Canon Pixma Professional-200 Evaluation | PCMag

A substitute for the Canon Pixma Professional-100 reviewed right here again in 2013, the Canon Pixma Professional-200 ($599.99), a wi-fi inkjet picture printer, is considerably smaller and leaner than its predecessor and prices rather less to make use of. That small footprint means it solely helps paper as much as 13 by 19 inches (supertabloid), versus the bigger 17-by-22-inch paper supported by Canon’s imagePrograf Professional-1000 and related machines. The Professional-200 is a superb picture printer, however it doesn’t help media rolls for creating banners and panoramas, so it is available in a detailed second to the Epson SureColor P700 ($799.99), our Editors’ Selection for13-inch professional-grade picture printers.

Lean and Environment friendly

Measuring 7.9 by 25.2 by 15 inches (WHD) with its trays closed and weighing 32 kilos, the Professional-200 is, in keeping with Canon, 15% smaller than the previous Professional-10 and Professional-100 fashions. (One of many extra frequent complaints about these early Canon pro-grade picture printers is their hulking dimension and weight.) The newer Professional-200 and Professional-300 are a number of inches smaller in all instructions and greater than 10 kilos lighter than the Professional-100. 

The P700 is comparable in dimension and girth, however what’s contained in the chassis has one huge distinction: Like most Epson SureColor machines, it comes with built-in paper roll help. On the brilliant aspect, the Professional-200 does help restricted banner printing as much as 39 inches lengthy.

Although the Professional-200 doesn’t help paper rolls, you’ll be able to print on reduce sheets as much as 39 inches lengthy.

The total-featured management panel consists of a number of navigation buttons and a non-touch 3-inch coloration show. As with most professional-grade picture printers, the vast majority of your enhancing and enhancements are dealt with through the bundled software program (or the picture manipulation software program of your alternative), which we’ll have a look at shortly. You may as well configure and function the printer, monitor consumables, and generate and print utilization studies through an online portal that runs on just about any browser, even the one in your smartphone or pill.

The management panel is succesful, however you may do most configuration by way of the net portal.

As for paper dealing with, the Professional-200 helps quite a lot of paper shapes ranging in dimension from 3.5 by 3.5 inches to 13 by 39 inches. That features three of Canon’s sq. codecs: 3.5 by 3.5, 5 by 5, and 12 by 12 inches.

The entrance cassette of the Professional-200 can maintain as much as 100 sheets ranging in thickness from 64 to 380 gsm (grams per sq. meter), or 17 to 170 lbs. A one-sheet tray on the again holds sizes from 8 by 10 inches to 13 by 39 inches. That can suffice for a lot of functions, however if you wish to print something longer, look to the Epson SureColor P700 and its 10.7-foot paper rolls. 13-by-39-inch pre-cut sheets and customized sheets are costly, so you could need to purchase a paper roll and reduce your individual sheets to feed into the Professional-200.

When you’re nonetheless storing and distributing information on optical media, the Professional-200 additionally prints straight onto pre-surfaced CD ROMs and DVDs.

Certainly somebody nonetheless wants this characteristic.

Skilled-Grade Software program and A great deal of Paper Decisions

Most photographers and artists use high-end graphic software program reminiscent of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, however for the few who do not, Canon has developed Canon Skilled Print & Format Software program, a mix picture enhancing and doc structure program with a user-friendly interface and highly effective picture processing instruments. It is included with the Professional-200.

Canon’s Skilled Print & Format software program can edit and improve your pictures and different content material by itself or inside different packages.

Canon additionally consists of Media Configuration Software, which makes it simpler to handle your numerous media sorts and their Worldwide Colour Consortium (ICC) profiles. These outline particular paper sorts by their traits—reminiscent of absorption charge, drying velocity, and matte or shiny end—and inform the printer how finest to mlx and apply ink.

The Professional-200 can connect with a Canon digital digicam or video recorder through Wi-fi PictBridge, to a single PC through USB 2.0, and to a community through Ethernet or Wi-Fi 802.11/a/b/g/n. Cellular connections are supported by way of Canon Print Service, Apple AirPrint, and Mopria.

