Canon i960, i860, i560 series printers

[soccerfan]

Anyone had any experiences, pro or con, with these printers?

I'm thrilled with the $100 HP off deal, but I keep hearing that the Canon's are a lot better, and I'd rather not get burned just to save $100.

[pooky]

Anyone had any experiences, pro or con, with these printers?

I'm thrilled with the $100 HP off deal, but I keep hearing that the Canon's are a lot better, and I'd rather not get burned just to save $100.

I have the i860, and it's great. Prints very fast, borderless printing is really borderless, text is sharp, color is very good for the price. Can't comment on the others, though.

[crouchingtiger]

i850 printer here. Fantastic photos. Very good text. Affordable long-life cartridges, couldn't be happier.
No experience with the HPs though.

[Mustafa]

I couldn't be happier with my i560, which must be one of the best photo bargains around.

Although it uses only four colours, I find it hard to criticise the prints I get. It's cheap to run, and works seamlessly off of the USB port on my Airport.

I guess one day I might aspire to an i9950 for A3, B&W and ultra-critical work, but at the moment I'm fully satisfied with what I've got. As a general purpose printer, i.e. for text documents and photo, i can't imagine a better buy. There's a lot of people on the dpreview.com forums that agree with me, too.

[Horrortaxi]

I have an i850 and I love it. I got my mom an i860 and that's just as good. Image quality and print speed are very good. They're pretty good on ink use too. My favorite thing about the Canons is the seperate cmyk tanks. Why spend $35 to replace 3 colors when you're only out of yellow and can get yellow for $13?

I used to always use HP printers. They were fine, though I don't think they have any with seperate cmyk tanks and that's become a necessity to me.

HP pissed me off with lack of OS X support on a scanner. I bought it after OS X came out (late 2001) and as far as I know they still don't have drivers for it--though their website says they're coming in spring 2003. That kind of ruined my relationship with HP--support the Mac well or get lost. Along those lines, I've found Canon to be on top of things.

[plus_c]

Why spend $35 to replace 3 colors when you're only out of yellow and can get yellow for $13?
In my experience, I've run out of all three colors at about the same time. The flexibility is useful, though, and creates less waste, so I'm all for it.

I have an S900 - little bit older than the printers you're asking about, but I love it. It's been an excellent printer for my purposes. Prints quickly and the quality is good - I'd assume that later iterations have only gotten better.

[soccerfan]

I ended up going with the i560.

I checked some example prints in the store, and I just couldn't tell much of any difference between the i560 and the i960.

And at Best Buy right now you can get a $30 rebate making the final price, WITH tax an incredible $64!

Can't really beat that....

[iBook]

I have the Canon i950. Not on your list, but it would be reasonably close to the newer i960.

I love this Canon. I never would have believed an ink jet for less than $200 could perform so well. Type looks great. Photos look spectacular.

The six-cartridge system eliminates wasted ink because you only replace what you need. It also ensures, I think, better color.

Would definitely buy the Canon over the HP -- unless you're in a position to do a side-by-side comparison of prints produced by the machines you're considering. I've owned HPs in the past at twice the cost of my Canon; the HP didn't perform half as well.

[powerboy]

I ended up going with the i560.




Good choice. I have the i560 and am very happy with it. And you can't beat the price. Enjoy.

[BubbaJones]

I have the i960 and I love it. It is virtually identical to the i950 except for some little neat features. (My brother has the i950 so this list is not from research, but from a conversation we had)

4x6 paper tray - This holds 50 or so sheets of 4x6 paper that you can engage with out removing the 8 1/2 x 11 stock.

Auto wake/sleep - No need to turn the printer on or off. The printer detects a print job coming and wakes to print then shuts off after 5 minutes or so.

night time mode - ultra quiet mode for printing at night when everyone is sleeping. This is neat because you can set a specific range of time (ex. 7:00 pm - 7:00 am) and the printer will automatically switch to the ultra quiet mode. But even with out this the printer is very quiet.

I had a $500 Epson printer before this, and this printer blows it away. The best features are the borderless printing, and the quiet operation. The 6 seperate ink tanks are also a plus. One thing I hated about the Epson is that the ink tanks had a chip in them that estimated the amount of ink left in the tank. This causes problems when the tank is not given enough time to charge before use/power down. A few tanks I had became unusable because I didn't wait long enough. The Canon used a prism (I believe) so you don't need a chip.

I recomend getting the Canon photo paper rather then a different brand too. I found the Canon High Gloss paper was in fact more glossy then the rest.

Good Luck! Let us know which you decide on getting.

Bubba