Customer Rating: 
Summary: CANNON CHARGES $100 FOR REPLACEMENT INKS
Comment: I would never buy this printer again... It is great until you run out of Ink then you can only use Cannon the replacing of the Chip only workls sometime to use other brand inks. It was not conservative on ink at all and now they want $100 for replacement inks. Probably will never buy another Cannon product again
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best printer I've ever purchased
Comment: I use both HP and Canon printers. I used to own only Epson printers but ran into issues with them. I use an HP printer for basic word documents (cheaper on ink) and the Canon MP500 for photos.
I've never owned a consumer-based printer that prints photos as clear as this printer. It's awesome. I purchased the printer last summer and I haven't bought cartridges yet. I'm anticipating that they will be somewhat pricey.
I also have a Canon SD20 digital camera that works seamlessly with the USB port on the front of the printer.
Just remember that you will need a USB cable as today's printers do not include one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good quality printing, menus on machine a little tricky
Comment: I have had this printer for 6 months and have overall been very happy.
1) Photo quality - I have printed out lots of color pictures and have been very happy with the printer wizard feature which asks you what you are trying to print and on what paper to determine the ink settings. I have found that this prints excellent pictures with the Canon glossy paper. It is important to use the printer wizard though, because the printer does make adjustments for different paper types.
2) Text print quality - Very crisp. I do print pictures, but a majority of my printing is printing out directions from mapquest, a letter from Word, my schedule from Outlook, etc. I have been amazed at how crisp the text quality is especially for a photo printer. This has very crisp text, even in color.
3) Scanning - Scanning both pictures and text is pretty good. You need to use the software that comes with the printer to make this happen, I haven't had any luck setting the printer and hitting scan from the machine itself. It was a little tricky at first, but it does scan even small text well on the highest resolution settings.
4) Copying - Good quality, but tricky. The menus on the printer are a little bit confusing to navigate, even after 6 months of use. Setting paper type, paper size, black and white or color copying, etc. is a bit tedious. There are lots of things you have to tell it, all in separate menus, and it is annoying. Once you get it set up, however, the copy quality is very good. If you were always copying the same type of thing (i.e. always 4x6 color photos on glossy paper, or always plain paper 8 1/2x11) then it wouldn't be an issue.
5) Ink life - My first ink tank (large black) has just ran empty after 6 months of moderate home use. My color tanks and small black tank are also running low. I don't print everyday, but I do print often, including pictures and color text. I think that changing tanks twice a year isn't bad and am happy with that given the reviews I had read that said this machine ate ink.
All in all, a great printer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Get this printer!
Comment: After literally years of frustration with my HP 1315 "all-in-one" printer, detailed in my one star review of that item, I decided to purchase this printer from Canon as a replacement because the HP printer has been sitting in the yard getting rained on ever since HP's "Award Winning Technical Support" left me on hold both for chat services and phone services for two solid hours without any attempt to fix the problem.
I cannot rate this item high enough. I purchased a refurbished printer that is in every respect as high-quality as a brand new one. I dropped my Avery business cards into the machine and viola! 150 photo-quality business cards without a hitch! (And fairly fast, too!) And I mean PHOTO-QUALITY. The cards look like they just came from a professional printing house.
Part of the excellent design of this printer is that the paper isn't folded back over onto itself like HP printers. This means higher bond paper (like photo papers, business card stock, resume' paper, and other thicker materials) feeds straight through WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT, BOUND, OR JAMMED!
No more cockeyed, misaligned printing! No more smudges and smears!
Print cartridges are smaller, but contain single colors-- no more sprinting to Office Depot to order a four color cartridge because one color is empty. Buy only what you need. No more throwing away all your magenta and yellow ink because cyan was empty.
Scanning seems to work well, and the OCR software contained in the installation actually translates the typed word reasonably well.
Overall, an excellent design. Unfortunately, Office Depot tells me that Canon discontinued this model. (WHY?!?!? It's the highest rated printer on Amazon after 169 ratings!)
My only complaint is that this printer has an enormous footprint. That's a cross I'll gladly bear to be able to print WHAT I WANT, WHEN I click the print button.
~D.
Customer Rating:
Summary: pretty good printer!
Comment: I really like this printer! Very glad I dumped my HP in favor of this. Most of the other reviewers have covered everything, but I wanted to mention about ink refilling.
