Stunning Photo Printer - You won't be disappointed!
Written: Dec 14 '03
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Paper Handling: |
|
|
|
Pros: Excellent print quality when photo paper is used, very quiet when printing.
Cons: Minimal printer documentation, loud initial loading of paper, no memory card slots.
The Bottom Line: If you want excellent photo lab quality images printed from your home printer this is a great choice.
|
|
|
| luckycat007's Full Review: Canon I-960 Photo Printer Ink-jet Printer |
I researched several similar photo printers in the $100-$200 price range, including several from HP, Epson and Lexmark. I read several photo printer reviews, including one at Steves Digicams that was very positive. The Canon percolated to the top of the list, and I have not been disappointed at all with our print results.
The Canon is missing one feature that may products in this price range have (closer to $200 for the i960) - one or more memory device slots for images (SD, CF, xD, MS, etc.).
However, you can connect your Canon digital camera (or another camera with the PictBridge interface, which seem to include Fuji cameras as well) to print directly from the camera. In my case, our Canon PowerShot S30, when attached to the printer, comes alive and worked beautifully well with the printer..it's very intuitive. You can crop your image, select the print paper size and off the races you go.
I'm not sure, however, how often I would actually use this direct print feature, and don't think I'm going to miss out on anything by priting directly from our computer, where I can first perform red eye reduction and general photo clean-up on our PC, where we download all of our digital camera images anyway.
A distinguishing feature of this printer is its configuration of ink cartridges. Canon printers have separate ink tanks for each color, so you don't need to waste an entire print cartridge that include all colors when just one color runs dry. I'm not sure how much ink this printer will use, and not sure if the use of less expensive "generic" cartridges or ink refills will work well. Something to research.
Now the important part--the images are stunning! You need to use high quality paper for the best results...I've tried Canon Photo Plus paper and NEC Professional Series paper, both produce absolutely stunning images. It really does look like the photos are from a real photo lab. We used the printer this year to print our Christmas cards, and were absolutely pleased with our results.
Canon includes image editing software to help reduce redeye, crop your pictures, and run an "image smoothing" algorithm on the images to smooth facial tones (softening them up). We had some issues with the redeye reduction...in a couple of cases it turned the eyes of our subjects entirely black, in other cases it doesn't seem to entirely eliminate red eye..so I have on occasion used other software to help with red eye reduction. When it works, though (it does 90% of the time), the software is pretty intuitive.
Oh one more thing...the additional 4x6 photo paper tray is a great feature as well. It is easy to use once installed, but I'm fearful that it'll break after a lot of use (seems like flimsy plastic).
Overall, this is a choice printer. If you want a digital photo lab in your home, you won't be disappointed with this printer, esp for the less than $200 range. I purchased mine from amazon.com for $177 or so, with free shipping...much less than $199 that was the asking price at most local shops.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 177
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
luckycat007
|
|
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.