Canon PIXMA iP 4300

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	Quick, automatic duplexing, individual ink tanks, can print direct from cameras
Disadvantages:	Paper manual could be better

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The only reason I bought this printer was that I had broken my previous one and therefore needed a replacement. By broken I mean I had dropped the power transformer onto the laminate floor as I had rather stupidly been carrying it by the cables, and the cable had come out smashing it into a thousand pieces as the plastic was so brittle from the constant heat. I decide rather than try and get a new power transformer for an old rubbish printer that was slow, noisy and whose print quality wasn’t up to much even though it was a photo printer (some Kodak Lexmark thing) that it was a good opportunity to buy a new cheap printer (I promise I didn’t do it deliberately, though if I had known how good its replacement would be it might have crossed my mind).

Why the Canon iP4300?

I like to look in Which? to see what are the Best Buys when I come to buy electronic goods (our washing machine, fridge-freezer, video and my digital camera were all chosen this way and I’ve had no regrets). From what I can remember (this was before Christmas) in the latest printer test Which? had reviewed the Canon Pixma iP4200 and this was a best buy, so I decided to buy it, but in my search for the cheapest price I saw that it had been replaced by the Canon Pixma iP4300, which on comparison was pretty much the same, and I thought surely it can only be better, and it was actually cheaper than the iP4200 that it was replacing. I bought the Canon Pixma iP4300 from PC World at the beginning of January 07 for about £58, but its RRP is £79. You can currently buy this printer for £59.59 from amazon.co.uk.

The Which? printer Best Buys in the test I looked at were dominated by Canon’s so this suggested to me that the Canon printers in general were of a high quality. Which? tested the iP4200 but as the iP4300 is based on it I think it’s fair to assume the test results would be very similar for it, and surely no worse. According to the Which? test on the iP4200, the cost of printing a black and white page is 3p, an A4 colour page 8p and an A4 photo 64p, which is very cheap. Performance wise Which? gave the photographic printing speed a rating of acceptable, they found the ease of use, versatility, quietness and black and white printing speed to be good, and the quality of both black and white pages and photographs to be excellent. The most important factors to me in choosing a new printer were print quality and low running costs, and as this printer scored excellent for print quality and as it had the lowest running costs of all the Best Buys it was a very easy decision to make. Alongside being a Best Buy it also got an exceptional value award and I can see why.

My digital camera is a Canon Ixus 40, so this was another deciding factor in buying this printer, as I would be able to print directly from my camera using PictBridge, not that I ever intend to print my photos on it as it is cheaper to get them printed professionally, but it is nice to know that I can.

About the iP4300

The iP4300 is an all purpose photo printer. It is compatible with both PC’s and Mac’s, and the printer connects to your computer via a USB 2.0 cable. The CD that comes with the printer contains some software to make editing and printing easier; Easy-PhotoPrint, Easy-WebPrint, CD-LabelPrint and PhotoRecord software for Windows but only Easy-PhotoPrint and CD-LabelPrint for Mac. It can print up to a resolution of 9600 x 2400 dpi (dots per inch).

The printer is black and rather large, it is 44.5 cm wide, 30.3 cm deep and 16 cm high, so it takes up a fair bit of space. The power button is on the front right hand corner and the USB cable plugs into the rear right side. Printouts come out of the front of the machine with the output tray folding up to become the front of the machine. From now on if I refer to the front of the printer I mean once the output tray has been opened.

The iP4300 has two input trays, one at the top of the printer and a cassette that slots into the front (below the output tray). If you have A4 paper in the front cassette tray the printer is deeper. Each tray can take approximately 150 sheets of paper. There is a button on the front of the printer to switch between the trays and it clearly shows which tray is selected, this is very handy as you don’t need to go into print setup on the computer as with some printers to see which tray you are printing from, it is also useful is you are printing via PictBridge. The cassette tray is internal so the paper in it won’t get dirty. I didn’t realise at first that this printer had two trays and was just using the top tray, and as the printer is large and filled up a lot of the room on my small desk (it’s about 100 cm by 50 cm) I was placing junk on top of the printer. This is what was happening if I wanted to use the printer – remove all junk from on top of the printer, open the paper tray, search for wherever I had left the blank paper and then put it in the tray, once done printing remove spare paper and close the top tray, place junk and the spare paper on top of printer. The cat would then come along at some point before I next used it with muddy paws and the paper would be covered in muddy paw prints. Now that I have discovered the internal tray (I read the manual) I find it is very useful, there is always paper in the printer ready to print, and it’s not covered in dirt. Having two trays is useful as you can use the internal tray for plain paper and the top tray for photo paper or headed paper etc, and it is very easy to switch between printing from the two trays.

