Canon PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II in Printers

When it comes to photo printing, Canon can safely claim to have beaten its rivals into submission, at least for the time being. It's been a long time since a non-Canon product has occupied the A List for inkjet printers, and its current occupant, the Canon Pixma iP4600, is streets ahead of the competition.

So it's not surprising that Canon's latest large-format device, the Pro9000 Mark II, is a terrific photo printer. It prints on paper up to A3+ in size, and the print quality is simply superb.

Plain black text is laser-like in its crispness and solidarity, while coloured charts and business graphics were equally solid. The Pro9000 will handle an impressive range of stock, as well - up to 300g/m2.

The Pro9000's reason for being is photo printing, and it's here that Canon traditionally sets itself apart from the competition. Our test photos were totally free of banding and matched the source colours in our photos almost perfectly.

Better yet, it's fast: an A4 photo was finished in 50 seconds, while a borderless A3 image was done in 1min 48secs in the impressive Standard quality mode. Ratcheting up the quality to High - which results in slightly warmer, fuller colours - only set the time back to 3mins 37secs for a borderless A3 print. And, with our prints completely grain free, the Pro9000's fantastic output was indistinguishable from that of a professional print service.

What's more, the Pro9000 is cheaper to run than paying for a professional print service. Photobox.com, one of PC Pro's favourite online printers, charges £5.99 including VAT for an A3 print.

Taking Canon's word for the number of photo prints you can expect from each cartridge, a single A3 photo works out at a shade over £1.36. You still need to buy paper, of course, but even factoring in Canon's expensive A3 Photo Paper Pro at £1.90 a sheet, you still save money.

Or you would, if it weren't for the price of the printer itself. At £500 there's a huge increase in price over Canon's consumer A4 printers, so you'll need to be sure that you'll really work its A3+ print engine regularly to be sure of making an economically-sound purchase.

But if you will, the convenience and speed of being able to run off lab-quality A3 and A3+ prints from the comfort of your desktop in a few minutes really takes some beating - particularly when they look this good.

Author: Dave Stevenson