Customer Reviews

Canon PIXMA iP3000 Photo Printer

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Having five kids in school who all use our networked printer, we go through at least one printer a year.

Because of this, we tend to buy a solid printer that is "cheap" on ink, has good text quality and the ability to print good quality photos from our digital camera.

We purchased the PIXMA IP3000 here at Amazon for several reasons. 1) The price was right. After applying for the Amazon credit card, we were rewarded with a $30 discount off our first purchase using the new credit card. 2) The reviews from other websites rated the PIXMA IP3000 as a high quality buy. 3) We have had outstanding luck with other Canon printers.

After a tiring year for our Canon S630, she died a quick and painless death. We were amazed that the S630 lated as long as it did. When I say we print alot, I mean ALOT. It is not unusual for us to go through a 500 count ream of paper every month. This does not include photo printing, T-shirt transfer printing and various school project prints. Having been extremely satisfied with the S630, we did our research on the PIXMA IP3000 and decided to purchase it.

Though we have only had it a few days, we can tell a big difference in the print quality. The PIXMA IP3000 uses a new technology called "FINE" which micro-manages the print head and the use of ink. This formula has made a great difference in photo printing. The quality is really amazing. We were very happy with the photo printing on the S630, but the PIXMA IP3000 has improved photo printing 100%.

The PIXMA IP3000 is a very sleek looking machine, and looks very nice in our computer room. Once closed up, you don't even know it is a printer. The duel paper feed system is a huge plus, the lower cassette will hold about 150 sheets of plain paper.

The bundled software seems to be of good quality, but we use Photo Shop for all our printing needs. The PIXMA IP3000 comes shipped with full versions of each ink tank, not the 1/5 filled ink tanks like many companies have went to.

We paid $92.17 for the printer, minus the $30.00 credit card reward for a total purchase price of $62.17. As our old S630 used the same ink tanks as the PIXMA IP3000 does, we felt that since the printer was shipped with 4 full ink tanks, we almost got this printer for free!

We used the "free shipping" option yet still received the printed via UPS in 3 days.

If this printer holds up for a year with this quality, we were be extremely happy.

Of note, the printer does NOT come with a USB cable.

The Canon Pixma iP3000 printer is, simply put, an excellent combination of great printing quality, unbelievable speed (for an inkjet) and family-friendly affordability.

After years of making dye-based printers, Canon is now making inkjet printers. The advantage of ink over dye is ink-printed photos will not fade over time, at least not as fast as dye. Color ink formula has improved a lot over the last three years, to the point that they will stay vibrant for many years to come. (Of course, only time will tell whether ink photos will last "forever.")

The boxy iP3000 is not a beauty to behold, but impresses everyone in the family with its excellent image quality (very good for text, excellent for photos) and fast speed. With our old Epson printer it used to take five minutes to print a photo at 150dpi in fine mode. With the iP3000, that was cut down to less than a minute and a half, and the same picture looked better this time around, too. Yes, for those of us environmentalists, the printer can print double-sided. Whether that tends to wear down the paper feed mechanism is unknown. So far, at least it hasn't had a paper jam. (Knock on wood.)

One of the best things about Canon printers (except the much cheaper iP1500) is they use individual ink tanks, and the replacement tanks are fairly priced, so there's no need to buy a new cartridge to replace all the colors when only one runs out. The iP3000 is also quieter than my Epson and HP.

This holiday season, if you want a family-friendly, high-quality printer, the Pixma iP3000 is by far the best choice. It strikes the perfect balance between function+quality and price.

I am a certified technician for Canon (and other manufacturers) printers, and I can run down a few of the strong/weak points of this model. Overall, this is a good machine for occasional users, but doesn't deliver the best quality available. It's a good machine for what it is, and most breakdowns that I've seen are due to user error.

Pros:
-very fine (2pl) droplet size gives good resolution.
-separate ink tank and print head for lower-cost supplies.
-easy to use, simple interface.

