Customer Reviews

Canon MP980 Wireless All-in-One Photo Printer

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(36)

 

 

I have now been using this printer/scanner for over two weeks. This replaces an old HP multifunction device which had problems with my Mac when printing over the network.
I work from home and have several computers running, Vista, XP and OSX and wanted them to share a printer/scanner. I must admit the driver setup is not the cleanest, and I needed to download versions newer than on the supplied disk to enable printing from 64bit applications on the mac. The only setup I got stuck on was that it is not clear that you need to have the printer connected by USB to create the initial connection to a secure wi-fi network.
Now that its up an running it works a dream enabling me to print and scan from any computer anywhere in the house. The scanning is decent (I don't have a huge quality need, but I can't complain about anything I've scanned), the printing is stunning. Colors are accurate for photos and the double sided printing is a great paper saver for general printing.
The only things which I feel could improve this device, for my purposes, are a document feeder for bulk scanning and a built in fax capability.

Before I had this printer I purchased a Kodak All-in-one. The one that advertises lab quality prints at half the price. It worked really well the first month of having it. After that I have never been more frustrated with an electronic device. It's main issues were a design flaw in the print head, noisy operation, inks didn't last very long, paper feed problems, bad software, and it wouldn't let me print photos on anything other than kodak paper. So after replacing the print head three times I called it quits and decided I wanted something I could count on. Enter the Canon MP980. This printer was twice as expensive as the kodak, but worth every penny. The prints are AMAZING, and 4x6 Photos print faster than any printer I've ever used. There is also a dedicated Gray Ink cartridge allowing for true gray scale/Black & White photo prints. Printing is completely effortless. Everything just works. Setup was a breeze. I can replace each ink individually (not that I've had to yet). It has all the basic features like multi flash memory card reader, pic bridge, separate try for regular paper and photo paper, double sided printing and then some advanced features. Such as "quiet" mode. Optional blue-tooth, and built in Wi-Fi. BIG LCD. Connecting wirelessly is made easy. The scanner is fully functional and in addition to doing all the basics, it will do film and negatives as well. It also features LED's so there is no "warm up" time. Although a message will show up saying to stand by for the scanner to warm up but it's only for about 1 second. Things I thought are a nice touch. The standard paper tray slides inside the printer. When in a Standby mode, all the trays and openings to the printer are closed. When you execute a print, the door where the paper exits, opens automatically. There is no worry of things inside the printer getting dusty. The software bundled with the printer is really nice, straight forward, and works well. So far, no problems. I couldn't be happier with this amazing machine.

Of course nothing is perfect. I thought it might be neat to print directly on DVD's like some other printers do, not with this one. It's largest borderless photo print is only 8.5" x 11". When turned on for the first time of the day, it goes through a priming routine where it gets the ink tanks and print head ready (I'm assuming). The process could take up to a minute. My biggest gripe is that the photo paper try loads from the rear. When you want to print from specialty paper you have to pull open the tray. It doesn't store paper inside like the standard paper tray. So when you want to print photos, you have to open the tray and load it with whatever specialty paper you're using. The tray pulls out in a virtical position so you can still position the printer up against a wall if you're limited on space. When finished, you then unload the specialty paper and slide the tray back inside the printer. You could leave it out and loaded, but then you risk getting dust on your specialty paper unless you have a printer cover.

I highly recommend this printer. It's well refined and quality is top notch.

Why 1 star you may ask.

I've come to expect a lot from Canon - I own several of their cameras; I have one of their older photo printers (paid $45) on my boat that works flawlessly, so when I purchased their top-of-the line consumer printer, I expected one heck of a printer.

While the photo printing quality wasn't bad, it wasn't any better than my $45 printer. As a matter of fact, I was seeing some funky stuff showing up in the very dark sections of my photos. No, resolution is not the issue - I've had these same images printed professionally at almost twice the size.

However, what really got me was the copy function.
The scanning works fine and captures everything, but not the copies.
The copies cut off the left and bottom 1/4 inch of the original document.

I called Canon Technical Support and was told that it's a known issue!
I didn't see that little tidbit of information in their specs did you?

I'm sorry, but in my opinion, it is totally unacceptable for Canon to sell the PIXMA MP980 as a photo All-In-One with no fax and a less than perfect copier.

Hope this helps...

