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Canon PIXMA iP8500 Photo Printer
Another in Canon PIXMA’s iP category, the iP8500 is a high quality photo printer delivering speedy performance but, in addition, has decent capabilities to perform the other essential printing tasks too.
Enclosed in dimensions of 6.7 x 17.8 x 11.5 inches (H x W x D), it is slightly bigger than the normal size of an ink jet printer. It weighs a reasonably light 15.4 pounds, which shouldn’t cause too much of a problem while trying to shift it to a different place.
There are some very useful inclusions in the iP8500 like the PictBridge connector for direct printing from a compatible camera, duplex printing, a 150-sheet cassette and individual cartridge for each ink colour. Overall, the iP8500 is compatible with eight ink colours; cyan, yellow, magenta, light cyan, light magenta, and black plus red and green. The additional ink colours made use of do play their part making the photo quality more comprehensive.
This photo printer has a printhead with 6,144 nozzles which play a major role in speeding up the printing process.
Performance wise, the photo suite needs 1 minute and 35 seconds for an 8 x 10 photo, much better than a few others like the Canon iP3000 and MP780. Further, a 4 x 6 takes only 47 seconds. Photos can be printed up to the maximum size of 8.5 x 11 inches.
Moving on to the business suite, the iP8500 impresses here too, clocking a speed of 22 minutes and 57 seconds, again better than some rivals.
Next, let’s look at the text and graphics quality. Being primarily a photo printer, they are nowhere near exceptional. But the end result isn’t bad at all. While normal text is easily readable at small fonts like 4 points, for quite a few of the stylized text, you need to increase the speed up to as much as 12 points. Also slender lines in graphics tend to disappear in the process of printing.
Photo quality is expectedly the best thing about iP8500. Bar a few negligible glitches, you should have no hesitancy in showing them off to your near and dear ones.
An excellent colour photo printer, the iP8500 dishes out superior quality prints at a great pace. Though the text and graphics quality don’t quite match it and you even won’t find a memory card slot, it is still good enough to be termed as a multi-purpose printer.
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PictBridge results are not very sharp
No matter what the company says, the iP8500 photo printer cannot be called a multi-purpose printer. Sadly, even the task it was designed for - i.e. photo printing, is not performed to satisfaction. You don't need to look closely to see that the picture lacks depth. The colours are not bright and vibrant. In some prints I even found the edges blurred. Don't blame the paper. The results were repeated on professional photo paper. I'd be willing to overlook the less-than-satisfactory text and graphics quality if the photo printing were good.
User Rating : 4 /10  (
by :
Rajan Sivananda on
Tue, 04 Apr 2006 12:24:53 GMT
)
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