Canon Pixma iP4000 Photo Printer

As the old saying goes, if this printer were a woman, I'd marry it. This is the way inkjet printers should work. Super quiet operation, feeds flawlessly. Superb print quality. Does borderless with ease. Love the way it prints both sides, automatically, no extra accessories needed. Very intelligent printer - prints one side, pauses for ink to dry, then prints the reverse side, collating the stack automatically. Adequate adjustments for hue, brightness, etc. Handles any paper stock. All inkjet printers bleed you on ink costs, but the Canon ink tanks are easy to refill, cutting costs dramatically. Surprisingly good color quality for only 3 primary colors (cyan, magenta, yellow). Blacks are noticeably better than Epson or HP. Prints fine detail better than anything I've ever used, thanks to microdot ink jets. Sharp styling, very pleasant to look at visually. Overall, this is the best printer I've ever used.

Economical to use, superb print quality, completely automated double-sided printing.

Frankly, I can't think of any.

HP, Epson

Haven't needed it so far.

I would rate this printer very highly at any price but for AUD299 ( about USD220 ) it is incredible value. Unlike the previous reviewer I found the bundled Canon software very good and user friendly. I got superb prints first time from a Canon Powershot S70. Printing through Photoshop is also excellent.

Very high quality photos up to A4 size especially if Canon's Photo Paper Pro is used. Colours, sharpness, smooth tone rendition, shadow and highlight detail are all excellent. The unit looks good and closes up to prevent dust entry. Speed is excellent. For office use, results from this unit are hard to distinguish from a colour laser printer.

High cost of Photo pro paper and ink sets. This problem is shared by inkjet printers generally.

HP colour laser jet, Lexmark inkjet.

Not required

The Canon PIXMA 4000 is an ideal dual-purpose printer for the small office or home. Its print speed on plain paper is amazingly fast and it has built-in double-sided print. For photographs I compared it with a photolab print 11 x 7.33 of a 3072 x 2048 pixel 100% JPEG taken with a Canon 300D/Rebel and the results were indistinguishable. Although it uses only a 3-ink system for photos (plus ordinary black for plain text) the colour depth is very good and print speed is excellent. The printer provides two paper trays which are switchable either in software or manually so you don't have to switch paper stock between plain and photo paper. It also supports the PictBridge direct camera connection for printing without a computer. Highly recommended at the price.

Dual paper bins with large capacity. Very good colour reproduction. Separate ink cartridges.

No built-in card reader. Supplied software not very good (I use BreezeBrowser or Photoshop for printing)

Various HP printers in the past.