Product Reviews

Canon's Pixma iP4200 has a lot to live up to. Last year's models, the iP300 and iP4000 were excellent all-round inkjets with impressive features, and they garnered rave reviews.

The headline new features in the iP4200 are its drop-size, an unimaginably miniscule one picolitre, and a resolution of 9600 x 2400dpi. Its print system, which is designed for the full range of colour printing tasks, rather than just photos, utilises five inks. The cyan, yellow, magenta and black tanks are joined by a larger pigment-based black tank for printing text.

Like its predecessors, the 4200 has dual input trays - meaning you can keep it permanently stocked with both plain and photo paper - a duplexer, and can print to CD and DVD discs. Each input tray has a capacity of 150 sheets of plain paper.

Canon says that, when printed on Canon media and stored appropriately, prints will last for 100 years.

The first thing we noticed on taking the printer out of its box is its size and shape. It has a squat, low-profile form factor, which means it is both deeper and wider than many of its competitors. However, if you use just the front input tray, the upper one can be folded away, and the arrangement of cable sockets on the side of the printer means it can be pushed flush against a wall, reducing the amount of desk space it would otherwise need.

The silver, graphite and charcoal finish is appealing and gives the 4200 a sleek, professional look. Its control buttons are mounted on its front, and consist of a power switch, paper feed and input tray selector. Below them is a PictBridge USB socket for connecting and printing directly from a digital camera. All that's missing is memory card slots, but on a printer like this, which doesn't have an LCD monitor, PictBridge is a better system for direct printing.

Set-up is easy,

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although Canon has opted for an A5 booklet for its quick-start guide rather than the colour A3 sheet provided by some manufacturers. Inserting the inks is made easy, thanks to LEDs in each tank holder. These light up when the tank is inserted correctly, and a decent labelling system means it's difficult to put the inks in the wrong holders.

Installing the software for the 4200 is a lengthy process, thanks to the quantity of software Canon supplies, which includes a neat application for designing CD and DVD labels. You can customise the installation so that only the drivers are copied across, though.

We put the iP4200 through MacUser's battery of tests and found it to be an excellent performer. Text, on the default setting, is crisp, dark and legible even at 2-point, and its output is speedy. A single A4 page of text popped on to the output tray in 14 seconds and further pages were spat out at a rate of five and a half per minute. On the fastest setting this rate increased to 13 pages per minute. The penalty is that text is grey rather than black, but it's still crisp and easily legible. Perfect for draft printing. One of the really nice things about the Canon driver is that text output speed is controlled by a slider rather than just a choice of two modes.

We were equally impressed with the IP4200's photo output. Borderless A4 photos, printed at high quality on Canon's Photo Paper Pro, took two minutes and eight seconds to be released from the clutches of the paper feeder and were beautifully reproduced. Colours were punchy but accurate, and there were no discernable dots or grain. Subtle tones and gradients were no problem and were a match for any six-colour inkjet we've seen. Fine detail was delivered with ease. Monochrome images had a slightly cold feel to them due to a faint green hue. However, it was barely noticeable, and to criticise the 4200 for it would be extremely harsh. With results like this from an all-rounder, there would seem to be very little reason to choose a dedicated photo printer - unless you want memory card slots or an LCD monitor.

We loved both the iP3000 and the iP4000R last year and are now equally smitten with the 4200. At a retail price of £119 it's well-worth it, but it's already possible to buy one online for a little over the £100-mark, making it a bargain. If you're in the market for a general-purpose inkjet that can pump out gorgeous photos, look no further.