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Text and photography by Jon Canfield
Canon completely revamped their desktop printer line this year with several
new PIXMA models. Of interest to digital photographers, the iP5000 is a five-color
printer with a tiny one-picoliter ink droplet size that rivals six-color printers
for quality, the iP6000D is a six-color printer with a card reader and LCD display
that can be used without a computer, and the new top-of-the-line iP8500 model,
which is the subject of this report.
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The PIXMA iP8500 is a compact printer capable of high quality
8x10 prints in under 2 minutes.
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The Canon i9900 has earned a reputation as one of the best wide-carriage photo
printers available. It was the first printer to use Canon’s ChromaPLUS
inkset which includes red and green for a wider color range, or gamut. The size
of the i9900, along with the cost, has kept it from sitting on more desktops,
especially for those people with more modest print requirements. If this sounds
like you, the new $349 PIXMA iP8500 is designed with you in mind.
Full Featured
The iP8500 is housed in Canon’s new style case, which when closed up is
an attractive compact unit. The printer has both USB 1.1 and 2.0 ports and is
compatible with Windows 98 and later as well as Mac OS X v10.2.1 and later.
No USB cable is included with the package, so be sure to buy one with the printer
if you need it—I hate getting home with a new toy and not being able to
use it!
Using FINE (Full photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering), the iP8500 employs
6144 nozzles to spit out 2-picoliter droplets of ink. This not only improves
the quality of output, but the speed is pretty impressive as well. Canon claims
a 4x6 borderless photo can print in 21 seconds. I wasn’t able to get quite
this level of performance, but the printer was noticeably faster than the Epson
2200 I also use. General print speeds are 16 ppm for black and 12 ppm for color.
With text-only documents, I found the 16 ppm claim to be very accurate. A full
8x10 borderless print took less than two minutes to complete.
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Ink tanks are easy to change when needed. Canon uses red and green
rather than the traditional light cyan and light magenta to increase
color saturation and accuracy.
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Also built into the iP8500 is a PictBridge USB port for direct printing from
supported cameras, including Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Olympus, Pentax, Fujifilm,
HP, and others. These cameras all connect to the printer with their USB download
cable. Print options are controlled from the camera’s LCD so no computer
is needed for quick prints. The iP8500 has built-in support for Adobe RGB as
well, so if your images are shot and stored in this color space, the printer
will take full advantage of the wider color gamut.
The ChromaPLUS inks were the first to include dedicated red and green inks in
addition to traditional light cyan and light magenta, for a total of eight ink
colors and until now were only available in the wide-body i9900 printer. The
addition of these two colors increases the vibrancy of reds and greens in photo
prints to nearly Velvia levels, as well as doing a better job of reproducing
orange tones. Print quality from the iP8500 is the best I’ve seen to date
from an inkjet printer. Inks are in individual tanks, so you only replace the
one you need. Ink usage is on par with other printers I’ve tested. One
nice feature is that each ink tank is clear so you can see how much ink is really
left.
The iP8500 has two paper paths; a lower tray that holds up to 150 sheets of
plain paper, and a sheet feed at the top. This is extremely handy if you routinely
print documents and photos. I keep photo paper in the lower tray where it is
protected from dust and scratches and use the sheet feeder for plain paper.
Both paper paths can be adjusted to use smaller (down to 4x6) sheets, and the
sheet feeder can handle paper up to 23” long for panoramic prints. Paper
source can be selected from a button on the front of the printer, or from within
the print driver. One nice feature is that if both sources have the same paper,
the printer can automatically switch from one to the other, if needed to complete
a print job.
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