[CaseCom]

Hi, all: I'm in the market for a photo printer. Mostly 4x6 snapshots, something larger once in a while. Both Canon's 4200 and the 8500 have gotten really good reviews. I know that the 8500 will give better photos with the 8-color printing, but is it worth twice as much as the 4200? I'm thinking the 4200 will be good enough for me. Thoughts?

(My camera is a 3-megapixel Canon S30, if that gives you an idea of the kind of photos I'll be printing.)

[tooki]

Keep this in mind: the 8500 is a dedicated photo printer: it is not a good all-round printer. The 4200 is a versatile unit, with both dye and pigment black inks, so that plain-paper black comes out solid.

The 4200 also is a newer model that uses the ChromaLife inks that are supposedly more fade-resistant than the earlier inks. (That said, I've had no fading problems with my pre-ChromaLife prints.)

What the 8500 gets you is speed: for a 4x6 photo, it's over twice as fast as the 4200.

tooki

[CaseCom]

Thanks Tooki. So would text on the 8500 look worse than text on the 4200? The PC Mag reviews seemed to say they were pretty comparable.

My existing printer (HP 5550) works fine for text, so I could hang on to that if I wanted.

The speed thing isn't much of an issue for me. I think the 4200 would be fast enough.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by CaseCom

Thanks Tooki. So would text on the 8500 look worse than text on the 4200? The PC Mag reviews seemed to say they were pretty comparable.

My existing printer (HP 5550) works fine for text, so I could hang on to that if I wanted.

The plain-paper text from the 4200 should be superior, especially on some types of paper. In particular, it'll be darker. Note also that the 4200 prints text FAR faster than the 8500: again, the 8500 is designed to be a dedicated photo printer, so it doesn't have an oversize black print head like versatile printers have.

Both Canons have built-in duplexing to let you print double-sided automatically.

HP's plain-paper black printing is, IMHO, the best of all inkjets. I don't think either Canon's plain-paper text will be as good as the HP's.

tooki

[orbital~debris]

I'd recommend the Pixma iP 5000, if it's still available (or if not, it's successor in the Pixma line-up)

When I was comparing the Pixmas, the 5000 came out with the best mix of photo quality prints and general usage printing capabilities.
It's been a very trusty printer so far (and works great in conjunction with my CanoScan as an impromptu copier). Whichever printer you go for, the Canon software/drivers is very good and there are many options to configure if you want more control (eg. quiet-mode printing after a certain time).

Oh and the styling on the (slightly) older Pixmas is better than the newer models, IMHO.

[tooki]

The iP4200 is the successor to the iP5000.

tooki