Canon PIXMA iP1600
Appropriate for home and light business use, the Canon PIXMA ip1600 is capable of delivering high-quality prints at reasonably rapid speeds.
PIXMA iP1600 comes with impressively small dimensions of 9.8 x 17.1 x 6.5 inches (H x W x D). But the shortened size comes at a cost. There is no such thing as an output tray and hence you have to be extremely cautious while taking prints or you’ll end up spilling the papers all over the floor.
A standard four-color printer, black and tricolour cartridges, you will have to connect it to a computer using a USB cable. For some reason, the USB cable is not provided.
In contrast with other ink jet printers in this category, the iP1600 disappoints in terms of text and graphic quality but is superb for photos.
There is no trouble when printing documents with normal fonts. But the problem arises when you try out stylized fonts, like the ones needed for greeting cards. You need to print using bigger fonts as small font sizes aren’t that easily readable.
Graphic printing features are only good enough for rough, home based work or in other words for personal use. Don’t take the risk of using them for printing important official documents. Improper printing and slight loss of matter are the primary culprits over here. There is also a high probability that on printing full page graphics, the paper comes out curled.
If the text and graphic printing features were disappointing, the photo quality undoubtedly stands out as the silver lining in the cloud. Picture quality was first-rate for most individual images. While there were some glitches in monochrome photos with lack of clarity and loss of detail, there were very few, if any, such issues with the colour photo prints.
According to the manufacturers, the new generation of ink and paper has the potential to last for a century if maintained properly in a plastic-sleeves photo album. Framed photos behind glass will have a life span of 30 years.
Performance wise, ip1600 isn’t disappointing at all. The business applications suite took 21 minutes and 52 seconds while photo capturing was also reasonably rapid; 1 minute 58 seconds per 4 x 6 and 4 minutes one second for each 8 x 10. The timings aren’t extraordinary but superior to most others in its class.
It is not a bad printing equipment at all. But the absence of an output tray and the average overall print quality stand as the major deterrents for ip1600.
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