Pixma iX5000

Canon printers have been giving Epson and HP printers a pretty good run for their money over the last few years, and this new Pixma is the latest attempt to corner the market. Before getting into the details, it’s important to say that this is not the newest graphics and repro oriented up-market multi-ink model – that will apparently be called the 9500 and is due out in the autumn, boasting a new ten-ink set.

The iX5000 is a more modest printer aimed squarely at the corporate market, but it might also interest budget-oriented photo enthusiasts. The selling points on offer are price – at around £300 it’s one of the cheapest A3 printers available – and speed. If you’re looking for an even cheaper A3+ model, there’s the Pixma iX4000.

We didn’t get a chance to look at the iX4000, but it seems to be almost identical to the iX5000, with a few significant differences: it runs at two-thirds of the print speed and costs around two-thirds of the price. With that in mind, it becomes an extremely interesting budget A3+ option. Otherwise, this review should apply equally to the cheaper model.

First impressions
The iX5000 isn’t the best-looking printer on the market right now, which isn’t surprising considering its business orientation. Frankly, this printer looks cheap, with minimal (as opposed to minimalist) black and beige styling that’s reminiscent of PC design from around five years ago.

With the exception of the print bed and mechanics, the parts and casing are all plastic. The sharply angled tray means the footprint is just a touch smaller than competing A3 models, but there isn’t much in it. Dimensions and weight are low enough for one person to install the printer on their own.

As with previous Canon models, the print heads and inks have to be fitted separately, using a simple snap-in process. It’s at this point that the main cost-cutting angle is revealed, when you realise the straightforward use of colour.

This is a four-ink CMYK printer, with none of the extra subtle shadings and gamut enhancements offered by upmarket models with more colours. The black is a doublesize cartridge, but the others offer a standard, relatively tiny, reservoir. At around £10 per cartridge, running costs won’t be extortionate, but the small ink volumes may make extended multi-copy print runs an occasional problem.

A new technology called FINE offers 2pl droplets, which, according to Canon, means output is equivalent to competing six-ink models. But the inks are dye-based rather than pigment-based, which means the available gamut is very different. Longevity is also an issue. The ChromaLife100 label means that fading is minimal over a century under ideal conditions. But when exposed to air, this figure goes down to a decade or so. Since most people don’t keep their prints in a darkened room in a vacuum, the latter figure is more likely to reflect the real-world longevity.

Easy installation
Set-up and installation are quite standard and take about half an hour for both hardware and software. Connection is by way of a standard USB 2.0 cable, which you’ll need to buy separately. The supplied software includes the usual range of easy-quick photo utilities. These have their moments – with a bit of persuasion the Easy-Photo tool can be persuaded to print thumbnails instead of family albums – but these tools won’t interest anyone who works with Photoshop for a living, and the installation routine can be asked not to include them.

More interesting is the main driver, which includes a couple of optimisation and enhancement features that try to add more punch and colour to prints. There’s also a noise-reduction tool, which attempts to remove graininess and other artifacts from your images. These are useful features to have, but the results don’t compare with standalone alternatives.

Surprising print quality
Of course the big question is print quality, and this is surprisingly good given the limitations of the ink set. We tried various test runs with different optimisation and enhancement settings, and also experimented with plain old contrast and brightness. Colour test bars always printed smoothly with no banding or stepped transitions, but the colour range lacked the eye-popping saturation and depth of the best of the competition.

The default cyan and magenta looked slightly muddy, and while they could be lightened, there was a corresponding lack of contrast. But this is a performance level that isn’t really being offered here.

The iX5000 isn’t a bad printer at all, but it’s a little tame compared to what’s available elsewhere. With profiling it could possibly be pushed into providing best-guess proofing on a tight budget, but for ultimate accuracy it would need to be set up very carefully. On the other hand, it’s fine for casual photo printing and for fast print runs of promo materials that don’t need absolute colour perfection or explosive contrast.

Print speeds are good, built around an almost alarmingly fierce and speedy paper-feed mechanism. A test image took less than three minutes in standard mode, and around half as long again in high-quality mode. The difference between the two modes looked minimal, so if you’re using good paper, standard mode should be fine for most applications.

iX5000 versus iX4000
This is a slightly odd product given that its sibling iX4000 is much cheaper and offers almost as much printer power. For the market it’s aimed at, the iX5000 only really makes sense for anyone who needs very fast printing on a regular basis. If output speed is less important to you, the iX4000 looks like a better deal with a discounted street price of as low as £220.

We’d definitely choose the iX4000 for casual printing. The iX5000 could fit into a busy office environment, but it would be much happier producing roughs and promos than proofs and final prints.