This printer uses opaque cartridges, so you can actually SEE the ink level inside. This is important because this printer is set up to recognize when you refill cartridges:
If you refill cartridges, you will have to disable the ink level detector, and the machine records the fact that you are bypassing their outrageous ink prices (this applies to non-OEM cartridge replacements as well).
Once a cartridge is used, the chip will not reset (as you can do with Epson chips and the proper resetter). Therefore, the ink level is never to be known again, other than pulling the cartridge out every now and then and checking it visually.
As for pre-filled non-Cannon cartridges: They don't come with ink level chips. You have to remove the one from your spent Cannon cartridge and attach it to the non-OEM cartridge. This doesn't allow the printer to tell you the level of the ink in that non-OEM cartridge--it merely allows the catridge to be used.
I have managed to deal with these annoyances, as I do a lot of high-volume printing, and I am VERY careful about refilling cartridges so they don't leak out into the printer (i.e., I have two sets of cartridges, and I leave a newly-refilled one out of the machine for at least a day to make sure it isn't leaking once refilled, and I use the rubber plugs that come with most refill kits instead of the flimsy "tape dots" that are supposed to seal the refill hole--they don't work!).
All that being said, this is a great little printer. It has no FAX, and I haven't tried the scanning function, but strictly as a printer, it suits my needs perfectly. I run printouts for an online business, so this thing has gotten a MAJOR workout already in the 6 months or so that I've owned it--much more than many of you may EVER have to print, and the print quality is very good.
It does, however, require 5 different ink tanks, each of which are replaced/refilled separately (no more wasted ink! Another bonus, and of course this is always good for us ink refillers!):
1.) Black
2.) Black Pigment
3.) Magenta
4.) Cyan
5.) Yellow
8/2007 Update: Printer is still going strong! DID have to replace the printhead once though (about $60), but again, I do a LOT of full-color, full-page printing. If you are a refiller, this machine is great BUT WATCH THE INK LEVELS or you will burn out the printhead if a cartridge runs too dry (not the reason my printhead died--mine just exhausted it's normal life expectancy).
Summary: CANNON CHARGES $100 FOR REPLACEMENT INKS
Comment: I would never buy this printer again... It is great until you run out of Ink then you can only use Cannon the replacing of the Chip only workls sometime to use other brand inks. It was not conservative on ink at all and now they want $100 for replacement inks. Probably will never buy another Cannon product again
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best printer I've ever purchased
Comment: I use both HP and Canon printers. I used to own only Epson printers but ran into issues with them. I use an HP printer for basic word documents (cheaper on ink) and the Canon MP500 for photos.
I've never owned a consumer-based printer that prints photos as clear as this printer. It's awesome. I purchased the printer last summer and I haven't bought cartridges yet. I'm anticipating that they will be somewhat pricey.
I also have a Canon SD20 digital camera that works seamlessly with the USB port on the front of the printer.
Just remember that you will need a USB cable as today's printers do not include one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good quality printing, menus on machine a little tricky
Comment: I have had this printer for 6 months and have overall been very happy.
1) Photo quality - I have printed out lots of color pictures and have been very happy with the printer wizard feature which asks you what you are trying to print and on what paper to determine the ink settings. I have found that this prints excellent pictures with the Canon glossy paper. It is important to use the printer wizard though, because the printer does make adjustments for different paper types.
2) Text print quality - Very crisp. I do print pictures, but a majority of my printing is printing out directions from mapquest, a letter from Word, my schedule from Outlook, etc. I have been amazed at how crisp the text quality is especially for a photo printer. This has very crisp text, even in color.
3) Scanning - Scanning both pictures and text is pretty good. You need to use the software that comes with the printer to make this happen, I haven't had any luck setting the printer and hitting scan from the machine itself. It was a little tricky at first, but it does scan even small text well on the highest resolution settings.
4) Copying - Good quality, but tricky. The menus on the printer are a little bit confusing to navigate, even after 6 months of use. Setting paper type, paper size, black and white or color copying, etc. is a bit tedious. There are lots of things you have to tell it, all in separate menus, and it is annoying. Once you get it set up, however, the copy quality is very good. If you were always copying the same type of thing (i.e. always 4x6 color photos on glossy paper, or always plain paper 8 1/2x11) then it wouldn't be an issue.
