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Inks, Toner & Media Summary |
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 • A full set of the 10 ink catridges costs about $146
• The printer does a decent job of managing the inks, warning you when they are running low |
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Detail Performance |
Page 7 of 12 |
Controls & Connectivity |
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Ink/Toner (5.0)
The Pro 9500 Mark II uses 10 ink cartridges, each filled with Canon's own Lucia ink formulation. Canon claims that this pigment-based formulation provides wider gamut range than others with fewer inks, and that the addition of a grey ink means that the printer can produce smoother and more accurate black and white prints. These are the same inks used in Canon's professional printers that are aimed at print shops. Each cartridge can be swapped out individually. At the time of writing, Canon sells the cartridges for $15.99 each, or $145.99 for a value pack that contains all 10 cartridges. That's more expensive than the catridges for the Pro 9000, which cost about $110 for a full set. In our informal tests printing a mix of documents (with the majority being photos), we found that the first cartridge to run out was the grey, which was finally exhausted after printing about 40 8 x 10 photos, 10 4 x 6 photos and 10 13 x 19 photos.
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The 10 ink cartridges that the Pro 9500 Mark II uses in place
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Ink/Toner Management (6.0)
The drivers that control the Pro 9500 Mark II do 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 whenever you start a print, but didn't seem to be overly pessimistic in its estimates; we started to got low ink warnings when the ink cartridge was shown as being about 80% empty, which meant it could still do a large number of prints. If one of the printer cartridges runs out, there is no way to do a print until the replacement is installed; there is no way to make do with what cartridges you have installed.
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The utility software of the Pro 9500 Mark II
warns you when ink runs low
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Media (9.0)
The Pro 9500 Mark II can print onto a wide range of media, both in terms of size and thickness: it supports paper sizes up to 13 x 19 inches, and paper that is up to 1.2mm thick. However, it cannot handle a couple of common printing tasks: it can't print to banner sized paper that is longer than 19 inches, and it can't handle printing directly onto CD/DVDs. The Epson R1900 and can handle both, but the Epson printers is missing the flat paper path that makes printing onto some thick and inflexible media possible. You can still print CD/DVD labels if you use one of the many peel-and-stick printing systems out there, but these don't tend to look as good as labels printed directly onto the disc.
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Media Support Compared |
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Canon Pro 9500
Mark II |
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Epson R1900 |
HP B8850
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4 x 6 prints
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Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 5 x 7 prints |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 8 x 10 prints |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 11 x 7 prints |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 13 x 19 prints |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| Banner prints |
N |
N |
Y |
Y |
| Direct DVD printing |
N |
N |
Y |
N |
| letter prints |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
legal prints
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Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
tabloid prints
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Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| Flat paper path |
Y |
Y |
N |
N |
Fine art paper support
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Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Paper Storage (6.04)
The Pro 9500 Mark II has only one tray that can store paper: the rear paper tray can hold up to 150 sheets of standard plain paper, or about 20 sheets of photo paper. The other two paper input paths (the manual feed path on the back, and the single sheet feed on the front of the printer) can handle single sheets only.
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The Pro 9500 Mark II with the paper trays open...
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.. and closed.
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Other Features
Ambient Light Correction - Canon's new Ambient Light Correction feature applies a color correction that supposedly compensates for the charctaristics of 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 don't want the software messign with their colors, and few people know in advance what kind of light they will be showing the prints under. This feature is also only available with Windows Vista: XP or Mac users don't get access to it.
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