BIOS: Technology Means Business

The breadbin-shaped PIXMA iP4000 is Canon's latest A4 inkjet printer designed for all-round usage. Besides the attractive grey-and-silver enclosure, the printer uses Canon's ContrastPLUS technology - a five tank ink system that includes an additional dye-based black ink for sharper contrast. It also sports a tiny 2-picolitre ink droplet size, which helps it to output good looking prints on high-quality paper. However, prints on regular paper are very disappointing, with text appearing fuzzy and uncontrolled and images suffering from severe banding. There's also no built-in memory card slots, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Nevertheless, for just £109 (ex. VAT), you do get dual paper trays, automatic duplex printing, CD-R/DVD printing functions, as well as impressive output quality on high-quality paper, making the PIXMA iP4000 a good value offering if you intend to print mostly 6x4in. documents.

Pros: Dual paper trays; automatic duplexing; CD/DVD printing
Cons: No Bluetooth or memory card readers; poor on regular paper

The iP4000 (418x286x170mm, 6.7kg) is currently the top-of-the-range model in Canon's new range of PIXMA inkjet printers. Set to appeal from the outset thanks to its stylish grey-and-silver enclosure, the PIXMA iP4000 (Best Current Price: £94.47) offers a high print resolution of 4800x1200dpi, a 2-picolitre droplet size, claimed print speeds up of to 25ppm (22ppm for colour) and can print glossy borderless A4 prints directly from a digital camera and digital camcorder. The printer can also be used to print onto special-coated CDs and DVDs using the supplied optical disc tray (no blank discs supplied).

Canon's PIXMA range is designed as a clear departure from conventional desktop devices. With computer-independent printing, along with a striking design and ability to operate placed up against a wall thanks to its front-loading and front-exiting paper path, the PIXMA iP4000 should fit neatly into most modern living or working environments. Support for the vendor-independent PictBridge standard also means you can print directly from a compatible digital camera or digital camcorder without using your computer. Unfortunately, there are no built-in memory card slots, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, so prints can't be made without cabling. This is a real disappointment considering the printer is aimed at consumers at photo hobbyists.

Installing and configuring the printer is relatively straightforward, but you do need to install the supplied print head as well as the five ink cartridges (two dye-based blacks, yellow, magenta and cyan). This is unusual, but is quick and easy to do thanks to the informative paper-based Quick Start Guide and HTML-based online manual. The PIXMA iP4000 features Canon's 'Transparent' single-ink system, where each ink is stored in an individually replaceable tank. This is an economical feature that helps to minimise waste, because only the ink that is exhausted needs to be replaced.

When a particular colour does run low, a pop-up warning window appears and the printer will not start to print a page if there is insufficient ink to finish. The printer connects to your computer using either a parallel or USB 2.0, but there's no built-in or optional Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity options for wireless printing.

One of the key design objectives of the PIXMA range was to maximise flexibility of location. To this effect, Canon's PIXMA printers are currently the only devices on the market that include both the traditional sheet feeder ('J' pass) paper path and a cassette ('U' turn path), allowing the printer to be stored and operated on a shelf or in other areas where space is at a premium. Dual paper trays also permit the printers to be loaded with plain paper and photo print media simultaneously, so both documents and photos can be printed without the need for stopping and changing paper.

The PIXMA iP4000 distinctly has two paper paths: a top-mounted automatic-sheet loader and an internal, pull-out, cassette at the bottom of the printer. Both of the trays can support up to 150 sheets of A4 plain paper (64gsm), as well as 4x6in. photo paper, 5x7in. photo paper, letter-size photo paper and 10 envelopes. The paper source is selected from the supplied software driver or using the two dedicated paper tray button on the front of the printer. Paper is output onto a flip-down tray.

Automatic duplexing (double-sideed printing) is supported, which is a very welcome feature considering the relatively low cost of the printer. However, automatic duplexing isn't supported on paper sizes smaller than B5, and photographs aren't really suitable for this type of printing because the image is usually visible on the other side. Moreover, the paper may absorb too much ink and become over saturated. Automatic duplexing also isn't supported for poster printing.

When it comes to printing, the PIXMA iP4000's intuitive interface lets you make the usual alterations to print settings. For instance, you can select media type, paper source, print quality, alter colour and greyscale levels, as well as preview your page before committing. You can also change print data size to increase printing speed.

More advanced print settings let you set printing type: normal-size (printed according to a document's original dimensions), fit-to-page (document is automatically resized and printed to fit a specific paper size), scaled (document is resized), page layout (pages are reduced and printed so that multiple documents can fit onto a single page), poster (enlarges and splits images across several sheets of paper to make one large image), as well as booklet (multiple-page document is printed so that two pages fit on each printed page).

From the driver software you can also apply print effects. These include the ability to print a colour image in a single colour (monochrome effects), increase the vibrancy of colours (especially blues and greens), improve the contours and smooth jaggedness that can occur when images are enlarged, reduce noise, as well optimise photos automatically (can be effective for images affected by colour imbalance and over- or under exposure).

Print quality was disappointing on regular plain paper using the default settings. In particular, text appeared fuzzy and uncontrolled, and images suffered from severe banding. There was also noticeable dithering on large areas of colour, although fine-tuning the driver software helped us to minimise these unsightly print deficiencies. Colour reproduction was more impressive on plain paper, and skintones in particular looked even and well balanced.

As expected, using high-quality Canon photo paper and spending a little time tweaking the driver settings improved print results, eliminated banding and added a whole new depth to photographs. Results still aren't the best available however, but they're good enough for the vast majority of today's digital camera users looking for a relatively low-cost and versatile printer for printing 4x6in. prints and the occassional A4 letter. If print quality is a priority, you'll probably be better off opting for one of Canon's forthcoming high-end PIXMA range (from £169 ex. VAT).

Canon claims print speeds of up to 25ppm for monochrome and 17ppm for colour. While the printer is certainly quick, in our tests an A4 colour photograph took 1m 21 seconds to print and a 6x4in. photograph tool 24 seconds - a far cry from Canon's claims. Printed at the highest resolution using glossy paper, the same prints took 3m 28s and 1m 20s respectively. The PIXMA iP4000's print engine is exceptionally fast overall though, and we managed to push 44 pages through the printer in one minute - the fastest we've tested to date.

Canon hasn't skimped on software either, and the PIXMA iP4000 comes with a range of easy-to-use software packages. Easy-PhotoPrint provides three easy steps to printing photos, assisting with options such as media selection and scaleing, and includes features such as face sharpening for out-of-focus face correction, red eye correction and digital face smoothing to reduce the appearance of wrinkles.

Easy-WebPrint sits on the Explorer toolbar and takes the frustration out of Web page printing, saving time, ink and paper by correctly scaleing output to print one-page-per-sheet, preventing the common problem of having the right-hand side of Web pages cut off. Finally, CD Label Print lets you quickly design and print on print-ready CD or DVD media.

About our tests:
BIOS uses a range of popular office-type documents to test the image quality and speed of printers and all-in-one devices. Our test suite comprises an A4 photograph (34MB, PSD format), 6x4in. photograph (5MB, PSD format), 12-page text file (90KB, RTF format), 12-page PDF (1.2MB) and 20-page presentation (2.5MB, PRZ format). For our throughput test we print a single dot onto multiple A4 pages. Unless otherwise indicated, printers are tested using default print settings. In all but the throughput test, the higher the number, the slower the printer. Print quality is subjectively analysed by the reviewer, based on experience and comparisons to printers we've previously tested.