Verdict
If you need peerless picture high quality, Canon’s PIXMA Professional-200 has it in spades. From portraits, by way of group pictures, motion images and landscapes, it delivers gorgeous outcomes with out taking too lengthy over it. Nonetheless, it’s fairly an funding.
Execs
- Distinctive picture prints as much as A3+
- Eight-ink print engine for much less grain in color images
- Gray inks for impartial black and white prints
Cons
- Costly to run
- Not nice for plain paper
Availability
- UKRRP: £430
- USARRP: $549
- EuropeRRP: €514
- CanadaRRP: CA$752
- Australiaunavailable
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A high-end picture printerThe PIXMA Professional-200 helps massive paper sizes and makes use of eight inks to print distinctive images -
Very tightly targetedThis printer may be very specialised: it isn’t actually supposed for plain paper prints or on a regular basis use
Introduction
Forgive the printer pun, however the Canon PIXMA Professional-200 is completely laser-focused on creating the very best images. Though it’s a single-function printer with no scanner connected, it’s nonetheless large, with its two huge paper trays designed to deal with heavy, massive picture paper as much as A3+ dimension. It’ll grudgingly settle for plain paper, nevertheless it’s constructed to ship better-than-lab high quality prints on coated matte and shiny paper. If you happen to’re after an exceptionally good picture printer, this may very well be it.
The very first thing you’re prone to discover concerning the PIXMA Professional-200 is that it’s large. It’s a lot larger than a typical A4 printer, and it even appears to be like huge positioned subsequent to Epson’s EcoTank ET-18100, which additionally prints on paper as much as A3+. Open the Canon’s sturdy paper trays and it’s even larger – notably for those who lengthen them to their most dimension to deal with A3+ paper.
Design and options
- Properly sculpted, however completely large
- Eight inks present superior color and mono prints
- Very excessive operating prices
You’ll want a whole lot of desk house for those who’re utilizing the Canon PIXMA Professional-200 to its fullest. Regardless of this, that is fairly a properly designed and made product. Its black plastics have a subtly textured horizontal sample, and all of its trays and compartments really feel extra sturdy than the norm. In direction of the correct on the highest aspect, there’s a medium-sized color display, navigated by easy instructions and OK buttons. To the left is the large hatch you’ll must elevate to suit its ink tanks.
Whereas most printers create pictures with black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks, the PIXMA Professional-200 makes use of eight colors, contained in eight tanks. Its gray and light-weight gray inks let it create black and white images with out utilizing any color, that means they need to have a supremely impartial tone. They’re additionally utilized in color prints for further management over shading.
This printer has further, lighter shades of cyan and magenta ink. Once more, these are helpful for high-quality management over lighter shades and assist keep away from the looks of grain you would possibly get utilizing customary magenta or cyan.
Eight is a whole lot of cartridges, and it could assist tremendously if Canon had thought so as to add a system to forestall you from placing them within the unsuitable slots. As it’s, you’ll want to pay attention when becoming them, notably provided that six of them are two totally different shades of the identical color. The opposite concern with utilizing this many inks is that you simply’ll must maintain extra spares available if you wish to be sure to by no means run out of ink.
Canon solely sells ink cartridges for this printer in a single capability, and it doesn’t specify what number of plain paper pages every one will print. Every of the eight cartridges has a special yield, however on common Canon’s figures counsel you’ll get 550 10x15cm images, or 75 A3+ prints from a set. With every cartridge costing about £16, you’ll pay 23p per postcard and £1.73 for a single A3+ print.
Consider Canon’s highest quality picture paper and also you’ll pay nearer 50p per postcard, or a mighty £3.50 for an A3+ print. That’s lots, clearly, nevertheless it’s price evaluating it to lab printing prices. You may get 10x15cm prints on-line at round 10p every, however few companies even go as much as A3 sizes, and people who do will cost you round £7 per print.
The PIXMA Professional-200 is relatively good worth for big prints, then, however for all prints it gives the benefit which you can experiment with totally different finishes, and return to enhance prints that haven’t fairly turned out as you anticipated. If you happen to’re a professional photographer or perhaps a eager novice, that may very well be a useful strategy to excellent your pictures. It’s additionally lots faster than ready for prints to reach within the put up.
Whereas some picture printers are pleased to show their hand to plain paper printing, the Canon PIXMA Professional-200 is completely not. It’s an indication of its intent that its PC print driver defaults to high-quality coated picture paper. You may choose plain paper, and the outcomes are OK, however this isn’t the printer for you for those who’ll often print workplace paperwork.
