electronics CANON PIXMA iP660D - your personal photolab opinions and reviews

CANON PIXMA iP660D - your personal photolab

The iP660D is highly recommended for snap-happy individuals who spend much of their spare time snapping pictures but hate having to send them to the lab for processing.

Although the Canon Pixma iP660D is an ink-jet printer, it aspires to be your personal photolab with a set of superior features and print quality that closely matches photolab printing. This chief attraction is due to the 9600 x 2400dpi print resolution (carriage res. X print head res.) which is achieved by Canon’s FINE print-head with technology that uses 1pl ink droplets.

Its 6-ink system gives colour prints that richness and depth that you expect from any photolab. And if you can overlook the occasional red cast, you may never have to send your pictures to the photolab. Prints from the iP660D are made to last, as the company says, a full 100 years. So that’s another feature common with photolab prints.

This printer also does a decent job of printing documents with black texts giving the prints a lasting feel. The other great advantage is PictBridge which allows you to take prints without connecting your handheld gadget to a PC. You can get prints direct from your digital cameras, memory cards, camera phone and even PDAs with the optional Bluetooth feature. Make sure your digital camera is PictBridge compliant.

The extra large 3.5” LCD makes it a lot easier to use. It displays the printer options and photos. Its other features include Image Optimizer, Red-eye Correction and Print Photo Index Sheets that can show up to 80 thumbnail images on each.

On the downside: when you feed glossy paper into the bottom tray it produces prints that have rub lines – a limitation which the product manual doesn’t mention. The company accepted the problem and suggested using the upper tray for glossy prints. The bottom tray’s mechanism bends the paper around to bring it in contact with the print heads which are upside down, causing glossy prints to have rub lines.

Setting up the printer is a breeze. The Quick Setup guide makes it very simple; besides the six ChromaLife 100 ink cartridges tell you when they are installed – the red lights on the cartridges light up; they blink on and off when cartridge runs out of ink.