Merely Flawless Paintings

The Professional-200’s 4,800-by-2,400-dpi decision and FINE (Full-Photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering) printhead know-how produce good and brightly coloured prints of your pictures and art work. Just like the Professional-100, the Professional-200 makes use of eight cartridges: cyan, magenta, yellow, black (CMYK), picture cyan, picture magenta, mild grey, and grey. Canon’s Chromatic clear coat is absent; it is solely put in on bigger and fancier fashions such because the Professional-1000.

Usually, we charge printers by pages per minute (ppm). Nonetheless, with one of these printer, velocity just isn’t as important as output high quality, and its options are designed to optimize element, coloration administration, particular results, and so forth. To evaluate output high quality, I printed a number of pictures and graphics layouts ranging in dimension from 4-by-6-inch snapshots to 13-by-19-inch pictures and posters.

See How We Check Printers

In our earlier checks of the Professional-100, it had a number of minor color-shift points, however Canon appears to have corrected these for the Professional-200; even upon shut inspection, I couldn’t discover any notable high quality points. Colours got here out correct and vibrant, and element was distinctive. As well as, the 2 grey ink cartridges and single black tank churn out distinctive monochrome halftones, a number of the finest I’ve seen.

When you do care about velocity, Canon says the Professional-200 can print an 11-by-14-inch bordered coloration picture (A3+) in 1 minute, 30 seconds, and an 8-by-10-inch bordered coloration picture (A4) in 53 seconds. “Bordered” signifies that the content material comes out with a quarter-inch margin on all 4 sides. Borderless pictures with edge-to-edge bleeds, which might look extra professionally designed, take nearly twice as lengthy to print as the identical content material with borders. The Professional-200 prints borderless output on all of the paper sizes it helps.

A Boutique Machine With Champagne Tastes

Like its siblings and rivals, nothing in regards to the Professional-200 says discount. Each ink and premium picture paper could be onerous in your finances.

The Professional-200 makes use of Canon’s ChromaLife100+ CLI-65 8 inks. In accordance with Canon, ChromaLife100+ is specifically formulated for enhanced coloration gamuts (ranges) in magenta and reds, deeper blacks, and enchancment of darkish coloration copy in blues and reds. The Professional-200 CLI-65 8 Colour Pack accommodates a full set of dye-based CLI-65 12.6 milliliter (ml) ink cartridges. You should buy the whole eight-cartridge set from Canon for $105.99 or every particular person tank for $13.99. (That’s a couple of $5 financial savings if you purchase your entire set.) That comes out to about $1.05 per ml, which is what passes for cheap on this printer class.

The Professional-300 makes use of 10 14.4ml ChromaLife100+ cartridges for a value of $1.30 per ml. Epson’s P700 comes with 25ml cartridges that promote for $37.99 every, or a whopping $1.52 per ml.

For the most effective per-ml worth, take into account a 17-inch mannequin, reminiscent of Canon’s Professional-1000. Its 80ml cartridges promote for $59.99, or about 75 cents per ml. When you print loads, the decrease operating prices will make up the distinction within the printer’s buy value.

As for paper, I discovered 50-sheet packages on Canon’s web site at about $2 per sheet. Store round and also you’ll discover these papers or equivalents for much less at Amazon, B&H Photograph, and several other different on-line retailers. In my expertise, utilizing Canon’s papers with its pro-grade picture printers garners wonderful outcomes, however third-party papers from Hammermill and different paper mills can prevent fairly a bit of cash; yow will discover ultra-glossy supertabloid-size picture paper, for instance, for as little as 55 cents per sheet. Utilizing smaller sizes will value significantly much less, in fact, in each paper and ink. Be certain to arrange the printer together with your paper’s ICC profile for the most effective outcomes.

A Lengthy-Awaited Improve

Professional-grade inkjet picture printers aren’t upgraded usually, however when they’re, the enhancements in print high quality and have units are appreciable. The Professional-200 is a number of steps up from the Professional-100, with a lowered footprint, an optimized ink and coloration palette, and a bigger onboard show. My solely actual grievance about this and different Canon pro-grade fashions is their lack of help for paper rolls. You probably have no want for banners or panoramas longer than 39 inches, that is a beautiful printer that produces attractive pictures (particularly grayscale ones) with decrease operating prices than most others in its class.