Canon Pixma MP600
Quick presentation and ergonomics
The screen diagonal gains 1.5 cm, speed increases, and there is now a black cartridge. In terms of ergonomics, we find an accessory found on high end cameras; the Easy-Scroll Wheel, which facilitates navigation in menus.
In fact, it is the best Canon tested, but paradoxically, it’s the one that has the most difficulty in finding its place in this survey. While the MP160 and MP510 do well in their price ranges, it’s less justifiable to fall for the MP600 despite all that it offers. Epson and HP also become competitive at this price level, and so you should really determine your specific printing needs. For photos, Epson is our preference with its RX640. For the office, it’s either the HP C6180 or Canon MP600. For multi use : the Canon MP600.
Quality of printing and scanning
Despite the addition of a second "black photo" cartridge, the improvement in quality is moderate. 99% of users won't see the difference.
On the other hand, colors are a little better than with the two models below. They aren’t necessarily nicer, but truer. On a pro or semi-pro model like this one, Canon seems to have place less emphasis on flattery and this is for the best. Tones in prints are closer to those in the originals.
Speed
This is the area where the MP600 has the biggest advantage over models below, and it definitely prints much faster. 10x15 cm prints without borders doesn’t take more than 40 seconds. In color we get as high as 6 pages per minute with our document (which starts to come close to entry level laser printers). However, it is in monochrome that we see the real results with 20 ppm in draft mode (excellent quality and really can be used on a daily basis), or 14 ppm in normal mode.
The scanner is in the average for speed at 15 seconds for a 10x15 cm, 22 for an A4 and 36 for a stamp scanned at 1200 ppp.
Ink costs
Adding the "black photo" cartridge doesn’t change anything for office prints, because it is not used. We can print 520 pages with the black cartridge, about 700 with the magenta and yellow, and 890 with the cyan. The office print cost per page with coverage of 5% is 9 cents like on the MP510 and MP160 with its long lasting cartridges.
We do gain in photo mode, because the printer no longer has to add magenta, cyan and yellow to make dark zones. The new cartridge carries out this function and for this reason we go from 17 to 14 cents per print (ink only).
A serious defect?
It’s quite silent, and we didn’t find any hidden defects…except one: the price of Canon‘s photo paper. Don’t buy it. From our experience, Epson paper works just fine. It’s time that Canon finally takes some action here to offer an affordable paper. Let’s hope that Kodak’s next arrival (October 2007 for France) of prints at 10 cents a piece (ink + paper) will shake things up.
One last small point to go against Canon is Epson’s great photo performance with its RX640. Some prefer its softer rendering to that of Canon‘s.
