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Configuration (7.50)
Canon includes five inks with this printer. The four dye-based inks—cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, part of Canon’s ChromaLife 100 system, are used to print photos and graphics, while the large PGBK ink tank contains black pigment ink for document printing. This dedicated document black allows for crisper text and keeps the MP600 printer from using up the black photo cartridge when printing documents.
Canon’s print heads are capable of some of the smallest droplet sizes in the industry, at 1 picoliter. The smaller the droplets, the more can fit in a given area of the print, yielding a higher resolution. The MP600 also features 3,584 nozzles to eject these droplets. All Pixma models above the MP600 in cost use the 1-picoliter technology.
Value (7.00)
The black pigment cartridge costs $16.25 and the color cartridges cost $14.25. Canon does not report the price per print for the MP600, but the ink breaks down to a cost of $.86 per milliliter for pigment black and $1.10 for color, relatively cheap compared to other manufacturers, such as HP. Their inks for the Photosmart 5180 cost $1.80/ml for black and $2.50/ml for color.
Ink management tools (6.50)
Ink management tools are accessed via the driver software and on the unit’s main menu. If inks are low, the driver will bring up a window notifying the user, indicating which inks are low with a graphic showing ink levels. An exclamation point in a yellow circle above the ink colors that are low shows up when the inks reach the last bar of the printer menu’s graphic. While none are meant to be exact measurements of ink levels, there are three different ways that ink levels are displayed. Two methods on the unit’s menu are bars (corresponding to about five levels of inks, from empty to full) and solid fields within the ink cartridge graphic. In the printer driver, the Printer Status window shows yet again another graphic displaying solid fields.
During testing, low ink warning levels for magenta and yellow were displayed, with 3 bars, 2 bars, and finally 1 bar. At this point, the unit said it "may have run out" of magenta ink, while running a set of five 5" x 7" color prints. Pressing "OK" allowed the printing cycle to continue, with no perceptible change in quality. A subsequent run of five prints were run through, but after the last print, the low ink warning graphic was displayed on the unit, and no further printing or performance of any function, including scanning, was possible. The unit was dead in the water. If inks are on hand, this isn’t an issue, but if the user would still like to use the scan or even the black text print or copy functions, they have no recourse but to run out and buy inks.
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