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Inks, Toner & Media Summary |
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 • A full set of inks costs about $100, but they can be purchased individually
• Ink management is adequate
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Performance |
Page 7 of 12 |
Controls & Connectivity |
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Ink/Toner (5.0)
The Pro 9000 uses 8 seperate ink cartridges: red, green, cyan, magenta, yellow and black, plus special photo inks that improve the magenta and cyan in photo prints. Each of these cartridges can be changed seperately, and a blinking red LED on the front of the cartridge shows which one is due to be changed when it runs low.
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The Pro 9000 Mark II uses 8 ink cartridges
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At the time of writing, Canon sells a complete set of 8 cartridges for $104.99, and the individual cartridges are available for $15. You can pick up the complete set from Amazon for around $80, though, and the ink cartridges are the same ones used in the Pro 9000. This means that this is not a cheap printer to use, but it's comparable with others of this type; a full set of inks for the Epson R1900 costs about the same. Canon claims that their ChromaLife 100 inks will last up to 100 years in an album, or up to 30 years in a display case. We weren't able to test this, but more details of their claims are available here.
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| Canon sells a set of all 8 cartridges for around $100 |
Ink/Toner Management (6.0)
The Pro 9000 Mark II does a decent job of keeping you posted on how much ink there is left in the driver; the included utility program shows the estimated level in all of the tanks. It also didn't seem to be overly pessimistic in its estimates; we only got low ink warnings when the ink cartridge was almost completely empty. There is no way to print with one empty cartridge, though; if your un out of one of the color inks and need a print urgently, you'll have to wait for the replacement to turn up. You can, however, produce a print on plain paper if one of the photo cartridges is exhausted.
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| The Canon utility shows the ink levels of each of the cartridges |
Media (11.0)
The Pro 9000 Mark II can handle a lot of different types of media, including paper sizes from 4 by 6 all the way up to 13 by 19 inches. It can also handle thick paper and card that doesn't like to be bent, as it has a straight-through paper path. This means that you could use the Pro 9000 to produce prints onto stiff card, which is useful for producing things like models or prototypes. There are some things missing here, though; there is no support for DVD printing, T-Shirt printing, both of which can be produced by the similarly priced Epson R1900. There is also no support for banner printing, while again the R1900 comes with support for banner printing from a roll of paper. The Pro 9000 Mark II supports borderless printing on all of the paper sizes up to 13 by 19, although this slows down the printer quite considerably.
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Media Support Compared |
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Canon Pixma Pro
9000 Mark III |
Epson R1900 |
4 x 6 prints
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Yes |
Yes |
| 5 x 7 prints |
Yes |
Yes |
| 8 x 10 prints |
Yes |
Yes |
| 11 x 7 prints |
Yes |
Yes |
| 13 x 19 prints |
Yes |
Yes |
| Banner prints |
No |
Yes |
| Direct DVD printing |
No |
Yes |
| letter prints |
Yes |
Yes |
legal prints
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Yes |
Yes |
tabloid prints
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Yes |
Yes |
| Flat paper path |
Yes |
Yes |
Fine art paper support
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Yes |
Yes |
Paper Storage (6.0)
The single paper tray on the Pro 9000 is the main input tray on the back, which can hold up to 150 sheets of plain paper. However, this is not a printer that is likely to be used this way much, as this will be more likely to be used to hold photo paper. The other paper paths (such as the front paper tray or the flat paper path at the back of the printer can hold only a handful of sheets.
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| The rear tray of the Pro 9000 can hold up to 150 sheets of plain paper |
Other Features
Ambient Light Correction - Canon makes much of their Ambient Light Correction feature, a new feature on the driver that applies color correction for different light sources, shifting the colors to the blue if you are displaying it under incandescent lighting, for instance. We found the effect to be interesting, but we doubt that many people will actually use it; most serious photographers will want to try and control the light rather than fiddling with the colors in their prints. And the software only works with Windows Vista: XP or Mac users don't get access to it.
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