
Canon PIXMA iP4000 Inkjet Photo Printer
| Print quality: text/color graphics | Very Good/Fair |
| Print quality for photos: Optional photo inks used when available. | Very Good |
| Speed | Very Good |
| Rated speeds | 25 ppm, monochrome; 17 ppm color (draft mode) |
| Tested speeds | 6.8 ppm text; 2.5 ppm graphics |
| Ease of use | Good |
| Features | Good |
| Maximum true resolution | 4800-by-1200-dpi color; 600-by-600-dpi monochrome |
| Maximum resolution | 4800-by-1200-dpi color; 600-by-600-dpi monochrome |
| Maximum paper size | Letter |
| Standard input capacity | 100 pages input, two trays |
| Paper feed options | No straight paper path, no manual-feed slot |
| Interfaces | USB 2.0, parallel port |
| Size (width/depth/height) and weight | 16.5 by 11.3 by 6.7 inches; 14.9 pounds |
| Support | Good |
| Warranty | One-year warranty |
| Support policies | 18-hour weekday, 8-hour Saturday toll-free support |

Canon Pixma iP4000
PIXMA iP4000 Inkjet Photo Printer Review, by Paul Jasper November 3, 2004
The Canon Pixma iP4000 will be at home in any small office where people need to print high-quality photos as well as text documents. It does a good job on glossy, borderless photo prints, and it has a few paper handling features that typical photo printers lack. You get a lot of printer for the $200 price.
If you switch often among several types of paper, you'll find the iP4000's two paper trays handy. The cassette in the printer's base holds 150 sheets of your favorite paper. Paper you change more often, such as different sizes of photo paper, should go into the upright sheet feeder at the back of the printer. The sheet feeder accepts up to 150 sheets of letter-size paper or up to 20 sheets of 4-by-6-inch photo paper. A switch on the front of the printer lets you select the default paper source, or you can choose between them from the driver.
The iP4000's duplexer lets you print on both sides of the paper. When not in use, the output tray folds up onto the front of the printer, giving the whole package a neat and professional look.
Each of the iP4000's inks come in individual cartridges. In addition to the three regular colors, there are two black inks--one for solid, dark text, and the other for photos.
Despite these promising features for office use, we were somewhat disappointed with the iP4000's plain-paper printing. In our lab tests, text printed on the iP4000 looked nicely sharp, and even the smallest font sizes were readable. The few faults we noticed included some letters with slightly fuzzy edges and some bold, blocky characters that bled into each other. But the iP4000 stumbled on our line-art test, failing to reproduce vertical lines longer than 0.5 inch without wobbling, and generating a strange diagonal pattern in a block of close horizontal lines. The darkest areas of color graphics that we printed on plain paper changed abruptly to heavy black, obscuring all detail and unattractively contrasting with the overall washed-out look of the rest of the image.
On photo paper, the printer managed good color accuracy, nice detail in shadows, and plenty of contrast. Our grayscale image looked superb, with smooth tonal changes, no color cast, and crisp detail.
The iP4000 printed text at a speedy 6.8 pages per minute, and graphics at a commendable 2.5 ppm. Both times rank as the second-best we saw from any of the printers in our December 2004 test group.
A PictBridge-compatible USB port on the front lets you print directly from a compatible digital camera. The iP4000 has no media card slots, so you must connect it to your computer via its parallel port or through a USB 1.1 port on the back. The software installed effortlessly, and we were soon up and running.
In addition to supplying a capable printer driver, Canon provides its own Easy-PhotoPrint application (for printing individual photos), PhotoRecord (for combining photos into album sheets), and Easy-WebPrint (for printing Web pages). The printer comes with a handy setup poster and a printed quick-start guide. The more detailed user's guide gets installed as HTML pages along with the software. This guide contains plenty of diagrams, but many of the screen shots are too small to read easily, and the pages aren't easy to resize, as they would be if the document were a PDF.
Upshot: This versatile unit is a good combination printer for office documents and high-quality photos, as long as you don't mind less-than-perfect plain paper output.
Paul Jasper
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Review Now! Already own it? Tell us What You Think
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Reviewed by: musiqmike
Strengths: There are so many: Two paper locations (bottom tray and top sheet feeder); excellent quality printing of photos, charts, text--even in draft mode! Ink is cheap, 3rd party ink seems to work great too.
Weaknesses: None. The paperfeed switch takes some getting used to (make sure you've selected the right tray for the media you're printing).
Overall: I've been using Epson inkjets since 1997--maybe because I didn't know better. I finally got sick of all the problems, ink clogs, cartridge prices & 3rd party incompatibility, so I went to Canon. The ip4000 is a solid, fast, quality workhorse that prints at speeds I thought were only obtainable by lasers or very expensive inkjets. I've only had to clean the heads twice and change cartridges once, yet I've easily printed close to 1000 pages--most color. Does great with 4x6 photo paper and gives you great borderless prints. Great driver options for enhancing lower-quality photos to get great prints. Best $120 I've spent!
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Reviewed by: eventsrme
Strengths: prints text and pictures beautifully, duplexing option wonderful
Overall: I love this printer. Of course coming from an Epson almost anything is better, but the ip 4000 prints beautifully. My only problem is that in Outlook, my left margins gets cut off about 1/2 an inch. I have adjusted margins, called Canon and no one seems to be able to fix this problem. Did anyone else have this issue? I had a ip 3000 and then upgraded in case I got a dud, but no such luck. In spite of this issue, this printer brought tears to my eyes, it is so wonderful and a good price too. Just this one pesky problem...
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Reviewed by: Ade1
Strengths: Very Quiet.It is affordable.It has a parallel port as well as the USB port.Prints fast.Two paper trays.
Weaknesses: Cables are not included.Printer has a big profile.Does not have CD print capability.
Overall: For the price I paid for this printer, I was surprised at the quality of the photo prints (I used canon paper). The printer was advertised as a "5 color" printer, but since two of them are black, I am not sure that this is a supportable claim. The pictures printed fast and the printer was extremely quiet. Because the Canon printer system has a permanent print head, you don't throw it away. This means that your replacement ink tanks will be cheaper.Overall, this is a very good buy for the price.
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Reviewed by: sellmen
Strengths: Fast print speeds for an inkjet. High quality photo printing. Sharp text. Double sided printing capability. Stylish appearance. Efficient with ink.
Weaknesses: None.
Overall: The PIXMA IP4000 is the replacement for the Canon i860 - it uses the same five ink tanks. There are two black ink tanks, one for text and one for photo printing, along with yellow, cyan, and magneta cartridges. Like most Canon printers, the PIXMA IP4000 is very efficient with ink, and the replacement cartridges are fairly low priced. The long term costs of this printer will be significantly lower than some other brands (HP, Lexmark). The 25PPM black and 17PPM color that this printer is rated for seems a bit high. Still, this is one of the fastest inkjet printers available. Text quality is very good; it isn't laser sharp, but for an inkjet it does a nice job. Photo quality is stunning. Images are sharp, colors are accurate. Using quality high-gloss paper, you can print pictures that are practically indistinguishable from lab prints. This printer has a duplex (double sided printing) capability, although it is a bit slow when using this feature. Overall, this is just a fantastic printer, and a great value if you want to print both text and photos.
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Reviewed by: icus
Strengths: high speed and good quality printing,Duplex printing (both sides of the paper)
Weaknesses: No CD printing on this printer (American version). Takes a while to warm up
Overall: Pretty impressed by the good ink cartridges life. It has PictBridge feature so you can plug any PictBridge enabled camera directly to the USB port to print your pictures. Super nice photo quality!
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