Editor's Pros & Cons
PROS:
The printer measures 39.1" by 46.4" by 34.3" and weighs approximately 146 lbs with its included stand, an item made necessary by the fact that placing the printer on other furniture could easily block or make difficult to use its feeds, especially when processing large rolls of paper.
The printer produces documents at a maximum resolution of 2400 by 1200 dpi and includes 30720 nozzles through which to deliver ink, split up between 2560 nozzles for each of its twelve colors (cyan, photo cyan, magenta, photo magenta, yellow, black, matte black, red, green, blue, gray, photo gray). To ensure print quality even in the event of one nozzle failing, the printer includes detection and compensation for non-firing nozzles. It produces ink droplets as small as 4 picoliters.
The printer can print to media at widths between 8" and 24" in width and documents as long as 59', as well as rolls with a maximum diameter of 5.9". The top loading paper feed can process documents at thicknesses between .07 and .8mm, while the front loading manual feed can process documents between .5 and 1.5 mm in thickness. Rolls can be between .07 and .8 mm thick.
The printer can print to borderless documents on roll paper as wide as 10", B4, A3+, 14", 16", A2, A2+/17", B2, A1, or 24", and to satin photographic paper, glossy photographic paper, graphic matte canvas, heavyweight satin photographic paper, and heavyweight glossy photographic paper.
The printer can interface with devices via USB 2.0 or 10/100/1000 Base-TX Ethernet, making the printer easily networked in environments that need it and extremely fast in places where Gigabit Ethernet has been implemented. The printer produces 49 dB of noise when operating, consumes 6W of power in standby and 100W of power at maximum operation. The printer also processes documents using GARO, Canon's proprietary printing language, but does include plugins to work in Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office and Digital Photo Professional for Windows. Windows operating systems from 2000 onward are supported, as is Mac OS X from 10.3.9-10.6 for 32-bit systems and 10.5 onward for 64-bit systems.
Unlike comparable printers from Epson and other manufacturers, the printer can automatically switch between matte black and photo black inks when necessary without necessitating that users manually swap the cartridges depending on the kind of job being sent to the printer.
An accounting manager is also included with the printer in order to allow you to track printing costs, client jobs, ink usage, print times, media types, the number of pages completed, and media consumption areas per job.
CONS:
Though the printer does include support for Mac OS X, users of PostScript applications such as QuarkXPress or Adobe Illustrator will need to use a RIP package compatible with Canon's proprietary GARO printing language, as it does not include PostScript support. This will add some downtime and potential additional costs to the process of using this printer for Mac OS users.
A USB cable is not included with the printer, making it necessary to have an unused one or to purchase one before the printer can be set up after unboxing. While this isn't a long-term drawback, it is an inconvenience and something worth noting for prospective buyers.
The printer does not offer any letter or standard-sized paper tray, meaning that environments that do perform occasional non-graphics jobs of more than a few sheets will need another printer in order to complete them, as all paper will need to be fed manually.