» Canon PIXMA iP4200 Photo Printer

Canon PIXMA iP4200 Photo Printer Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: An Older Model - But Still A Great Printer Nonetheless
Comment: Canon IP 4200P

I bought the Canon IP4200 a few years ago primarily for printing text documents, although I do occasionally print some pictures. Here are some of its pros and cons:

Pros
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- Print Quality
The quality of printing for both text and images is superb and as good as it gets. Text printed in all of the Print Quality modes (FAST, STANDARD or HIGH) are sharp and the print quality on FAST and STANDARD modes rival that produced by the best inkjet or laser printers. The quality of the photos printed are comparable to those from a photo lab (yes, they're that good).

- Full duplex printing
Full duplex printing simply means that double-sided printing is fully automated - you won't have to manually feed documents back into the printer to finish the job after it's done printing on one side. That's really really nice, and it's a real time-saver!

- Quiet operation
The printer is fairly quiet. However, for people who share a room (college students in a dorm room, for example), the noise emitted might still be a disturbance to a roommate who's say sleeping or studying. That's where its Quiet mode comes in handy - it's whisper quiet in this mode but it comes at the expense of printing speed.

- Print Speeds
I found that the actual print speed is considerably less than what's advertised. For printing text, and assuming we're printing an average page of text -- on its lowest quality (FAST) mode, it can crank out ~6-8 PPM (pages per minute). On its highest quality (HIGH) mode, it's capable of producing ~4-6 PPM. For photo printing, it takes just over a minute.

- Reliability
The printer has proven to be extremely reliable for me. Amazingly, in the roughly 3 years that I've had this printer, it has had paper jams only a couple of times - and even then, it was because the paper wasn't properly loaded. It's been a workhorse for my printing projects, both big and small - I've printed entire manuals on this printer with no problems.

- Ink Usage
At the lowest quality mode, I can print about a ream's worth of paper - double-sided.

Cons
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- Ink Usage
I do almost all of my printing in gray scale (black and white). You would think it uses only the black ink cartridge when it's printing in black and white - not so; it actually uses all of the color ink cartridges - at about the same rate! I had the same experience with my old HP printer as well. I Googled extensively on why this was done. Almost all resources point to the canned response from Canon stating that this is done to make the colors more "vibrant." I mean black is black is black! It boggles me why you would need colors to make black more "vibrant." Oh well, go figure.

So, if you're counting on using only the black ink cartridge to print gray scale and save yourself from having to buy the color cartridges -- don't!

There have also been reports that when the printer runs out of ink, it displays a notification about the printer being of ink and prevents further printing - that has got to be extremely aggravating when you urgently need something printed out.

Last, I should mention the price of cartridges are more on the steep side. The printer uses Cyan CLI-8C, Magenta CLI-8M, Yellow CLI-8Y (also sold as a multipack), and the two black cartridges PGI-5, and CLI-8 Black (also sold as a multipack).

- Direct CD/DVD Printing
NOT! This feature is only available in the European version of the Canon IP4200. Direct CD/DVD printing allows you to print directly on a CD/DVD. Nifty! Sure beats Lightscribe (Lightscribe drive required) or CD labels. But somehow Canon has decided to omit this feature for the US version of this printer.

No matter, if you're adventurous and have time on your hands to burn, you can retrofit the printer with a special CD tray (no longer available at Amazon) yourself. Google some to find a seller and to find instructions on how it's done.


There you have it. To sum it all up: The IP4200 produces phenomenally great looking text and photos. The main gripe I have is the price of ink cartridges. Despite this shortcoming, I still rated it 5 stars by virtue of its impressive print quality.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Piece of crap
Comment: Prints beautifully when it's working, which is rare. This printer has a software interface with the computer that is designed to monitor ink tank levels, etc. This software is constantly telling you that there is something wrong with the ink cartridges when there is not, even with brand new cartridges. The software is constantly in your face, basically compelling you to go buy some more ink cartridges (which are exorbitantly priced). You cannot circumvent the software and will find yourself in a situation where you desperately need to print something and the Canon Corporation demands that you go and buy some ink cartridges when in fact there is nothing wrong with the ones you have. Overall, this printer is a piece of crap. I'm about to go out and run over mine with an automobile tire. Buyer beware.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great printer, with solid customer service experience
Comment: I have had this printer for about 2 years. It is a realy workhorse, printing lots of photos and text for myself and my wife. This thing does a great job with both. Also, despite what some reviewers on here say, the separate ink tanks have the potential to save you considerable amounts of money. Much better design than a single tank model.

Although I've never tried to refill ink tanks or use after-market tanks in this printer, I did run into the plague of ink tank error messages that many reviewers have described. Turns out I had not one, but two defective ink tanks in the printer. After discussing the issue with online support from Canon, they sent two new ink tanks at no charge. They arrived within 3 days.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Decent Printer - Pitiful Support
Comment: Purchased this printer some time back but decided to give it a review after using it.
The printer quality is acceptable, even for 8x10 color photographs.

However, it periodically just quits working - "The printer is off line..." Tried a number of times to get technical support at Canon to assist me without success - would not even answer my emails.

As far as I am concerned, I will never purchase another Canon product again. If the printer won't print, it is just as good as not having a printer.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: You'll go broke buying ink for this machine
Comment: Sure, it's cheap, but you'll quickly make up for that in buying ink. This printer takes 5 separate ink cartirdges, 4 of which must be bought in a pack, so you end up with extras you never use. It will refuse to print if it thinks any of those 5 cartridges have unacceptable ink levels. This has happened to me even on a fairly new cartridge. Even worse, my particular machine often gets confused and tells me I have more than one of the same color installed (I don't). Again, because of this, it refuses to print. I wish I'd never bought this printer.

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