This printer does everything I wanted it to do, and does it well in excess of my expectations. Plain paper printing is excellent, and the photo prints are simply gorgeous. I cannot tell the difference between this printer's photo output and store-bought prints. Furthermore, the memory card, wireless functionality, and the built-in display work great. The UI is intuitive and works well for printing photos directly from a camera's memory card. The card also appears as a disk drive on networked Windows machines, making for easy transfer of photos and video clips to fixed storage (a Windows PC or NAS box, for example).

On the other hand, the software installation process is a complete dog. It takes almost 20 minutes (!) to complete. This is not at all pleasant and it's not intuitive. I found it to be the same level of hassle on Windows XP and Mac OS X platforms. The process has a few pitfalls as well as taking a long time. It's not worth going into the details (some other reviewers have), but you should be aware of it before going into the project. Furthermore, there was a gap of nearly two months from when Apple released OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) before updated drivers were available for it from Canon, which was inconvenient and difficult to understand.

It's a shame I have to rate the product at 4 (revised to 3 one year later--see below) stars when it's really an outstanding multifunction device, but the software is inseparable from the product at the end of the day.

Updated one year later: Everything I related above remains true; however, it's become evident that this printer is remarkably--astonishingly--expensive to own. It has been completely reliable and the print quality is still great, but the ink cartridges, which the printer eats with a ferocious appetite, are very expensive and inconveniently small. Without tallying receipts, I estimate that this printer has cost me fully what I paid for it (which was basically full retail because it was brand new when I purchased it from Amazon) in the cost of Canon ink cartridges. I shy away from off-brand or generic cartridges because of print quality and reliability problems I've experienced in the past with other printers, but I do bargain-shop for cartridges. For context, this printer serves a family of four (two of whom rarely print anything) and only normal, household printing needs such as school reports, coupons, etc--we print photos only a few times a year. I'm not looking to replace it yet but my next printer purchase will be at least 50% based on cost to operate.

I wanted an all in one printer that worked wirelessly and this printer seemed like my best bet after reading all the reviews. I have used the printer for almost two weeks now on a Windows XP system and on a Vista system running 64 bits. Here is my evaluation so far. I will list pros and cons up front for those that don't want to read my whole review.

Pros
Great prints both normal and photo
Extremely fast
Great scans for normal documents and 35 mm film if done correctly
Very easy to set up on new computers once you get it working on a single computer wirelessly.
Nice software controls that work well with Photoshop

Cons
Horrendous documentation
Very confusing setting up for wireless access on Windows XP for initial setup.
No document feeder for copying multipage documents

Setup:
Very bad experience for me. I took the printer out of the box and tried to decipher the instructions so that I could print wirelessly using Windows XP. I knew in advance this would be an issue from prior reviews but figured as an experienced computer user I should be ok. Not so. You HAVE to install the software first on your computer before ever hooking the printer to it. You also must start using a USB cable and be sure to enable the wireless feature in the printer using the menu system on the printer itself. Turn the printer off and then hook it up to your computer. The configuration utility will then allow you to set the computer up for first time use on a wireless LAN. Enter your WEP keys if needed. You MAY have to create a port for using the printer wirelessly. It is not entirely clear in the documentation but that caused some grief. After you have configured the printer for wireless use then detach it from the computer and turn it off and on again. It should come up as a printer you discover wirelessly your computer. Once you can attach to it you should have no problems.

Printing:

The printer is lightning fast even in regular mode. I was blown away how fast it is so this is a major plus. I HATE the fact that there is no document feeder. This means I have to keep my old HP printer around for bulk copying of documents which is really annoying. Contrary to some prior post you CAN have HP printers work with this printer without an issue. I am doing it. Photos print fantastically well but in order to get the best color match I used the Adobe RGB 98 profile with Photoshop. The printer has a variety of profiles and is very very tweakable which is really helpful. Full bleed photos were so good my friends could not believe they came from this printer. I used the Canon photo plus glossy II 4x6 photo paper. Set that output for the printer so that it optimizes for that printing surface.

Scanning:
Contrary to another reviewer I had absolutely no problems scanning over the net. Interface to Photoshop 7.01 and CS4 was flawless and the scanner utility is very nice and tweakable. For the person that said it looked very digital I would suggest setting the DPI values in advanced settings up to the max 4800 dpi since the default is 1200. I scanned 35mm film negatives and was blown away how well they came out. The instructions for the use of the film scanning tray are sketchy but eventually I figured it out and am thrilled about the way I can use it. Scanning photos worked really well also. If you use Photoshop you don't have to have the scanning utility do the work of removing dust etc but it does have that feature if you want it.

