Canon i9100

Replacing the much-lauded S9000, Canon's i9100 ups the already high ante for large-format printing. The maximum horizontal resolution has been increased from 2,400 to 4,800dpi and it will now produce borderless prints up to A3+ (13in x 19in).

The i9100 is a six-colour unit, with the standard cyan, magenta, yellow and black augmented by light magenta and light cyan. The Single Ink system means each tank is individually replaceable, while optical ink sensors give an exact reading of what remains in each tank. The driver options are comprehensive and include trinkets like Image Optimisation for interpolating low-resolution images and PNR (Photo Noise Reduction) for reducing typical digital photo speckle artefacts.

Using Canon's Photo Glossy A3+ paper, the i9100 produced huge, borderless and beautiful prints. There was no banding in any of our test output. The light cyan and light magenta tanks also help to produce a fantastic colour gamut, including decently saturated greens - traditionally a tricky area - and with the colour profiling set up correctly the results are close to what you see on screen.

The drop size is a tiny 4pl (picolitres), but this is an increase on the A4 Canon i950's 2pl. However, on A4 paper, this had no notable impact on fine detail compared to our A-Listed photo printer, the Epson Stylus Photo 950 (see issue 100, p96). What's more, none of this comes at a speed penalty: our standard test photo, printed on borderless A4, dropped into the output tray after just two minutes, 40 seconds, and borderless A3+ prints never took more than six minutes, ten seconds. Monochrome images, both neutral and deliberately tinted, came out with no perceptible colour fringing or divergence - the dot placement is near perfect.

The step up to large-format printing means a hefty increase in price, but with the amazing speed of its print engine Canon is better placed than any other manufacturer to deliver a practical A3+ photo printer. And the i9100 is certainly that. If you need borderless large-format photo prints, there's no alternative.

Author: David Fearon