Print pace and high quality
- A4 picture prints in lower than 4 minutes
- Distinctive picture high quality
- Gradual on plain paper
Canon was ok to supply me with spare inks and quite a lot of its personal picture paper, so I fortunately went to work testing the PIXMA Professional-200 on a choice of my favorite panorama, portrait and household images. It was rapidly apparent that this printer delivers on its promise of good picture high quality – it’s among the many finest I’ve examined.
The PIXMA Professional-200 excels at reproducing high-quality particulars. This was most evident within the high-quality strains and strands of hair in close-up portraits, but in addition confirmed all through my pattern prints, for instance within the crease of materials, or in high-quality brushwork on a role-player’s costume. It’s notably good in mid and darkish tones, however arguably much less so in very pale areas resembling clouds or pale shades washed out by daylight.
This printer appears to experience complicated and extremely contrasting topics, turning a high-dynamic vary (HDR) vacation snap of my son right into a mini-masterpiece. There wasn’t a single space the place the printer failed to breed the element of the unique shot. Under I’ve in contrast this print from the Professional-200 (left) and the Epson ET-18100. In equity, I ought to level out that the latter makes use of solely six inks.
I attempted the Canon PIXMA Professional-200 on just a few black-and-white pictures. Regardless of having black, gray and light-weight gray inks, it defaults to utilizing a small quantity of color ink alongside them – you’ll be able to power it to black-only within the driver. I genuinely struggled to inform the distinction between the 2 settings – it’s refined, even for those who use a magnifying glass. My impression was that default prints have been virtually imperceptibly extra detailed than black-only ones, at the price of a really slight transfer away from being really impartial in tone.
In my testing, I discovered just one picture the place I felt the Professional-200’s print wasn’t fairly as satisfying because it might have been. Its rendition of a silver automotive by a loch at daybreak reproduced the heat of the sky however misplaced a number of the coolness across the automotive, and barely underexposed shaded vegetation on the banks. It’s a subjective distinction, although – my accomplice most popular this print to the Epson ET-18100’s rendition.
This printer gained’t maintain you ready too lengthy on your images, even on massive A3+ paper. On the highest doable setting, it completed off every borderless 10x15cm print in lower than a minute. Borderless A4 prints have been performed in three and a half minutes, whereas I timed a color A3+ print at six minutes and 49 seconds. I observed that black-only mode was appreciably slower however sadly wasn’t capable of time by how a lot earlier than I needed to return the printer to Canon.
I performed our standard plain paper checks for completeness. The PIXMA Professional-200 wanted 37 seconds to end up the primary web page of black textual content, or almost a minute for color. It might handle solely 2.4 pages per minute (ppm) on our customary textual content check, rising to only 3.7 ppm over 20 pages. Twenty color pages took greater than six minutes, a charge of three.2 ppm. Plain paper print high quality was cheap, with pretty darkish textual content and first rate graphics, however you’d get higher from an inexpensive, office-focused inkjet.
Newest offers
Must you purchase it?
You need the very best images
The PIXMA Professional-200 is a tool that places high quality picture printing on the forefront. If you need nice outcomes, and particularly if you’re a photographer, that is the printer for you.
You want a photograph printer that may double up for on a regular basis or workplace use
This isn’t your common printer for informal residence and workplace use. It excels in high-quality picture printing. You will discover higher worth on your wants if that isn’t what you require.
Closing Ideas
This actually is an distinctive picture printer, producing prints which might be comfortably ok for aspiring photographers to show or promote. They’re higher than the standard you’d get from a typical lab, with the benefit that they’re a lot faster, and that you simply get the possibility to experiment and refine them till they’re precisely what you need.
This isn’t the most affordable strategy to get first rate postcard-sized images – on-line companies are far cheaper, as are refillable alternate options just like the Epson EcoTank ET-18100. That mentioned, it ought to nonetheless prevent cash and enhance your outcomes for those who typically print on A3 or A3+ paper.
If you happen to’re after one thing totally different from a photograph printer, resembling a cheaper price, try our greatest picture printers information. Or, for those who don’t require the perks of a photograph printer, there’s out finest printers listing too.
How we check
Each printer we assessment goes by way of a sequence of uniform checks designed to gauge key issues together with print high quality, pace and price.
We’ll additionally evaluate the options with different printers on the similar worth level to see for those who’re getting good worth on your cash.
Measured the time it takes to print with varied paper
In contrast print high quality with different printers
Examined printing with monochrome and colored ink
FAQs
No, it’s a single-function printer, optimised for excellent images.
It’ll take as much as A3+ paper, which measures 329x483mm (13×19″). You may as well set customized paper sizes as much as an enormous 323x990mm.
