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zigzag · Sep 17, 2004, 06:10 PM

I'm looking to replace my HP 970 with either the new Canon ip4000 or 5000. The 4000 has gotten glowing reviews, and the 5000 appears to be the same machine but with 1 picoliter nozzles in place of 2 picoliter nozzles - supposedly the finer nozzles will provide smoother photo prints.

The strange thing is that the more expensive Canon - the 8500 - uses 2 picoliter nozzles like the 4000, but with 8 inks instead of 4 (although it also has many more nozzles than either the 4000 or 5000).

Anyway, does anyone have any idea whether the 5000 would offer a real advantage over the 4000, or is this some sort of marketing BS?

P.S. I found out why Canon doesn't offer CD printing on its US models: apparently someone else has claimed a U.S. patent on the technology (presumably Epson or whoever Epson licenses it from) .

tooki · Sep 17, 2004, 07:10 PM

All else held equal, droplet size makes a big difference in print quality. Adding more inks, all else held equal, provides about an equivalent increase in quality.

In any case, the difference should be noticeable, but not huge, just because even the iP4000 is starting from a very strong position.

tooki

Cadaver · Sep 17, 2004, 07:57 PM

I'll be buying a Canon Pixma 5000 in the next couple weeks. When I do, I'll post a mini-review.

bbales · Sep 17, 2004, 08:24 PM

I have the Pixma 4000 -- bought it a few weeks ago -- and I LOVE it. The pictures look like they came from the photo lab. I had a few problems early on, until I looked deeper in the manual and discovered I had some key settings wrong. Since then, I've printed probably 200 photos and have had only a few duds. And that was my fault, not the printer's. It's fast, it's quiet and the quality is very, very good.

That said, the 5000 didn't exist when I bought my 4000. I looked atht e price difference and perhaps would have gone up $70 for the 5000. I don't know though -- it's a pretty steep increase. But even the 4000 is really, really good.

Cadaver · Oct 16, 2004, 04:20 PM

Just bought the Pixma 5000 today... Amazing. Freaking amazing.

Pictures printed off iPhoto onto Canon's borderless "Photo Paper Pro" paper are simply indistinguishable from a 4x6 film print. Light years beyond what my Epson 880 could do. And this is 10 minutes with the Canon vs. two years of tweaking the Epson's settings.

The OS X drivers are great too - absolute top notch. Full control over all the printer's features, including the dual paper paths, duplex printing, and color correction (unlike Epson, thank you very much). The drivers alone on this thing are enough to tell anyone considering a printer for their Mac to skip HP and Epson altogether.

I can't believe a $200 printer can look this good.

joe · Oct 20, 2004, 11:04 PM

I've had my iP4000 for a month now with excellent results. Something not mentioned above is the included Easy-PhotoPrint software. It's OSX compatible and does perfect borderless prints every time. Also, I've used quite a few HP inkjets with the duplex option (work and home). The Canon iP printers have better front/back alignment when printing duplex IMHO. And it's a standard feature too instead of a pricey add-on!

I love the individual ink carts! No more throwing away half empty "color" carts when you run out of yellow. And though it's already mentioned above, the photo quality is excellent! It also does direct printing from digital cameras with Pict-Bridge.

Finally, The iP4000s have both front loading i/o trays (like HP) and a top loading tray (like Canon, Epson). So you can either use it on a bookshelf (HP) or on a desktop (any printer). Or just store different paper types in each! Both trays can be controlled by the OSX driver or a button on the front panel.

That crap about direct CD / DVD printing really pisses me off tho. This printer does direct CD/DVD printing in the rest of the world. It's just that some M$-wannabe has a monopoly in the US on direct CD printing. Too bad we can't just order the IP4000 from the UK and get the feature anyway. But the extra cost wouldn't be worth it for how little I'd use the feature.

zigzag · Oct 27, 2004, 10:59 PM

I bought the ip5000. Everything looks great so far, and the features are terrific (save for the lack of CD printing).

One question: if you're just printing an ordinary text document, is it necessary to go into the "Color Options" area in the printer dialog box and select "Graphics"? Does it matter? I don't want to use up the wrong ink cartridge, but this isn't clearly explained in the documentation.

tooki · Oct 28, 2004, 09:49 AM

"Color Options" affects the color management (=color matching), not anything else.

Which cartridges get used is solely controlled by the "print grayscale" checkbox -- when it's checked, only black is used. Regardless, these printers use cheap ink, and I've found that they're good at using the appropriate ink for a job. (Black only for true B&W jobs, color and black for the others, since it uses the colors to make smoother grays.)

tooki

Landos Mustache · Oct 28, 2004, 11:45 AM

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Light years beyond what my Epson 880 could do. And this is 10 minutes with the Canon vs. two years of tweaking the Epson's settings.

That is what I have been saying for over a year with my Canon i900. I went through every Epson on the planet and they are all clogging pieces of junk with 6 out of 10 prints messed up in one way or another from clogging.

With my Canon and over 400 8x10 photo prints in the past 1.5 years ONE picture was messed up slightly. That is it.

I don't know how anyone can have any respect for Epson after they see a canon.

davidflas · Oct 28, 2004, 01:59 PM

Originally posted by Landos Mustache:
That is what I have been saying for over a year with my Canon i900. I went through every Epson on the planet and they are all clogging pieces of junk with 6 out of 10 prints messed up in one way or another from clogging.

With my Canon and over 400 8x10 photo prints in the past 1.5 years ONE picture was messed up slightly. That is it.

I don't know how anyone can have any respect for Epson after they see a canon.

Word! (Canon i9900 owner)

AdotWu · Nov 1, 2004, 02:38 AM

you guys ever compare and epson print with a canon print? its a night and day diffrence. what pisses me off is how epson claims that they have the highest resolution printer in the market. go to an electronics store and the sales people will always reccommend you and epson because of their stupid resolution numbers. heres the catch. they only use 500 nozzles compared to canons 1000-3000 nozzle printers. next time you go into the store, bring your camera along and print a couple of pics off the epsons. i can guarantee you the pictures will look over saturated and grainy.

tooki · Nov 1, 2004, 09:36 AM

I've got an i850 at home, and could hardly be more pleased.

I agree about everyone on the Epsons -- they used to be the best on the market, but they're just not anymore. It's ridiculous that Epson's highest resolution comes at the cost of EXTREME print times (on the order of 20 minutes per page!!!), only to achieve results comparable to what Canon does in 70 seconds. And that with ink that costs 3 times as much. Honestly, I don't understand how Epson sells any printers at this point, with Canon and HP doing so much better. (I still say that HP has the very best plain-paper black and white text printing of any inkjet. For photo, I say Canon.)

tooki