Canon’s PIXMA IP4000 is one of Canon’s first four ink photo printers, shipped with the company’s proprietary five color ContrastPLUS ink system that improves color saturation and contrast in photo printing. The iP4000 has a compact professional look to it; with both paper guides (top and bottom) and the 150 paper sheet tray capable of being tucked neatly away into the printer. The two paper handling trays accept a range of paper sizes, and you can place a maximum of 150 A4 papers or 20 sheets of glossy 4 x 6 photo paper at the bottom tray. You can also switch between different paper sizes place in either of the trays or set the default tray at a touch of a button. The PIXMA IP4000 weighs in at a low 14.9lbs and will occupy only 418 x 286 x 170 cm of your desk space which is convenient. Also, having individual cartridges for cyan, magenta, yellow and black means you save money when they run out, without having to buy a bulk color cartridge each and every time only a single color runs out.
Features
Out of box Canon’s PIXMA IP4000 comes bundled with the entire photo editing software you will need to get started; such as Easy Photoprint which you can use for photo adjustments for instance red eye correction or for borderless printing, Photo Record – allows you to create album sheets by combining photos, and web page printing software ‘Easy Web print’ for printing WebPages without cut off edges. The quick start guide will take you through the installations of drivers and the included software for both Mac and PC; the print driver allows you to adjust the paper type, print quality and color intensity among other things.
A neat addition to the IP4000 are the preset profile driver settings which can be selected based on what kind of print job you wish to complete. Other driver settings are included for effects on photo prints, duplex printing (with its in built duplexer), borderless printing, and printer alignment. Users who run Ubuntu and other Linux flavors can download the Linux drivers from canons website though they have been known to fail occasionally; in any event you could use 3rd party printer drivers such as Gutenprint print drivers.
Canon’s IP4000 has a USB 1.1 port and a parallel cable port. A printer cable is not included so you may have to buy one off the shelves from a reputable store; USB printer cables usually sell for just below 10 dollars.
Photo printing quality is decent at a rated maximum of 4800 x 1200 dpi, sufficient for average photo quality prints outs. Printing from a portable canon camera and other supported cameras is easy through the ‘Pictbridge’ port, though you won’t be able to plug in memory cards and print directly to the IP4000 without having to access your computer.
Performance
The PIXMA IP4000 can print up to a rated maximum of 25 pages per minute in monochrome though in practical tests that figure was closer to 6.5 pages per minute in monochrome; 17 pages per minute for colored text and graphics which is respectable. A standard 8×10 inches photo take roughly 1.5 minutes which is pretty impressive considering many models struggle to break the 2 minute mark. A borderless 4×6 inches photo takes the IP4000 roughly 35 seconds to complete. Having a dye based cartridge means you lose out on crisp prints for text based documents, with print outs seeming slightly blurred; this isn’t very noticeable even in the IP4000’s photo prints, however for the discerning eye this might be a serious downside.
Overall the IP4000 makes for an okay entry level printer, and is very well affordable; BUT, if you are looking above average photo print quality you may want to invest in a different PIXMA model.