An exellent printer (Canon Pixma iP4600)

Member Name: warandpeace

Product:	Canon Pixma iP4600
Date:	10/07/09 (228 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Duplex printing, low running costs

Disadvantages: Fiddily to load paper at first

After falling into the trap of the cheap printer but expensive ink with my previous HP printer, this time I decided to do a bit of research into the cost of ink first. While the Canon is more expensive upfront than some printers though not by a huge margin, it makes up for it in cheaper running costs.

The printer itself is a solid unit and has two paper loading sections one at the top which is very much what you would expect from an inkjet and a loading bay at the base of the printer. This was somewhat fiddly to use at first as it took some time to work out how to extend the lower cartridge so A4 paper could be loaded, but once it is done once it becomes easy to do in future. The two tray system is advantageous in that you can have regular paper in the lower tray and use the top one for photo printing. However on this note while the cost of ink is lower than some, it is still likely cheaper to have photos printed by one of a myriad of online companies

Print quality on photos is excellent though as it is on conventional printing, the printer also has built in duplex, meaning it can print on both sides automatically.

Ink wise, it uses five cartridges, allowing you to change just the colour you have run out of, official cartridges are about £8 - £10, and are chipped to try to stop you using generics. However you can buy generics fairly cheaply with the chip in place for about half as much (£4 - £5), and while there might be a slight decrease in quality, it is evidently too subtle for me to notice.

Summary: An exellent inkjet, with low running costs and a range of features

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Print quality: