Canon Pixma MP800 > Reviews (2)

One of the best Printers I have ever used, I purchased this printer after my Epson Photo Stylus RX425 started to get sick and eventually only copy prints, and after my Lexmark photo printer inks were putting a hole in my pocket.

This PIXMA MP800 Photo All-In-One delivers spectacular Print performance and is better then anything I have ever seen. It produces an amazing resolution of up to 9600 x 2400 colour dpi remarkable detail and clarity in your prints and produces virtually grain free images in each of its prints set at high quality. A 4"x 6" photo lab quality borderless photo takes approximately 36 seconds, but I have found that with most of my images it seems much faster which is superb.

The Copy feature automatically optimizes the quality based on the type of original you're duplicating. The convenient Photo/Film buttons allow you to make reprints of your photos and film without using your computer

. And the scanning enables you to produce exceptional 2400-dpi scans, which are vibrant and as close to the original as possible. You can simultaneously scan up to 6 frames of 35mm film (negatives or positives), or up to 4 mounted slides of film. It also has a CD printing tray and you can print on printable CD's. There are 3 different memory card readers which is pretty much all you need, and also a PictBridge port to print things straight from your camera which I have tried and it works superbly. One of the best features for me are that it also has 2 paper trays, one at the top and one in a slid tray at the bottom so you can switch easily between photo and normal prints on normal or photo paper.

I bought this printer for my college work, as my college has 16000 students and there are quite a lot of students printing on the same copier at the same time, and what a great decision it has been so far. The print quality is far superior then my Epson printer, and the print outs come out almost 20 times faster.

This is a superb printer, and is very professional, and has a 3.5 inch colour LCD screen which makes things very easy to navigate and is bigger then most high quality All-In-One printers available and it kind of looks like a Sat Nav (Tom Tom), the scanning quality is fantastic, and it can print out as fast as a copier on fast function and the ink lasts very long if you use it on a reasonable basis.

This is the first time I have ventured into the canon printing world and I was stuck deciding whether I should buy this printer or the Canon MP530, although that printer is £70 cheaper, it has less features, such as photos slide printing, faster speeds, larger LCD colour screen and resolution, although it does have CD printing.

The only downsides are that is very heavy and very big, and the ink costs around £40 to refill all 5, about £32 to refill the main 4 ink tanks, but the inks are pretty cool and light up red. There are also compatible inks that go with this printer, and are only like £2-3 for each of the 5 inks and can be bought on eBay or any ink retailing site such as www.

colourwise.co.uk and www.ab-inks.co.uk and many more. You can also get Ink refill kits for slightly more, but more ink for this printer from eBay and such, that saves more money then compatibles and is quite simple, but make sure you cap the ink hole where you drilled into the top straight away once you have injected the ink, as it is air tight and ink escapes through the bottom when it is exposed to air. The inks from this printer are also used in the lower MP530.

But a big negative to this cheap efficient way of ink sustaining is that you have to remove the chip from an original cannon ink cartridge and place it on the compatible cartridges, and also your printer reads the inks as being low at all times or not being able to detect the correct amount of ink. Also with Ink Refilling and cartridges, your printer memorises the use of wrong or non Canon inks being used, so your warranty may be void if you use them.

I decided to stick with official Canon inks and you can get them cheapest on Amazon.co.uk as I have searched everywhere, but make sure you buy from Amazon and not a Amazon marketer as they charge a crazy £4.50 for shipping because its under the electronics category, although if you are very low on budget, then you could consider compatibles or ink refilling which I used to do on my other printers at one point.

In all, it's a Smashingly Great printer, well worth the money, has numerous superb features and is pretty much the same as the newest Epson Printer the Photo stylus RX700 (approx RRP £300), but at about half price, and better in my opinion as Canon istop notch for photos and printing. Although if you don't have the space (approx 17.5" or 45cms wide and 9.5" or 24cm high) or the money (approx RRP £165-180), go for another printer or the lower Pixma MP530 (approx RRP £100-120) which uses the same ink tanks.