5) Ink life - My first ink tank (large black) has just ran empty after 6 months of moderate home use. My color tanks and small black tank are also running low. I don't print everyday, but I do print often, including pictures and color text. I think that changing tanks twice a year isn't bad and am happy with that given the reviews I had read that said this machine ate ink.
All in all, a great printer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Get this printer!
Comment: After literally years of frustration with my HP 1315 "all-in-one" printer, detailed in my one star review of that item, I decided to purchase this printer from Canon as a replacement because the HP printer has been sitting in the yard getting rained on ever since HP's "Award Winning Technical Support" left me on hold both for chat services and phone services for two solid hours without any attempt to fix the problem.
I cannot rate this item high enough. I purchased a refurbished printer that is in every respect as high-quality as a brand new one. I dropped my Avery business cards into the machine and viola! 150 photo-quality business cards without a hitch! (And fairly fast, too!) And I mean PHOTO-QUALITY. The cards look like they just came from a professional printing house.
Part of the excellent design of this printer is that the paper isn't folded back over onto itself like HP printers. This means higher bond paper (like photo papers, business card stock, resume' paper, and other thicker materials) feeds straight through WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT, BOUND, OR JAMMED!
No more cockeyed, misaligned printing! No more smudges and smears!
Print cartridges are smaller, but contain single colors-- no more sprinting to Office Depot to order a four color cartridge because one color is empty. Buy only what you need. No more throwing away all your magenta and yellow ink because cyan was empty.
Scanning seems to work well, and the OCR software contained in the installation actually translates the typed word reasonably well.
Overall, an excellent design. Unfortunately, Office Depot tells me that Canon discontinued this model. (WHY?!?!? It's the highest rated printer on Amazon after 169 ratings!)
My only complaint is that this printer has an enormous footprint. That's a cross I'll gladly bear to be able to print WHAT I WANT, WHEN I click the print button.
~D.
Customer Rating:
Summary: pretty good printer!
Comment: I really like this printer! Very glad I dumped my HP in favor of this. Most of the other reviewers have covered everything, but I wanted to mention about ink refilling.
This printer uses opaque cartridges, so you can actually SEE the ink level inside. This is important because this printer is set up to recognize when you refill cartridges:
If you refill cartridges, you will have to disable the ink level detector, and the machine records the fact that you are bypassing their outrageous ink prices (this applies to non-OEM cartridge replacements as well).
Once a cartridge is used, the chip will not reset (as you can do with Epson chips and the proper resetter). Therefore, the ink level is never to be known again, other than pulling the cartridge out every now and then and checking it visually.
As for pre-filled non-Cannon cartridges: They don't come with ink level chips. You have to remove the one from your spent Cannon cartridge and attach it to the non-OEM cartridge. This doesn't allow the printer to tell you the level of the ink in that non-OEM cartridge--it merely allows the catridge to be used.
I have managed to deal with these annoyances, as I do a lot of high-volume printing, and I am VERY careful about refilling cartridges so they don't leak out into the printer (i.e., I have two sets of cartridges, and I leave a newly-refilled one out of the machine for at least a day to make sure it isn't leaking once refilled, and I use the rubber plugs that come with most refill kits instead of the flimsy "tape dots" that are supposed to seal the refill hole--they don't work!).
All that being said, this is a great little printer. It has no FAX, and I haven't tried the scanning function, but strictly as a printer, it suits my needs perfectly. I run printouts for an online business, so this thing has gotten a MAJOR workout already in the 6 months or so that I've owned it--much more than many of you may EVER have to print, and the print quality is very good.
It does, however, require 5 different ink tanks, each of which are replaced/refilled separately (no more wasted ink! Another bonus, and of course this is always good for us ink refillers!):
1.) Black
2.) Black Pigment
3.) Magenta
4.) Cyan
5.) Yellow
8/2007 Update: Printer is still going strong! DID have to replace the printhead once though (about $60), but again, I do a LOT of full-color, full-page printing. If you are a refiller, this machine is great BUT WATCH THE INK LEVELS or you will burn out the printhead if a cartridge runs too dry (not the reason my printhead died--mine just exhausted it's normal life expectancy).
Canon PIXMA MP500 All-In-One Photo Printer & Sanner Reviews: Page 5 of 32
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