A shot of the general page is on this site: http://dpnow.com/vintage/Features/Printer_reviews/Canon_s900/In_use1/s900driver2.jpg
Actually, that’s for the S900 printer, but it looks exactly the same. The panel has a Green/Yellow LED and a Paper Feed/Clear Error button with a power button. The computer driver will tell you what’s wrong and what to do to fix it.
There’s also a Pictbridge port for your digital camera, which I’ve used a few times, works very nicely.
QUALITY/SPEED
While I can get a 4X6 out of it in around 40 seconds, I only get a sad 4ppm for printing much else, but then it is a photo printer.
Quality is awesome for photos and comes close to laser quality for text. Photos look lab quality, simply put. The only photo papers I get these type of results with are Canon’s Photo Paper (ridiculously overpriced), Epson Photo Paper, and Dell’s Photo Paper. Kodak and HP photo papers produce terrible prints on this printer, be warned! If you want to see the full ability of this printer, use Canon’s Photo Paper Pro. Never ever use a generic paper, it really hates every non name-brand I’ve tried.
IN CLOSING
If you’re looking to print photos, this does an awesome job of it, but if you run mixed text and graphics it’s way too expensive to consider. I wish I could give it 4.5 stars instead of 4, but I can’t give it the full five due to the excessive consumable prices, and crooked paper feeding. Go for it!
If you're looking for a panoramic photo printer though, look at the Canon i9900, or the older S9000.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 200.00
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
jstergis
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Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 1 member
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