Digital Home Thoughts: BIOS Reviews the Canon PIXMA iP4000 Printer

"The breadbin-shaped PIXMA iP4000 is Canon's latest A4 inkjet printer designed for all-round usage. Besides the attractive grey-and-silver enclosure, the printer uses Canon's ContrastPLUS technology - a five tank ink system that includes an additional dye-based black ink for sharper contrast. It also sports a tiny 2-picolitre ink droplet size, which helps it to output good looking prints on high-quality paper. However, prints on regular paper are very disappointing, with text appearing fuzzy and uncontrolled and images suffering from severe banding. There's also no built-in memory card slots, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Nevertheless, for just £109 (ex. VAT), you do get dual paper trays, automatic duplex printing, CD-R/DVD printing functions, as well as impressive output quality on high-quality paper, making the PIXMA iP4000 a good value offering if you intend to print mostly 6x4in. documents."

I was looking forward to the new PIXMA line of printers, but fuzzy text on plain paper? That's nothing like my i950, which has fantastic quality text on plain paper. Or I wonder if "plain paper" for them is some cheap 20 lb junk? I only print on 24 lb bright (90+) paper, so that may indeed be a factor. And who prints images on regular paper anyway? Of course they'll look horrible. I really like the dual paper trays though - that's very cool.