Alongside being able to print on standard paper, envelopes and photo paper it can also print on T-shirt transfers, photo stickers and CD’s and DVD’s. It comes with a special tray that allows you print onto CD/DVD’s, and this slots into the front on the printer above the output tray. I have not used this feature and probably wont but I did investigate how to put the tray into the machine (I was curious, for some reason I thought it would go in the top and could not work out how the printer would print on the disk) and it seemed very straight forward and easy, you also get software on the CD for printing on the disks, which will make it easier.

You can print photographs directly from digital cameras that are PictBridge compliant, without having to turn your computer on. The cameras USB cable plugs into the front of the printer, and to print you turn the camera on and use the cameras LCD screen to navigate the menus and select what options you want. There are no memory card slots on this printer, but I never used the card slot on my last one so I don’t mind. I have had a go at connecting my Canon Ixus 40 up to it via PictBridge and it was very simple and easy.

One very handy feature of this printer is that it can automatically print double sided. I did not realise it could do this when I bought it and it was a very nice surprise when I found out it could as I like to print on both sides to save on paper. It will not print your document as fast if you select this option as once it has printed the first side it waits for the ink to dry before printing the second side, and for some reason I found this highly amusing first time I did it (I think it was late).

Setup

The paper manual that comes in the box has only 16 pages in English and is in 24 different languages, so it is quite chunky. It only contains very basic information, and on the whole the paper manual is not particularly helpful. You do get the full manual on the CD and this is far more useful and contains a lot of information, but it would have been nice to have this supplied in paper format. Installation and setup are explained on an A3 double sided sheet of paper that only contains pictures with references to the paper manual for more information, not that there is much more in the manual.

Despite this setup is very easy. Before you start installing the printer on your computer you need to prepare it first. This basically consists of taking it out of the box, plugging it in and turning it on, installing the print head and ink cartridges (which light up if correctly installed). Once this is done you turn the printer off and place the CD in the computer, this will install the print drivers and takes about 10 minutes, the A3 sheet shows each screen and what to select. After these are installed it prompts you to connect the printer to the computer and turn the printer on. There is no USB cable supplied with the printer, so you need to ensure you have a USB A-B cable handy, I got a 1 m one for about £7 from Maplin. Once connected the Found New Hardware wizard appears and gets you to align the print heads and print a test page. I was a bit concerned as the test page only prints in blue and black and I was worried that the other inks were not working, but I assume this is normal as the printer prints all colours fine. I would have appreciated a bit more explanation of each step for setup along side the pictures but setup is very easy and you will be printing in no time at all.

Ink

The iP4300 has separate ink tanks for each colour, this saves you money as you only need to replace the colour that is empty, and you don’t waste any ink. It takes CLI-8 black, cyan, magenta and yellow ink cartridges and a PGI-5 black cartridge. You get a partially filled cartridge of each of these with the printer and I have yet to replace any of them. Whilst I don’t use it a lot I was expecting to have had to replace one by now. Each cartridge has an LED that is lit if the cartridge is correctly installed (installing the ink cartridges is very easy). When the ink is getting low this LED starts to flash slowly, and when it is empty it flashes quickly, so you can quickly tell if you have any ink left without having to turn the computer on first. Each cartridge is also see through so you can see how much ink is left. You do get a pop up when printing from the computer if the ink cartridges are low or empty.

I wasn’t sure at first why it had two black ink cartridges but after a little investigation I found out that the CLI-8 cartridges are dye based inks and the PGI-5 cartridge is a pigment based ink. From what I can gather the pigment based black ink produces better looking text and the dye based inks give better looking photographs.