I would have given this printer 5 stars if it had a document feeder and the setup and documentation were better. If judged for scanning and printing only I would absolutely give it 5 stars. My daughter is an animator and artist and she needed a printer that would provide accurate color and she is very happy with it. I will say that it worked without any problems on 64 bit Vista using Adobe Photoshop CS4 which was really nice.

This printer mostly lives up to its technical descriptions with many great features and is the best Canon printer I have had to date. I highly recommend its so far. Although I was very pleased with my Canon i980, this surpasses it providing even higher quality prints. I also found emailing tech support for a minor difficulty resulted in a rapid and helpful response. On the negative side, I was unable to setup the wireless capability and perhaps it was due to my Netgear WiFi system but I did not pursue this. What I find inexcusable is that such a high quality machine can have such low quality writing in the manuals. Whereas much is OK, some sections, such as dealing with an important feature such as double side printing, would totally frustrate a novice and might cause even a more experienced person to scream out in irritation. Not enough space to fully explain or rewrite here: First they should have presented somewhere a diagram of the printer screen showing function buttons, the main controlling device exhibiting the outer ring for up, down and sideway operations, and the inner ring which one must be used for scrolling such as to find the icon for double sided printing. The directions are inaccurate, and make simple steps unnecessarily confusing by its organization compounded by dubious terminology such as "special copy", and "---confirmation", which in the latter case should merely state "copy setting screen". There is no confirmation. Using the computer manual, one needs to print two pages (one by clicking "special copy" on the first page when the organization should have simply presented the steps in logical numerical order with some detail. Moreover, as it is now, step 3 sends the reader on the wrong trail--one does not load paper into the "rear tray" as stated. In short, writing should be clear, precise and simple enough for anybody to understand regardless of experience. It reads as if parts were written by a technocrat whose brain filled in some of the needed but not clearly written statements, with some totally missing. Inexcusable!, M. N. Schroth [[ASIN:B001DJ6C2W Canon MP980 All-In-One Photo Printer (2922B002)

I was looking for a good all-around color printer for printing on both plain paper and also for high quality photo prints. The MP980 was a new model, but the specs were excellent. When I ordered it, there were no reviews yet. My first unit had a problem with the built-in display screen. I called customer support and they immediately shipped me a new unit. I had some issues getting the drivers installed - it took me 3 trys, but once installed, the wireless network setup worked the first time. The driver install problems were probably do to the security software installed on my PC by my employer. I've had similar issues with other software. The built-in wireless capability is great - it was an important feature for me. I really like the two paper inputs: a paper tray for plain paper and the back input for photo paper. The print speed is *very* fast. A 4x6 photo prints in approximately 30 seconds. A 8x11 plain paper print is even faster for plain paper quality. The photo image quality is amazing - as good as commercial photo printing. I've had not problems using the scanner through the wireless network as reported by another reviewer. This is an awesome printer. I'm very pleased with my purchase.

I've had it for over a year and I like it. I primarily use this printer for printing out homework with colored graphics on the pages. I just realized that it's been years and I've never printed out a picture from my digital camera. Unfortunately I can't comment on the photo printing aspect. However, with basic, everyday printing, It's worked perfectly.

Software - I only installed the driver so I have no experience with Canon's software.

Style - Compared to the other brands I viewed, it looked the most stylish.

Ink consumption - The only problem with this printer. It does have high ink consumption. I'm able to print 100 black/white/color pages after the printer tells me the ink is low. Depending on how often you turn off and on the printer, the automatic cleaning mechanism can use up to 1/3 of the ink tank.

This model is no longer made so I can't imagine anyone will be reading this review :(

I ordered my printer from the Canon website as soon as it was out in October. The first one that I received did not work. Some kind of error kept coming up on the screen, almost 2 hours on the phone with a Canon rep and the bottom line is it was some error with the print head/ink station. Customer service was terrific, tried everything but still didn't work. They sent me a replacement, I had it in three days. I sent the original one to a repair center for someone to look at it on their tab. The second printer I had problems installing my software on my XP computer. After another 45 minutes on the phone, I was all ready to go. I absolutely love this thing!!! I know every product out there has a defect some place so considering customer service was so good, I really didn't mind having to wait a few more days to get this printer. Photos are brilliant! I'm glad I waited a few months for this to come out.

Excellent product. Wireless feature was easy to set up and works flawlessly. I have printed photos from a digital camera, have copied prints with the scanner and have printed microsoft office documents. The photos have realistic lifelike colors and the documents are laser quality. So far the ink usage seems average for this type of printer. I am very happy with this printer and would recommend it highly.