Canon Pixma iP6600D review

Canon uses the same driver for most of the Pixma models. The main tab has drop-down lists for choosing paper type and input source, as well as autofeeder and cassette overrides. You can also select continuous autofeed to change from one tray to the other automatically during long print jobs. You can choose High, Standard or Draft quality. There's also a custom setting that lets you select from dithered, diffusion or auto halftoning, as well as adjust a quality slider for gradations between fast/coarse and slow/fine output.

Although the iP6600D's driver can adjust colour balance automatically, you can access sliders that customise cyan, magenta, yellow and blank intensity, as well as choose between sRGB and Windows Image Color Management (ICM) systems for colour matching. Greyscale printing is only a check box away, and there's a simple but effective Print Advisor wizard that quizzes you on what kind of document you're printing, then recommends an appropriate paper.

Other page-setup options include size and orientation, number of copies, border/borderless printing and whether you'd like to add a watermark or a background image. An Effects tab has settings for optimising the image, reducing noise, boosting contrast or adding effects, including sepia, pink or other colours. You can save any of your settings as a profile for reuse during another printing session.

The Maintenance tab is dotted with buttons for nozzle cleaning, printhead alignment, nozzle checks and other tasks, including a bottom-plate-cleaning function that uses a folded letter-size sheet to tidy up prior to duplex printing.

Performance
Like most of the other models in the Pixma line, the iP6600D uses Canon's Full-Photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE) printhead, which emits droplets as small as 1pl for each of the colour inks -- cyan, magenta, yellow, photo cyan and photo magenta -- and 5pl for the black ink. Canon claims its ChromaLife 100 ink system will resist fading for 30 years when used with Canon Photo Paper Pro and Photo Paper Plus Glossy and framed in glass or ten years when not framed. Seal your prints in an album with a plastic cover sheet and keep them in the dark, and Canon says they'll be preserved for viewing 100 years from now.

Separate ink tanks improve economy, but you can expect to pay about £42 for a full set of refills. The CLI-8 inks, also used in several other Pixmas, cost about £10.45 for each tank. We found Canon-recommended paper stocks online for £13.95 for ten sheets of a semigloss double-sided paper for duplex photo printing (125x180mm size).

As you might expect, this six-colour printer's output quality fell between the results we saw with the four-colour iP4200 and the flagship eight-colour Pixma iP8500 (which adds red and green inks to the mix). The colours themselves were excellent: quite neutral and fully saturated. If anything, there was some over-saturation in the reds, quite pleasing for photos of hot air balloons or extraripe tomatoes, but garish in subjects that required more subtlety. On examination through a 10x loupe, those picolitre dots were easy to discern, however, and we spotted some jaggies in diagonal lines.

Jaggies weren't the only problem with our black text output, however. Bleeding ink adhered like a coat of lint around the edges of most text characters, even when we switched to a premium paper to reduce wicking significantly. If you're finicky about your text output, don't cut corners on paper quality with this printer, and don't expect the text to approach laser printer sharpness.

During informal testing, the iP6600D delivered 100x150mm photos in about 45 seconds, 200x250mm prints in a hair less than two minutes, and monochrome text at a roughly 15-seconds-per-page clip.

CNET Labs inkjet printer perfomance  (Longer bars indicate better performance)

Photo speed in pages per minute

Canon Pixma iP6600D

0.68 

Epson Stylus Photo R800

0.38 

Lexmark P450

0.36