Canon PIXMA iP3600

First Impressions:
Very shiny black finish, inherent with Canon's iP range of printers, makes the ip3600 look like the sort of peripheral that Darth Vader would choose for his printing requirements . Print quality, for a five cartridge printer, is very good. Quality is actually on par with many seven cartridge printers on today's market. For photos, colours are accurately reproduced, albeit sometimes a little too vibrant, using Canon's own Easy Photo Print software.

After some use:
Print speed for photos and for text are OK, but it can take an awful long time to initialise - once it does get going it will print page after page without much hesitation. Noticed that the paper feed cassette and the paper collection tray, both located on the front of the unit, are fiddly and made from thin and flimsy plastic. Surely the designers at Canon should have known that those attachments where likely to be handled the most! After printing just 20 photos, on 6*4" paper, the on-screen ink capacity indicator is now showing that the Photo Black cartridge is nearly empty! - ink capacity appears to be very, very, poor for this product. Limited to using Canon's software to get the best out of photo printing - printed photos directly from Windows Gallery, but, in my opinion, the colours came out looking weird. I felt that Canon's software had limited functionality, with regards to selecting photo paper sizes, and had an out-dated, simplistic, feel when photo editing.

Summary
Good performance, but cartridges didn't last long. Flimsy, poor quality, plastics.