Labs

The Canon Pixma Pro9000 is an eight-colour A3+ printer that uses Canon's dye-based inks. It's an uncompromising looking device, but that's not to say it's ugly by any stretch of the imagination. The whole unit feels well constructed and each of the doors feels like it will withstand being opened and closed over the course of the, hopefully long, life of the printer.

There's not much in the way of additional features, with a PictBridge port on the front the only sign of what could be called an extra. There's USB 2 connectivity and three buttons to control the machine at source, but that's your lot when it comes to on-printer operation. The main paper path is the usual straight through from a rear tray, but this Canon has a trick up its sleeve, with a front-loading paper tray for speciality paper support. This gives the printer an entirely flat path, so you can use thicker papers and not bend the media as it passes the print heads. We did feel that the rear paper tray support was a touch flimsy and the paper would often bow unconvincingly

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as it sat waiting to be pulled through, but overall construction and design is excellent.

On the speed front, the Canon is superb, with by far the fastest output for an A3 page. Its fastest performance was 1 minute 41 seconds, while its slowest was only 10 seconds more. If you're looking for a fast device for your A3 prints, this should certainly be at the top of your list. Even at 1 minute 51 seconds for one of our test prints, the Pro9000 was still 1 minute 27 seconds ahead of the next fastest competitor; the Epson Stylus Photo 1400.

The results from the Canon, with the exception of the black-and-white image, which had a strong yellow tint to it, were good. In isolation, the images had a fine level of detail and crisp punchy colours. Up against the competition though, the results fared less well. The Pro9000 wasn't a big hit with our independent judges when it came to colour, who felt that hues were less natural than the competition. The colour portrait shot we used did come out a little soft and the image of the motherboard wasn't as detailed as we'd have liked. That's not to say that it gave poor performance though, as the images were of a high quality.

Ultimately, this Labs is about a balance of performance and output quality, so though the Pro9000 scores highly in the speed stakes it loses out on the print front. However, with the exception of the black-and-white image all of the prints were acceptable. It's just that on this occasion, the Canon was up against some strong competition. This is a well-built and generally excellent printer that bar a few minor failings will offer excellent prints.