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Configuration (5.00)
Two ink cartridges serve the Canon Pixma iP1800. A pigment black ink cartridge, which contains 320 nozzles, prints documents. Canon claims that this results in crisper text that is more resistant to fading. The color cartridge is composed of four inks—dye-based cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Each color, minus the black, has 384 nozzles each, for a total of 1,152 nozzles. These inks are used by the printer specifically for printing photos. The cartridges are simple to install and replace.
Value (6.00)
Canon inks generally have good value over the competition. Text and graphics page yields from the smaller PG30 and CL31 cartridges are calculated by Canon at 220 pages for the black cartridge and 205 pages for the color. The page yield for 4-by-6-inch color photos reaches 1,390 photos from the black cartridge and 82 photos from the color cartridge. (The black cartridge number is so high because the color cartridge has a dedicated black for printing photos. The pigment is not usually used for photos.) Consumers can also use the larger PG40 and CL41 cartridges with page yields of 355 pages and 308 pages, respectively, for documents, and 2,165 photos and 120 photos, respectively, for color photos.
Ink management (7.00)
Canon gives the user plenty of warning when the ink is getting low on the iP1800. The low ink warning occurs when the user prints. A dialog box is displayed that shows printer status, and if the ink is low, the notice shown below will appear.
Clicking on Ink Status brings up two windows, one which tells you which cartridge is empty or low and another that shows all the cartridges the printer uses.
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