Canon PIXMA Pro9000

Pro 9000 review / Mark Pettigrew, 2006-11-08

"Received the Pro 9000 printer yesterday and set it up. First impressions are that it is a very well built printer. It all folds up into a closed black and silver box-like structure, great for keeping the dust out of the innards. Some of the flaps (eg the paper output tray) feel a little flimsy, but this is a big printer and without adding considerably to the weight it is hard to see how they could make it more solid. (Only a little flimsy, though. I’m not worried about it breaking). Interestingly, the printer has a pair of wheels on the back for pulling it forward, as it requires something like 15 inches at the back if you use the straight-through paper path for A3 paper. Set up is fairly straightforward, although the universal language of pictures on the A3 sheet telling you how to commission it doesn’t really explain well. However, I did manage to get it all set up OK – although it doesn’t give you the comfort of words to describe things like installing the print head and the pictures aren’t that clear, the things you have to do are fairly straightforward and obvious once you get going. And you have to remove what seems like yards of orange packing tape. Software installation is straightforward as well. CD in the tray, say yes a few times, turn the printer on when you are told to, and that’s it. One thing which did faze me a little was the print head alignment. On my old canon S820D print head alignment required me to pick the best of several blocks of coloured print; I discovered after reading the online guide that the Pro 9000 that alignment is automatic and doesn’t require any user input. Brilliant! The printer has a fold-out paper feed for the normal paper input from the top, typewriter-style, which does require the printer to be pulled a few inches away from the wall. But you can also feed paper straight through – which the online guide says can take media up to 1.2mm thick. To do this you reposition the paper output tray by lifting, tilting and lowering it, and you open the rear paper tray. Your paper is placed flat on the output tray, a bit of button pressing to prepare the printer, the paper then passes back through the printer and then you’re ready to print. Print quality appears to be excellent. I printed a few A4 prints onto Canon Glossy Photo Paper (probably the lowest quality that Canon recommend). The colours do appear richer than from my previous printer, which I considered to be just fine for photos. An A4 borderless print at high quality took about 4 minutes. Interestingly, the smell is also remiscent of conventional (chemical) photo printing on silver based photographic paper. No scratches on the printout, no visible banding. It uses 8 ink cartridges (Black, C, M, Y, PhotoCyan, PhotoMagenta, Red, Green) and a separate print head. There’s also a waste ink absorber. I suspect that the ink absorber and possibly the print head are things which might need attention after heavy use – the print head on my old printer was the reason for replacement, and it’s good to see that the print head on the Pro 9000 is a user replaceable part. The software package seems to be adequate. There’s an easy photo printing package, and a ‘pro’ package which integrates with Photoshop CS2 to allow you to semi-automate the process of printing photos (eg 4-up on A4, contact sheets, etc). There’s also the PhotoRecord software, which to me seems an adequate tool for printing montages, but not much more than that. Overall – a costly printer, but it looks to me already well worth the money. Delighted so far, and looking forward to spending lots of money on printing (paper, inks, etc) "