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General performance
Warm-up time (4.84)
The Canon Pro9000 took 27 seconds to warm up and be ready for printing. This is slightly slower than the 25 seconds it took for Canon’s all-in-one inkjet, the MP600, but significantly faster than the 99 seconds it took for a color laser printer like the HP 3600n.
Power Usage (8.04)
Canon’s reported power usage is approximately 1.8 watts in standby mode, 20 watts while printing, and 1 watt when powered off. Using a watt meter, our tests actually showed lower numbers for these figures. These numbers were very energy efficient, especially for a printer of this size.
The Pro9000’s power score was beaten only by the compact photo printers currently in our lab. As with many printers, no watts were being pulled when the unit was off. Four watts were used when in ready mode, twelve-and-a-half watts when printing and about the same on average for head cleaning. No other pro photo printers are currently in our lab, but we’ve lined the Pro9000 up against the few all-in-one photo inkjet printers in our labs for comparison.
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Power Usage (watts)
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Off
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Idle
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Ready
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Printing
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Self-Cleaning
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Canon Pixma Pro9000
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0
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n/a
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4
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12.5
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13
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Canon Pixma MP600
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0
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1
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5
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16
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14.5
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HP Photosmart 5180
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4
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5
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5
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12
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20
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Kodak EasyShare 5300
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6
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6
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13
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24
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30.5
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Speed/Timing
Document (3.70)
Our testing times and rates are based on the highest quality settings, in an effort to quantify a printer’s performance at the extremes of its capabilities. The Pro 9000’s document printing rates—0.87 and 0.74 ppm for less than one page per minute for both text and graphics—was slower than even some all-in-one photo printers, but document printing is an extra function of these printers and not its first intended use.
Photo (8.71)
Four-by-six-inch prints on the Pixma Pro9000 actually printed faster, 2.0 pages per minute, than two all-in-one photo printers we currently have in the lab—another Canon model, the Pixma MP600, and the HP Photosmart 5180. The Pro9000 lagged behind the MP600 when printing larger prints, but this 8-ink prosumer model from Canon outperformed the HP 5180. Photos printed very slowly at the maximum size, with individual 13x19-inch prints taking nearly 6 minutes per print using a 19-megabyte image.
The Pro 9000 features no media slots, so testing the file transfer timing was not possible. This printer’s two closest competitors from the other two big printer manufacturers, HP and Epson, are split on these features. HP provides them while Epson doesn’t.
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Print Speeds in Pages per Minute
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8.5 x 11
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4x6
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8.5 x 11
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13 x19
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text
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graphics
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Photo
Sml file
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Photo Lge file
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Photo Sml file
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Photo Lge file
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Photo Sml file
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Photo Lge file
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Canon Pixma Pro9000
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0.87
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0.74
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2.00
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2.00
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0.40
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0.41
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0.18
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0.24
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Kodak EasyShare 5300
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1.59
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1.33
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2.18
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1.67
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0.58
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0.56
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n/a
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n/a
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Canon Pixma MP600
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2.81
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1.35
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1.62
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1.66
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0.52
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0.51
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n/a
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n/a
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HP Photosmart 5180
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6.00
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2.57
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1.19
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1.19
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0.29
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0.32
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n/a
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n/a
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Color Accuracy (3.02)
Determining the accuracy of a printer involves evaluating its output against a known ideal. For our color accuracy test, we print an electronic version of the Gretag Macbeth Colorchecker chart (show below) on the test printer. We then read the color density values with an EyeOne Pro spectrophotometer from X-Rite and compare them to the electronic chart’s original La*b* values. The average difference between the ideal and measured values is the color error.
The Pro9000 yielded a color error of 7.13, a a fairly low value for a pro photo printer. The printer’s cousin, the Canon Pixma MP600 all-in-one photo printer, showed less error and so did a small compact photo printer we tested recently, the Epson PictureMate Snap. The Epson Stylus Photo R2400, a pigment-ink system, scored much higher, with only a 1.42 error value. Flesh tones appeared to reproduce well, while cyans and some blues showed more error than other colors. Some of the red tones seemed somewhat undersaturated as well.
Color Gamut (4.97)
The Pixma Pro9000 scored impressively in our color gamut test, covering 56 percent of the Adobe RGB color space. This was more than any printer we’ve tested to date and represents a very good value for any printer, even one in the pro photo category. The chart below shows a visualization of the ideal color space as a grid pattern with the Pro9000’s color gamut shown as the solid color field inside. The more of the grid space the printer’s space can fill, the higher the score it receives.
Dmax (6.26)
The density of the black tones that a printer can reproduce is an excellent indicator of the potential tonal range of that printer. Dmax is a measure of that density, with a value of 2.5 being optimal. We measure Dmax by printing out the deepest black tone possible, then measuring it using the EyeOne Pro spectrophotometer. Prints were made both on Canon Photo Paper Pro and Ilford Galerie using Canon’s stock profiles and our own custom profiles. We perform all these tests to find the maximum Dmax value possible.
In our tests, the Pro9000 yielded a maximum Dmax value of 2.25 on the Canon Photo Paper Pro using Canon’s stock profile. This value is very good for any printer, but it’s still less than others both in and outside its class. All-in-one photo printers and even compact photo printers in our lab scored higher in some cases—a disappointment for a high quality printer such as the Pro9000.
Black and White (6.00)
Dmax score is an expression of the possible range of tones that a printer is capable of reproducing. Given the decent, but not excellent Dmax value, we expected a reasonably good tonal reproduction in our black-and-white test print made with the Pro9000. The results were somewhat disappointing, with white tones not holding well and the richness of the blacks not reproducing as strongly as we’d like to see in a higher-end photo printer.
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