Canon Pixma iP4500 Photo Inkjet Printer (2171B002)

I've only had this printer for a few days. It's a replacement for a Canon Pixma ip3000 that failed after 3.5 years. Given the similarity between the models, I decided to "upgrade" to an ip4500 instead of going for the lower priced ip3500. Both are so similar to my old ip3000 that the manual wasn't even necessary.

While I haven't put this printer through all of its paces yet, what I've seen so far is very encouraging. Text prints very quickly and looks as good as a laser printer.

However, I bought this printer for photos and it looks like it's going to surpass my ip3000 in quality. Colors seem a bit smoother and there also seems to be a minor improvement in sharpness. I still need to do some experimenting, but I don't think I'll find anything too surprisingly different.

Now let me tell you why I only gave it four stars. Although I have always used Canon brand inks, I resent that Canon has lowered itself to Epson's level of FORCING me to do so. It's such a blatant marketing ploy that I find it offensive. I'm sure if they found a way to put a microchip on a piece of paper they'd force us to use their brand of paper as well.

I ordered this Canon Pixma printer based on the price, printing capabilities, and 5 separate colored ink cartridges(2 for black and 3 for the basic cyan, magenta and yellow). Our previous Canon bubblejet printer was slow to print, but printed very high quality. This printer is much faster than that older one, and does not disappoint in terms of quality. I printed a photo on regular typing paper and got a very high quality image with colors that matched those on my computer monitor. It takes some time to "warm up" each time this printer is first powered on, but it has a nice energy saving feature once it's ready to go. This printer is a keeper.

Be aware that the dimensions of this printer are not as advertised.

In the Product Features it says "Dimensions: 11.9 x 6.3 x 17.5 in. (WxHxD)", and in the Technical Details it says "Dimensions: 17.5 x 11.9 x 6.3 inches (W x H x D)". In fact this printer is neither.

The correct dimensions are 17.5 x 6.3 x 11.9 (width x height x depth). So it's about a foot and a half wide, six inches high, and a foot deep.

I love this printer. I printed a vacation photo on glossy 5x7 paper and could not tell the difference between it and a professionally processed photo.

We have had such bad luck with our old brand of printers that we have been really pleased with this product. The print quality is excellent and works for all our needs.