Pros & Cons
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- Moderately priced for a near-dedicated photo printer.
- Outputs gallery-worthy photos.
- Reasonably fast.
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- Some color issues, mostly in graphics.
The Canon Pixma PRO-100 ($362.54 at Amazon) may be the new junior model in Canon's professional photo inkjet line, but as such it can still output gallery-quality prints at sizes up to 13 by 19 inches. It's a good choice for an amateur photographer who's looking to take the hobby more seriously.
At 8.6 by 27.2 by 15.2 inches (HWD) when closed, it's slightly larger than its Epson counterpart, the Editors' Choice Epson Stylus Photo R2000 ($699.99 at Adorama) , and about the same weight. Like the R2000, it lacks an LCD; instructions and data like ink tank levels are displayed on the screen of the computer you're printing from. It offers WiFi and Ethernet as well as USB connectivity.
The PRO-100 uses eight ink tanks for its dye-based inks: black; gray; light gray; yellow; magenta; photo magenta; cyan; and photo cyan. The high-end model in the series, the Canon Pixma PRO-1 , sports 12 ink tanks. Although the PRO-100's sticker price is much less than that of the PRO-1, its ink costs—at least in price per milliliter of ink, as there's no good way to measure the cost per printed page for this sort of printer—are considerably higher. Each of its tanks holds 13 ml of ink, at a cost of $1.31 per ml, compared with an even dollar per ml for the PRO-1, which has much higher capacity (36 ml) tanks. The PRO-100's ink costs per ml are also slightly higher than the $1.25 per ml of the Editors' Choice Epson Stylus Photo R2000.
The PIXMA PRO-100 has two paper trays: A rear tray for a variety of fine art and glossy photo papers, and a manual slot for thicker media. It also permits printing onto printable CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs.
Speed
Speed takes a back seat to quality with near-dedicated photo printers, but faster is still preferable, all else being equal. I timed the Canon Pixma PRO-100 (using QualityLogic's hardware and software) at an average of 1 minute 17 seconds to output a 4-by-6 print and 2:01 to output an 8-by-10. This is slightly slower than the 51 seconds per 4-by-6 and 1:42 per 8-by-10 for the Epson R2000, but much faster than the Canon Pixma PRO-1's 2:14 and 3:53 times.
Output Quality
No one buys a photo printer like the PRO-100 to print text, but it's good to know it can do so if you need it to, as it has above-average quality for an inkjet. It did especially well on several of the more common business fonts. Graphics quality was slightly above par for an inkjet, though colors were off on a couple of illustrations.
It's with photos, though, that the PRO-100 really shines. In our standard photo tests, it did very well in capturing detail in both light and dark areas, and in faces. There was the barest hint of a tint in a monochrome image, but only a perfectionist is likely to notice. I also did some ad-hoc testing, including with larger-format (13 by 19 inches) prints. It didn't do quite as well as the PRO-1 in printing images with very dark backgrounds, which isn't surprising as five of that printer's 12 ink tanks are various shades of black or gray. In a couple of prints, the colors were slightly off. Still, the overall photo quality is good enough to produce prints for exhibition or sale.
The Canon Pixma PRO-1 costs twice as much as the PRO-100 and is bigger, heavier, and slower, but has considerably lower ink costs. The PRO-1 did a superior job of printing photos with black or very dark backgrounds, and did slightly better in printing other photos as well.
The Epson Stylus Photo R3000 ($849.99 direct), which prints top-tier photos and graphics, adds a color LCD and the ability to print from paper rolls.
The Epson R2000 is a touch smaller than the PRO-100 and has a slight edge in speed, as well as slightly lower ink costs (per volume at least). That said, they both produce gallery-worthy prints, and choosing between them may come down to whether you prefer the look of Epson or Canon prints, which have slightly different qualities. They both offer WiFi, Ethernet, and USB connectivity.
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