The iP4300 has the ChromaLife100 system, which is where the print head, photo paper and ink work together to help your photos look better and resist fading. By using genuine Canon photo paper and genuine Canon inks together with the printer, the printed photos will resist colour fading for longer. According to Canon the photos printed using this system will resist fading for 100 years if album stored, 30 years if displayed under glass and 10 years if exposed to light and the atmosphere. Obviously I can’t comment on whether this is true or not but it sounds good in principle.

Each Canon ink cartridge costs around £10, which seems a lot when there are five to replace, but each cartridge lasts along time and you only need to replace the one that is empty. Instead of buying Canon cartridges you could try and save some money by buying compatible ones which you can get for under a fiver, but then you can't guarantee the quality of the ink. You can buy a CLI-8 ChromaLife Pack which consists of the four CLI-8 black, cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges and a pack of 50 10x15 cm PP-101 Photo Paper Plus Glossy which will save you a bit of money, and then keep the spare cartridges until you need them.

Here are the page yields (number of pages you can print from an ink cartridge) for each cartridge according to Canon:

PGI-5Bk - 520 t&g (mixed text and graphics) and 3095 p (photos 10 x 15 cm)
CLI-8Bk - 5220 t&g and1305 p
CLI-8C - 890 t&g and 387 p
CLI-8M - 670 t&g and 271p
CLI-8Y - 700 t&g and 291 p

As you can see this is quite a lot of pages/photos so this printer does have low running costs and the cartridges are good value for money. At the end of this review I have put where I have found to be the cheapest places to buy the cartridges online so you can see how much the cartridges will actually cost.

Printing

According to Canon, this printer can print black and white pages up to a maximum of 30 ppm (pages per minute) but 14.8 ppm is standard, and colour text and graphics up to a maximum of 24 ppm with 11.6 ppm standard. I have not tested this claim, but I was shocked at how quickly it printed, it is very, very quick and makes my old printer look like it was from the dark ages in comparison. The print quality is also very good, with no lines or smudges, and text is crisp and clear and pictures are perfect. Canon claims the printer can print a borderless 10 x 15 cm photo in approximately 36 seconds. It doesn't take long to warm up either from being switched on, it is ready to print in approximately 20 seconds. I recently printed out 20 copies of a double sided word document that contained text, maps and photos, and the printer handled it brilliantly, the text was sharp and clear and the pictures were true to life, and all I had to do was set it to print and leave it for half an hour, and I didn’t need to be there to turn the paper over as it can print double sided automatically.

In Summary

This is a very good printer that is easy to setup, easy to use and produces excellent quality documents and photos and is also surprisingly quick. At £60 this printer is a bargain when you consider the quality and features that it has, you certainly won’t regret buying it. If you do decide to get this printer you will need to ensure that you have a USB printer cable handy as unfortunately one is not supplied in the box, but it does come with all five ink cartridges, though they are only partially full. It does also take up a fair bit of space so it is wise to measure where you are planning to put it to see if it will fit, I found it to be a lot wider than I was expecting (didn't really pay much attention to its dimensions). All in all for its price this is an exceptional printer, and it puts a lot of the more expensive printers to shame.

Best Prices

I have not purchased from these website so cannot say anything about their service, but these websites had the cheapest prices that I could find, prices are as of the beginning of June 07 and may change in the future.

ChromaLife Pack (see above for details)
Inkraider.co.uk & valueshop.co.uk - £32.49 + £1.49 P&P
Cartridgepeople.com - £38.99, P&P free, but is currently £28.99 if you pay with Google Checkout there is an offer on currently of £10 off if you spend over £30.

All 5 Ink Cartridges
svp.co.uk - £37.78 + £1.99 P&P less £10 with Google Checkout = £29.77
ebuyer.co.uk - £37.43 + £2.58 P&P less £10 with Google Checkout = £30.01
inkcyle.co.uk - £40.40 free P&P less £10 with Google Checkout = £30.40
inkraider.co.uk & valueshop.co.uk - £35.23 + £1.49 P&P = £36.72

PGI-5BK
cartcon.co.uk - £9.33 free P&P
inkcycle.co.uk - £9.40 free P&P
inkraider.co.uk/valueshop.co.uk - £7.99 + £1.49 P&P = £9.48

Individual CLI-8
inkcycle.co.uk - £7.75 free P&P
inkraider.co.uk/valueshop.co.uk - £6.81 + £1.49 delivery