Summary: Awesome Printer for a Great Price
Comment: I purchased the i900D a couple weeks ago and I am amazed at how nice the pictures are that come out of this printer. I purchased the i900D and the Canon A80 digital camera at the same time and they are a perfect pair. I own a midlevel Canon film camera that has produced excellent pictures for years so I really wanted to see how the A80 compaired to that. I went around the house and the neighborhood and took pictures with both my film camera and my A80. I printed off all the pictures from the A80 on the i900D and then took the film to be developed. I also took my compact flash card with me to the developer and got some prints with one of those kodak do it yourself printing stations. I asked family and friends which pictures were which and nobody could tell the difference!!! My only regret is that I didnt buy the i900D and the A80 sooner!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Product!!
Comment: I have used my new Cannon i960 for 60 days and I am very happy with the product. I have printed over 75 4X6 and 12 8X10 prints and have been completely satisfied with the product when using Cannon glossy paper. When I have used paper from a competitor there is a marked difference. When I show my prints to my friends they cannot believe that the pictures came from a printer. Photo lab quality.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent printer (and it prints 5x7 borderless!)
Comment: I purchased the Canon i900D yesterday and I could not be more pleased. Prior to purchasing the Canon, I was torn between the i900D and the HP Photosmart 7960. One of my deal-breaker requirements was that the printer MUST be capable of printing 5x7 photos borderless on 5x7 photo paper. From my internet research I was unable to determine if either the i900D or the 7960 could do so.
At Best Buy yesterday it so happened that an HP sales rep was there to answer questions about their printers. I had one question for the woman: Can I print a 5x7 borderless on 5x7 photo paper? After the HP rep wasted 45 minutes playing with the 7960 trying to determine if and how to do so, she finally concluded that you cannot. You have to print on a 8x10 sheet (centered nonetheless) and crop the whole thing. Plus, I was amazed on how little this HP rep knew about her own product.
I then went to the i900D. The Best Buy clerk had a photo printed borderless on 5x7 paper in less than a minute. Piece of cake. Bottom line, the Canon allows for quick and easy borderless printing on any standard photo size - no centering/cropping needed. Simply tell the printer or its printing software which size you want and it automatically does it. At home last night, I was interchanging between 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10 prints with ease.
i900D photo print quality is excellent from my 5.1 megapix camera (have not tried older 3.1 pictures). The b&w and sepia prints were nothing short of amazing. I found it close to impossible to tell that they were not professional photos. The install was a breeze. I was printing directly from my Sony Memory Stick Duo (if you have a duo card, make sure you have an adapter) even while the driver/software install was going on. The Easy Print software that came with it is excellent for simply printing your photos. Both the software and on-printer "software" are so user-friendly that a monkey could figure out how to print photos in the size wanted.
This previous HP user has been converted.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Proof you don't have to spend a lot of $$ ...
Comment: This printer is by far the least amount of money I've ever spent on a printer ... and it's absolutely the best printer I've ever owned! Canon makes the best digital cameras and now, I'm convinced, they make the best printers too. I own an Epson Photo printer and an HP photo printer/scannner/copier. I spent over $300 for each of those and the prints are much better on this Canon than either of those 2 printers. I have a lot of experience on both the HP and Epson printers and I will point out why (...)this is far superior than anything anyone else puts out in this price range or even much higher.
** The ink system in this printer is fantastic! Anyone who has an Epson printer knows that the ink cartridges have a plastic coating over the hole where the ink comes out and when the printer "charges" the ink, it has to kinda drill a hole through it to get the ink to come out. Many times with those cartridges, it takes 2 or 3 times for it to get it right and print correctly. And Epsons drink ink a whole lot faster than this printer does. The HP ink system is just a joke when photo printing with the tri-colored cartridges. (...) With the Canon ink system, you just break off the bottom plug and insert it into the print head. That's it! No ink charging, no print alignment (except for the first time you use the printer and put all the ink cartridges in), nothing. Just close the cover and start printing. They also last much longer than the Epson inks.
** The printer driver is very user friendly. I have my Epson 960 well over a year and still find it very diffucult to get a good print because of all the confusing menus and options in the driver. With the Canon, there's a "print advisor" that kinda walks you through the process of printing a photo without confusing menus. It also has many extra options for printing such as an Image Optimizer and Vivid Color, to name a few. Much better driver in the Canon than in the HP or Epson.
** Print quality ... amazing! I wrote a review about my Epson 960 when I got it about how great the pictures were (when I got it to print right) and I never thought it could get better. Well I printed out a few images from the same CF card and the Canon images came out even better. More contrast, richer colors, and much less "noise" even on lesser quality images. I even printed out 5 of these images on one of those new Kodak kiosks they have at a lot of retail chains now. Not really a fair comparison considering the paper and dye based ink they use but I have to honestly say, the Canon images were absolutely identical to the ones I printed on the kiosk.
Some other nice things about this printer are:
* The built in card reader is a lot faster than the card reader on my computer or my HP all in one.
* It's whisper quiet printing and to even further that, there is an option in the printer driver for "quiet mode" printing which I haven't tried yet, but would almost have to be silent to get any quieter.
* The print speed is slower than the comparable i960 because it has about half the nozzles (about 1500 compared to the roughly 3000 on the i960), but that can be a good thing. Cheaper photo paper absorbs ink slower than better photo paper so if you're using cheaper paper on a faster printer, you run the risk of blotching if the ink isn't absorbed faster than the paper is going through the printer feeder. This just leaves more options open with this printer than a faster one.
All in all I have to say that overall, this is one of the best purchases I've made in a long time. (...). And when (...) Bottom line ... buying this printer is a no-brainer. (...) Even though the ink that is used in that printer is supposed to preserve the photos colors much longer, if you do as I do and save all my images on to CD's, even if the picture does fade after 20 years you can just print another one.
You just can't go wrong with this printer!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Really nice photo printer
Comment: This is my first photo printer and I couldn't be happier. The clarity and quality of the pictures is great. Just make sure you only use Canon photo paper with this printer. I originally used kodak premium photo paper and the quality of the photo prints was awful.