The Pixma iP4000 is the flagship in Canon's new line of four-colour printers. What does that mean for you? Direct printing from a Canon or PictBridge-compatible digital camera, good print quality across the board, fast print speeds, and best of all, a low price.
Design
Taking a page out of Epson's book, the Canon Pixma iP4000 eschews the bulging-belly design in favour of a rectangular bread-box look. Frankly, neither approach is terribly attractive or innovative, but in the iP4000's case, we appreciate that the top input guide and the front output tray fold into the body of the printer for a clean, uncluttered, 'at rest' look. One unusual feature in a low-cost inkjet is the 150-sheet paper drawer that slides in and out of the bottom of the printer -- generally found only on HP inkjets and higher-end laser printers.
We also like the way the power button is embedded in the right-hand corner of the printer; it doesn't do anything special, but it looks good. When you open the output tray, you'll see a button that lets you toggle between the top and bottom input trays. The change is indicated by LEDs much like those on a photocopier. There are also USB and parallel ports so you can connect the printer to your PC or Mac (no cables included) and a direct-print port for Canon cameras or any camera that supports the PictBridge direct-print standard.
Features
The Canon Pixma iP4000 is a four-colour printer. This means that you get dye-based cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks plus a pigment-based black. You can replace cartridges individually, which saves money and reduces waste because you don't have to throw out the whole expensive colour set every time one hue runs out.
Canon includes a few photo-friendly applications on the installation CD. You can use PhotoRecord to make and personalise a photo album; Easy-PhotoPrint for tasks such as quick, borderless printing and red-eye correction; and Easy-WebPrint, which ensures that you can print an entire Web page without cutting off the edges.
Canon's drivers are extremely easy to use and offer enough advanced options to keep the family digital-photo geek busy. The drivers are organised into tabs. The Main tab lets you adjust print quality, paper type, and colours (including a manual option for regulating individual colour levels and intensity). It also features the Print Advisor button, which asks questions about your intended print job and adjusts driver settings accordingly. Other tabs include Page Setup for paper size, borderless printing, and manual duplexing (printing on both sides); Stamp/Background for adding stamps and watermarks; Effects, which lets you create simulated illustrations and vivid photos; and Profiles, which saves your personal print settings. There's also a Maintenance tab for cleaning, tweaking printhead alignment, and setting the quiet-print mode.
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User reviews3
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Roger Hodge 18 July 2005
Good: Quiet operation. Duplex printing. The price. The look.
Bad: Nothing yet.
Comment: Having had Olliveti, Epson (high maintenance) and HP (expensive ink cassettes) printers this is the best by far. The print quality is very good and the paper stack, of which there are two, means that it doesn't need filling so often. It's quiet operation allows it to be used late in the evening without disturbing the family. So far, three months, it seems to be cheap to run on ink. The duplex printing is really neat and avoids having to remove the paper and insert it again after turning it round to print on both sides of ther paper.
Keith Berry 7 June 2005
Good: Its output; trouble-free feed; quietness; ease of use; appearance.
Bad: Nothing so far.
Comment: I've owned my iP4000 for three months and I continue to be impressed by it, particularly after owning two Lexmarks in a row. I'm just not accustomed to placing paper in a feed slot and having it travel through the printer without having to prod it or pull it out of the works.
Printed text and diagrams are crisp and clear and digital photographs emerge looking just as good as they did on the monitor, without banding or stripes - remarkable. In 35 years of 35mm film photography I never had quality this good.
Paper can be fed from either the auto sheet feeder or the cassette underneath, and you can print on both sides of the paper automatically. There is also a plate into which you can insert a suitable type of CDR or DVDR for printing upon.
The nearest thing to a problem that I've experienced is when 6 x 4" photo paper in the cassette has curled up and blocked the feed, but the flashing LED code alerted me to it before it could jam. If I had to buy another printer right now I'd buy another one of these without hesitation.
Steven Heaven 17 May 2005
Good: Ok printer
Bad: Where do i start?
Comment: Not all that. Bit plastic. Not great quality. Never again!
See all 3 user reviews