Canon PIXMA iP1800 InkJet Photo Printer
- Black Print Speed: 20 ppm
- Color Print Speed: 16 ppm
- Output Type: Color Printer
- Technology (Detailed): Inkjet
- Printer Type: Digital Photo Printer
- Max Resolution (BW): 600 x 600 dpi
Available From
Why are these offers here?
Smart Buy!
Lowest price from a Trusted Store
Second Lowest Price
- Overview
-
Reviews
- Compare Prices
User ReviewRead All Reviews »
General purpose, low use printer.
Pros
Cheap, fast and produces decent color documents.
Cons
Not suitable for photo printing because of ugly composite black.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Good choice for general purpose home use. Poor choice for photo printing.
For specifications, please click on the specs already provided by Epinions (don't want to be redundant).
Photo printer? NOT!
Budget printers are rarely expected to print superb quality photos, but these days, even cheapo printers produce quite excellent looking prints (I have a budget Epson that prints superb photos). This is not the case with the so-called Photo printer from Canon, the IP1800 (or the Pixma IP1880 in some countries).
I have one of these and although Canon calls it a photo printer, I rate it poor for photo printing as it mixes three of the colors to get composite black. This, on photo paper, results in very muddy blacks and darker colors. Tree trunks and rocks look like messy waste watercolor. This gives the printed photo a very "urgh, that's real ugly!" effect. That's exactly what I said when I printed some landscape photos!
If only canon had included an option to use a cartridge with a dye black instead of a pigment black (which is exclusively for text and plain paper color document work) I think the pictures would be quite good as the dots are so small it's hard to see and I cannot detect any significant banding.
If you don't mind refilling the cartridges, I guess you could fill up the pg-40 cart with dye-based black ink and then select plain paper for photo work (but you lose the borderless high quality option).
Text quality
Text quality is acceptable for a budget printer. Nothing to shout about. It looks worse than on my older ip3000 though. Text on plain paper have a fuzzy effect when printed in standard mode and the black really isn't black enough. Black text look dull and faded. The good thing though, is that text output when printed with the black pigment ink is waterproof.
Printer speeds
This is quite a fast printer, as far as cheap printers go. Certainly much faster than my cheap Epson (which produces nicer prints though). A 4x6 photo in high quality mode takes around 2 minutes (almost 5 minutes on my Epson) while text pages come out quickly, I didn't time it but I finished printing a two page document in less than 10 seconds. Very fast for me.
Noise
It's quite noisy when compared to my super silent ip3000. The noisiest culprit is the paper feed mechanism and the left and right movement of the ink tank carriage when printing. Almost as bad as listening to a dentist drill, only at a much lower pitch. Thank goodness, however, for the printer's Quiet Mode, which feeds paper in slowly and the print head moves back and forth at a slower pace as well. This causes printing to slow down but not too much.
In comparison, my cheap Epson is a noisy clunking monster that will wake everyone in your home up if they're sleeping!
Remember, Pigment black for text, dye color tank for photos
The reason why Canon doesn't use the black cartridge for photo paper printing is because this is a pigment based ink, which is waterproof. If you set the print driver to plain paper, the printer will print with this pigment ink even for photos. And if you load up a piece of photo paper in plain paper mode, you'll soon see why the pigment ink is not suitable for printing on it. The ink smudges or rubs off easily as it does not adhere to the glossy photo paper and it also has a matte effect and makes the overall print look like it was printed with black tar!
Compared with similarly priced budget models from Epson, I have to say the Epson produces much nicer color photos on photo paper as they are printed with all four colors instead of just three like Canon's budget line. (I also have an Epson C series).
However, given a choice between this Canon and others from Epson, for general purpose printing, I'd still choose this one as it's much faster. And if you're not [icky about photo quality or you rarely print photos, then this is a much better deal. Especially given the fact that you can easily refill the cartridges and simply buy a new set when the built-in print head wears out.
Refilling cartridges
I have refilled the yellow ink so far, since that color was the first to run out. I've also topped up on magenta and cyan. I found it quite easy to refill, just be careful not to spill any ink or get ink all over your hands and desk. Wear gloves if possible. Refilling the cartridges with quality but cheap refill ink (buy ink that is meant for the specific cartridge only) makes the printer a good buy for those willing to go this route. So now you can print all the color documents you want! :)
Included software
Canon includes quite a bunch of useful software in addition to free fun stuff found at Canon's Creative Park website. There's Easy Photo Print, Easy Layout Print and Canon Toolbox which helps you with creating calendars, stickers and such. If you're using Windows Vista, you have to download the Windows Vista driver yourself as I found none included in the software disk.
