Canon PIXMA iX4000

Author's product rating:   

Picture quality	Excellent
Printing speed	Fast
Colour sensitivity	Excellent
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	The quality of the Photo printing and it prints to A3
Disadvantages:	Setting it up

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I bought a Canon Pixma ix4000 about three months ago. I'm not a technical expert, either in computers or in printers, so this review may be bit lacking in some technical details.

I already have a Sharp AL1457D (a multi purpose laser printer, scanner and copier) which I use for most day to day printing. The sharp only prints out onto A4 and is Black and white. I like taking photographs so I set out to buy an extra printer that was good for photographs and could handle A 3 printing, occasionally I need to print out some poster sized stuff. I also wanted something that wasn't going to cost a fortune to run, I had been using a Lexmark colour printer which only took one cartridge which i thought was expensive.

I had a look around and decided on the Canon. I paid about £225 for it, I've checked and you can get them now for around £170 (sods law really).

The Canon meets all of my needs. It prints up to A3, fairly quickly (if its' B&W). it prints excellent quality photographs (both colour and black and white), to look at them you would think that they were produced by a Professional photo lab, they are that good. I take lots of digital photos using a Canon EOS 300D. The printer produces picture quality that is just incredible, the subtlety of tones are great. I took some photos in the autumn in the peak district with the sun going down the quality of the shadows is ace. The man who sold it me told me that its all to do with the droplet size of the ink and the fact that Canon Full-photolithography Nozzle Engineering (FINE) creates accurate inkjet nozzles. OK I don't really understand it either all I know is that it works. I've also been told that the ink canon uses for the printer lasts for years. I don't know if it does ask me in ten years time.

Its' also compatible with my camera and also pictbridge compatible, which is a bit of a bonus.

It's also not particularly noisy, its' louder than the laser printer but not intrusive, I can still work whilst its' printing without being distracted, its only about 2 feet away from my desk, so noise isn't an issue.

I also wanted something that was more efficient in terms of ink. The Canon has four ink cartridges (black, cyan, magenta and yellow). Apart from the first set of Cartridges, which didn't last that long, (I gather that the free ones that come with it are only half full...something most manufacturers do...) the replacements have all lasted well. They're not cheap but equally they're not undully expensive. You get what you pay for.

In terms of speed, standard A 4sized, I tend to get around 16 pages a minute (I've only used it a few times for B&W - normally when I've forgotten to pick up new toner for the sharp) Colour is variable around 4 - 12 pages a minute, depending on what I'm printing. That's a bit slower than the book says but its' fast enough for me. If I print out on A3 in colour it takes much longer, even A4 can take longer if I print out on colour with the settings on Fine. The type of paper also has an impact. So its' actually fairly difficult to give precise speeds.

All in all it was a good purchase. the only real drawback was setting it up in the first place.

It arrived in a big box full of packaging, canon must have shares in whoever makes polystrene.... after I unpacked it I was unhappy to discover that it didn't come with a USB cable. I then turned the house upside down to find a spare. I put the print head in and inserted the ink cartridges. Before buying it I'd been told it was fairly easy to set up. I'd read a few reviews saying it was "fairly straightforward". wel it wasn't, perhaps its' my fault for not being a technical expert. Anyway after about an hour and being ready to throw it through the window a few times I got it to work. I had a problem installing the drivers. Anyway It worked and I got to play, the anger and annoyance evaporated when I saw the quality of the photos.

Since then I have used it to print out loads of photos and I have never had a problem with it. There is a bit of ongoing servicing that is supposed to be done, there's a bottom plate that should be cleaned, I haven't yet, it catches ink from borderless prints and you should clean it off occasionally or it can catch other photos etc. I will at some point. It also has never jammed or chewed up paper (yet - touch wood)

It ticks all the boxes for me, it does everything I want.

For those who need technical detail:-
Its' an Inkjet colour photprinter that weighs about 9kg and is compatible with pc's and mac's. It works on USB connections and prints, importantly for me, with a max colour resolution of 4800dpi x 1200 and is pictbridge enabled.

It prints on almost any sort of paper you want it to up to and including A3. It has a sheet feeder of 150 sheets (which isn't particulary big but is adequate). It will also print borderless. It will print on paper weighing anything from 64g/m2 to 273g/m2 (Kodak Ultima photopaper is 270g/m2 - most is less than that).

It needs windows 98 or better or MacOS X 10.2.8 or later (at this point I'm copying off the instruction book). talking of the Instruction Manual, its' helpful and fairly welll written. i could understand what I had to do to set it up I just couldn't do it. The Manual is actually extremely useful.

Set up problems to one side it has been an excellent investment. I would seriously recommend it