Digital Journal — You wouldn’t expect a printer from a leading brand like Canon to be such a big fat lemon. But if printers could talk, Canon’s iP1600 Pixma photo printer would say: “I suck so hard, I even hate myself.”
For $69, the iP1600 takes cheap to a whole new level. But since the replacement cartridges cost about five bucks less than the printer itself, you’ll eventually end up paying through the print nozzle — especially since this printer wastes more ink than a tattoo parlour. One Amazon buyer suggests a useful strategy: “Keep buying new printers, take the cartridges from the new one, and then sell the extra printer on eBay.”
Worse, its print quality is uglier than a preschooler’s first drawing: Characters come out blurry and smudgy, especially on high-gloss paper. This is a shame, because other versions of Pixma are some of the best photo printers around. Why would Canon want to degrade its brand with this piece of dollar-store crap?
It’s not like the printer speed exactly lives up to the company’s spec sheet either. Canon claims the iP1600 can spew 19 black-and-white pages per minute (ppm), but it actually took us a minute and five seconds just to get the first page out. And by the time we got to page 19, we were already clocking three minutes and two seconds.
For those of you with scientific calculators, that comes to about 6.25 ppm — not exactly what it says on the box. Though the manual helpfully instructs you to optimize your speed settings and be judicious with ink usage, it is still way too slow. That’s just deceiving to the consumer, pure and simple.
During our tests, this printer ran out of ink after printing only 18 colour photos (a dozen 8.5 x 11, six 4 x 6). In one word, pathetic.
Now, with el printero cheapo, you’d expect a fairly no-frills setup. But the fact that there’s not even a damn output tray really takes the cake. That’s like a George Foreman Grill with no grease catcher.
Come on, Canon. Paper-tray manufacturing technology has come a long way over the decades. We’re pretty sure even Gutenberg designed a simple one when he invented the printing press hundreds of years ago. They’re cheap to make and necessary. Without a tray, any clutter on your desk will get in the way of your printouts. The only good news about the iP1600: At least you’ll have lots of time to clear a path before it actually prints.
This article is part of Digital Journal’s national magazine edition. Pick up your copy of Digital Journal in bookstores across Canada and the United States. Or subscribe to Digital Journal now, and receive 8 issues for $29.95 + GST ($48.95 USD).