Bottom line:
Pick this if you print a lot of general documents (which contain mostly text and some color graphics) and the occasional photo or two.
Don't pick this if you intend to print a lot of your beautiful digital photos at home. Get something which uses real black ink for creating black in photos instead of composite (mixing cyan, magenta and yellow) black.
Photo printer? NOT!
Budget printers are rarely expected to print superb quality photos, but these days, even cheapo printers produce quite excellent looking prints (I have a budget Epson that prints superb photos). This is not the case with the so-called Photo printer from Canon, the IP1800 (or the Pixma IP1880 in some countries).
I have one of these and although Canon calls it a photo printer, I rate it poor for photo printing as it mixes three of the colors to get composite black. This, on photo paper, results in very muddy blacks and darker colors. Tree trunks and rocks look like messy waste watercolor. This gives the printed photo a very "urgh, that's real ugly!" effect. That's exactly what I said when I printed some landscape photos!
If only canon had included an option to use a cartridge with a dye black instead of a pigment black (which is exclusively for text and plain paper color document work) I think the pictures would be quite good as the dots are so small it's hard to see and I cannot detect any significant banding.
If you don't mind refilling the cartridges, I guess you could fill up the pg-40 cart with dye-based black ink and then select plain paper for photo work (but you lose the borderless high quality option).
Text quality
Text quality is acceptable for a budget printer. Nothing to shout about. It looks worse than on my older ip3000 though. Text on plain paper have a fuzzy effect when printed in standard mode and the black really isn't black enough. Black text look dull and faded. The good thing though, is that text output when printed with the black pigment ink is waterproof.
Printer speeds
This is quite a fast printer, as far as cheap printers go. Certainly much faster than my cheap Epson (which produces nicer prints though). A 4x6 photo in high quality mode takes around 2 minutes (almost 5 minutes on my Epson) while text pages come out quickly, I didn't time it but I finished printing a two page document in less than 10 seconds. Very fast for me.
Noise
It's quite noisy when compared to my super silent ip3000. The noisiest culprit is the paper feed mechanism and the left and right movement of the ink tank carriage when printing. Almost as bad as listening to a dentist drill, only at a much lower pitch. Thank goodness, however, for the printer's Quiet Mode, which feeds paper in slowly and the print head moves back and forth at a slower pace as well. This causes printing to slow down but not too much.
In comparison, my cheap Epson is a noisy clunking monster that will wake everyone in your home up if they're sleeping!
Remember, Pigment black for text, dye color tank for photos
The reason why Canon doesn't use the black cartridge for photo paper printing is because this is a pigment based ink, which is waterproof. If you set the print driver to plain paper, the printer will print with this pigment ink even for photos. And if you load up a piece of photo paper in plain paper mode, you'll soon see why the pigment ink is not suitable for printing on it. The ink smudges or rubs off easily as it does not adhere to the glossy photo paper and it also has a matte effect and makes the overall print look like it was printed with black tar!
Compared with similarly priced budget models from Epson, I have to say the Epson produces much nicer color photos on photo paper as they are printed with all four colors instead of just three like Canon's budget line. (I also have an Epson C series).
However, given a choice between this Canon and others from Epson, for general purpose printing, I'd still choose this one as it's much faster. And if you're not [icky about photo quality or you rarely print photos, then this is a much better deal. Especially given the fact that you can easily refill the cartridges and simply buy a new set when the built-in print head wears out.
Refilling cartridges
I have refilled the yellow ink so far, since that color was the first to run out. I've also topped up on magenta and cyan. I found it quite easy to refill, just be careful not to spill any ink or get ink all over your hands and desk. Wear gloves if possible. Refilling the cartridges with quality but cheap refill ink (buy ink that is meant for the specific cartridge only) makes the printer a good buy for those willing to go this route. So now you can print all the color documents you want! :)
Included software
Canon includes quite a bunch of useful software in addition to free fun stuff found at Canon's Creative Park website. There's Easy Photo Print, Easy Layout Print and Canon Toolbox which helps you with creating calendars, stickers and such. If you're using Windows Vista, you have to download the Windows Vista driver yourself as I found none included in the software disk.
Bottom line:
Pick this if you print a lot of general documents (which contain mostly text and some color graphics) and the occasional photo or two.
Don't pick this if you intend to print a lot of your beautiful digital photos at home. Get something which uses real black ink for creating black in photos instead of composite (mixing cyan, magenta and yellow) black.
