Customer Reviews

Canon PIXMA MP800 All In One Photo Printer

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I purchased the mp800 to replace my Lexmark X-85 "INK GOBBLER" because I got tired of not being able to refill the ink successfully and paying through the nose for replacement ink cartridges. The Lex X-85 was over three years old and I was ready for a better printer that new technology had to offer.

I am very pleased with the MP800. It's printing quality and speed is excellent for this caliber of printer. Most of the photos I have printed are on "Jet Print" professional photo paper which has worked well. I have yet to purchase some Canon Photo Paper Pro and try it. I did however print one 4x6 photo from the included pack of Canon Photo Paper Pro that came with the printer. The photo quality was amazing!

Regarding the refilling of the ink cartridges: I purchased the 5 ink refill kit from re-inks.com for $60.00. the kit has enough ink for about 12 refills of per cartridge.

The printer is smart enough to know that you are using refilled ink cartridges but it allows you to continue with a warning that Canon may not be responsible for damage.

once you get past the warning the printer asks you to press the stop/reset button for 5 seconds and the printer will continue to print using the refilled cartridge but when you view the Ink Status Monitor it shows the ink tank level as empty.

So in the future you will have to manually remove the cartridge to view it's ink quality. This is easy to do because Canon's ink tanks are Clear Plastic!

This simple reset procedure is required each time the printer detects a refilled cartridge. I suspect that once all 5 cartridges have been "released" from ink detection, it might not ask you again to go through the reset process again. I haven't got there yet. Thanks canon for leaving the Ink Refill Door Open! Hope this info helps. Scott

Excelent photo print speed and quality. Dual paper feed a plus, no need to remove paper from feed tray when printing photos and envelopes, just load the second feed source. Software easy and seems very Windows compatable unlike some others. Ink tank system very smart, no need to buy expensive cartridges with built-in print heads and the five seperate ink tank allows replacement of individual color. Recommend original Canon ink, read PCWorld.com (Cheap Ink Probed) article.

Good quality photo printing, good copy quality.
Double side print is a plus
Good scan results.
Good price.

Photo printing works well with Kodak and Canon photo paper,
it doesn't work well with HP photo paper, save your money by
using Kodak or Canon photo paper if you have this printer.
Don't use it with HP photo paper.

The ink cartridges are kind of expensive, they have chips on the
cartridges to check the ink levels and detect if the cartridges are been refilled or not.

I refilled my color cartridges and the printer detected the changes in the ink level and warned me that the ink cartridges are not original and could harm the printer, but I decided to use the refilled ink cartridges. And it still works very well in terms of color precision and quality for more than 6 months.
I think it's just a new way that printer manufactures try to scare comsumers to use refilled cartridges.
Since ink cartridges are bigger revenues than the printers.

Each refill for a cartirdge is about 30 cents compare to original cartridge price 12 to 16 dollars. I am a heavy printing user, in about a year, the money I saved will be worth a new printer.

Have printed thus far about 70 4x6 prints from my 3 mp camera. Prints came out with very bright and pleasant quality. They really look as good as ones from photo lab with advantage we can crop ,edit and adjust what we want before printing. Because resolution is very good, we are combining 2 pictures in one 4x6 with good results.

Had to print couple of prints first to get feel of adjustments needed to intensity and saturation so we could get best results. usign canon paper. the glossy plus is fine enough.

Scanner was good and performed well scanning negatives at 2400 dpi. We also scanned some book pages into pdf and found software and hardware very convenient for our home enthusiast needs.

Recommend it.

This is my first time having a printer that does borderless photos. They come out incredible. I bought a pack of 4x6 sheets, and the prints blow me away. Its fast and quiet too.

However, like the last reviewer said, no one makes refills or even replacement cartridges for this printer (yet). Something about Canon having a patent on the cartridge style - see this link:
http://www.discountcartridge.com/newcapr.html

So, it gets 4 starts instead of 5.
Anyway, although I hate being cornered into only buying retail ink, I'm pretty much okay with it at this point. My last printer, the Epson CX5400 went through about 5 refills and clogged up big time on me. The printer I had before that had about the same number of refills, and clogged up. I think I've lost faith in the cheapo refill kits (not to mention the mess and time).
Still, $68 hurts to replace all 5 ink tanks. That price used to buy me about 5 refills. Hmm, 5 seems to be the magic number here :)

I haven't had a chance to use the slide / negative scan tool yet, but that's another reason I got this printer.
The scans I have made are high quality.
The footprint is big, but about the same as my old Epson CX5400.
I love the two paper trays, and it does double-sided prints from the cassette tray.

pros
-excellant speed in print and copy
-scanning speed of negatives is a little slow, but with excellant results.
-sofware package is easy to use for casual user
-documents can be saved as pdf files

cons
-black cover shows dust and scratches
-doesn't come with usb cable

I have no complaints about the output I receive from this new all-purpose Canon Printer. What I find VERY ANNOYING, however, are the frequent error messages about the various ink cartridges, all of which are Canon brand. Without warning, I will receive error messages, for example, that the printer detects more than one "magenta" cartridge, when, in fact, there is only one magenta cartridge. I then remove the "blinking" magenta cartidge and place it back in the appropriate magenta printer cartridge slot. Sometimes, the same error message immediately reappears. Other times, I immediately receive another error message about another cartridge being, either missing or present more than once. Sometimes, the printer works fine. If I receive an error message, I immediately remedy the problem and then hope for the best. This is increasingly annoying and definitely detracts from my overall satisfaction with the printer. I contacted Canon phone support about this and their response is to send me replacement "magenta" and "black -No. 5" cartridges. While I appreciate receiving the new cartridges, this will not remedy the underlying problem. If others have had this problem, please write a review, especially if there is a solution!

I absolutely love my Canon Pixma MP800. They were released in April 2006 and for me, had a lot of things in their favor BEFORE I bought one: they were rated as a #1 best buy in Consumer Reports (I'm a big fan), this is my fourth Canon multi-function machine with each one improving over the last and this one was promoted as having superb photo printing --- and it does! In our wholesale container nursery business we take a lot of plant photos (duh...) and although I've been pleased with the photos in the past, I am blown away by how great the photos are from this printer. My grandson played in the Little League State Championship tournament this past week and I took 150+ pictures of the team and made photo journals for the coaches. At least 80-90% of the parents asked me what type camera I used because the photos looked like professional quality. I think the camera is very good (Olympus Camedia C-4000) but it's already several years old and I told them the quality of these photos was in the printer. I bought the printer for $229 w/free shipping through Amazon in June (it was listed at $280 on Consumer Reports)and could not be any happier with my purchase. I'm already planning to buy the Pixma MP830 (includes the fax function) when our Canon that's connected to our fax line wears out. As with almost any new printer, the ink cartridges are still a bit pricey (approx $12 for black, $14 for other colors, shipping included) but I'm sure those prices will come down as the cartridges become more common. Hope this helps!

The Canon Pixma MP800 is the best All in one printer I have ever purchased. The copy of a photo is as clear as the original. It is hard to tell them apart. A person can print from 35mm negatives as well. THe speed is great at 25 pages per minute in Black text. THe scanner produces clear crisp scans. You can print directly from your digital camera that hooks directly to the printer. I also hook a USB bluetooth adapter to my mp800 and can print directly from my bluletooth cellphone. THe down side to the MP800 is that you cannot purchase generic or compatible ink. Canon has patened their ink cartridges for the MP800 therefore causing the owner to have to purchase only certified Original Canon ink cartridges at an average of $ 15.00 per cartridge with the MP 800 using five cartridges to operate. Overal the MP800 is a wonderful printer and what can you say- Its a Canon.
Tim Parker-Mississippi

My review after using this all-in-one (AIO) printer for 8 months (April-December 2006).

PRO's:
1) The color printing was superb and surprisingly the black & white text is almost laser quality. I printed some beautiful job resumes' & once the ink dries, there is little or no ink smudging (this was a major problem with my previous HP printers). I used Kodak, HP, Staples & Costco brand photo paper and still had beautiful prints. Print speed was also faster than my HP AIO printer.

2) The quality of the scans is great, outshining even my Epson Perfection 4490 photo scanner.

3) Duplexer works great also, allowing significant savings on paper purchases. I have printed several different size envelopes with no problems, and this printer is fairly quiet too (my previous HP AIO was very noisy). I have not had any paper jams or clogs, leading me to believe that the previous reviewers may have had a "lemon" printer right out of the box.

4) I have a Canon digital camera and it is very easy to upload and print photos using the card slots on the printer. When card slot is not in use, there is a little door to cover the slots to keep out dust. The software is very easy to use.

CON's:
1) Though you get beautiful color prints and superb text, this printer uses up the ink cartridges fairly quickly, and currently the Canon cartridges are just too expensive to purchase on a frequent basis. Because this is a relatively "new" printer in Canon's line, there are no good & reasonably priced "generic" ink cartridges to use. The current "generic" ink cartridge for this printer ships without the chip. I tried gluing a chip from an empty Canon cartridge to a new "generic" cartridge and it worked fine, but the process was a little too messy for my taste; and Canon makes it difficult to try and use a "refill kit" on its cartridges. But take heart, I read that sometime in the middle of 2007 the "generic" ink cartridges will ship with the chip installed allowing you significant savings on ink cartridges.

2) There was no option to save the printer settings. Since this printer uses a lot of ink, I would like the option to be able to set and save the print type to grayscale Black & White only, but at each printing I have to go through all of the print options or it will always print in color. I wasted a fair amount of ink before I found this out.
In addition, after each printing, a little information picture pops up showing the ink level of each cartridge and when I elect to print in "black text" only, the pop-up info shows that the "color" cartridges are slowly but continuously depleting. How and why this is happening is very strange...

Now For The Really Bad News:
3) As the previous reviewers stated, there is a "SERIOUS" flaw using the ink cartridges even when they are Canon's brand. I'm not exactly certain if the problem is with the cartridge or the print head, but once you replace an empty cartridge, you sometimes will get a flashing error message that "cartridge is not installed correctly" and you have to continuously install & re-install the cartridge or the machine will not print! This was extremely frustrating and eventually I had to return the printer because the error message never stopped flashing and after 8 months the printer stopped working completely. I have notified Canon of this flaw & hopefully they will do something about it. If you plan to purchase this printer and would like to keep it a few years, I would strongly suggest purchasing an extended warranty apart from the free first year warranty. Though Canon does not advertise it or tell you in their manuals, for an additional charge you can obtain an extended 2-3 year warranty directly from Canon. You can even obtain an extended warranty 11 months after your original purchase.

Because of the above "SERIOUS" flaw and the very expensive ink, my rating of this printer is downgraded from five to two and a half stars.