Cons:
-four color system (black, cyan, magenta, yellow) doesn't give the true depth of image colors (look for 6 colors, with photo cyan and photo magenta, or 8 with photo red and photo green for better results)
-limited ppm output speed
-inks tend to dry if printer is left unattended for extended periods of time

How to keep your inkjet printer functional:
The top reason for printer failure (particularly microfine printers) is use of incorrect ink tanks. Do not use discount inks from other companies, they aren't formulated for the very small droplet size of this printer. Don't use ink refill kits, either. The printhead is not usually replaced with ink cartridges, and can easily be clogged by substandard inks. Also, make sure you print something at least once a week to keep the inks fresh. You can print just a nozzle check (press and hold the rest button until the green light blinks for the second time) to refresh the cartridge with a minimum of expended ink.

The Pixma iP3000 has performed flawlessly, and is an exceptional value.

(a) The printer is quick, and the output is very sharp. (Please note that I have not printed any photos yet- just web pages and documents).

(b) The printer can duplex pages automatically (prints on both sides of a page). This is very handy when printing documents with many pages. Duplexing appears to slow the printer down a little, but it is still quick.

(c) The iP3000 has two paper slots so you can either load up a large quantity of plain paper, or use the tray for photo paper, and the top feed for plain paper.

(d) The printer uses 4 ink tanks, which can be replaced individually. This will help reduce ink costs (compared to replacing ink cartridges in other printers).

(e) Some newer digital cameras can be connected directly to the printer to produce photo prints, so you don't have to bother transferring the images from the camera to your PC first. (I haven't tried this yet).

Two potential "negatives" can be (1) some Epson printers allow printing directly onto CDs/DVDs, while the Canon doesn't have this functionality, and (2) compared to the Canon i560, the Pixma iP3000 has a larger footprint. Although I like the smaller i560 footprint, I value the features in the iP3000 more.

I bought this printer as an upgrade to my dinosaur HP Inkjet (it had to have been over 10 years old), and must say I'm very pleased so far. However, before I go any further, you should know that the printer does NOT ship with a USB cable to connect it to your computer. This is kind of disappointing, considering you'll have to spend another $20 just to hook it up to your computer. Aside from that, I am satisfied!

The first thing one is likely to notice is the design, which is sleek, simple, and well thought out. The front has two buttons, one of which will cancel a print job in progress. The other button changes the paper feed tray, of which there are two. There is also a port on the front that allows PictBridge enabled cameras to connect and print without the need of an intervening computer.

For its price, this printer is packed with a plethora of useful features. One feature that was intrigueing was automatic on and off-- the printer turns on when you need it, and off when not in use. This option needs to be configured via the Control Panel. Another useful feature is automatic duplexing. In other words, the iP3000 can print two-sided pages without human intervention. How cool is that!

Print quality and speed on this model continue to leave me grinning. The test page was printed in a matter of seconds, and a test 4x6 print came out relatively fast (Canon's claim of 36 seconds per print seems correct). Text is crisp, and colors are fairly accurate. The test 4x6 print was a little darker than the same one when it was printed at Kinko's, but they also have something like 8 different ink colors (versus the iP3000's 4), so that's to be expected!

Anyways, to cut a long story short, this printer is an amazing value at just under $100.

Most of the other reviews praise this printer, and for the most part, the reviews are correct. I like the great, borderless prints and duplex printing. However, I realized something most people just overlook.

I must give it 2 stars, because Canon did something shady: It uses the color ink cartridges whenever you print an image, ANY image, even in "grayscale" mode, and even a B&W photo. Over the course of three months, I have replaced all 3 color cartridges twice, and I have never replaced my black. In fact, the black is still 80% full (you can tell because the ink casing is clear). All 3 colors come out to about $30, while the black is closer to $12, so you can see why Canon designed all images to be printed with the color carts. The black seems to be only for text.

How did I discover this? I was out of the Magenta and Yellow carts, and had about 20% Cyan left, so I decided I would only print in grayscale until there was a sale on the other colors. However, two weeks later, the Cyan was gone! At first I thought the printer was designed to waste ink whenever it does its initialization. I got mad and took out all the color cartridges. I did some prints of websites with only the black cartridge installed, and I noticed the graphics were being printed in weird colors like yellow or pink instead of gray. After a while, there were no graphics printed. I went into photoshop, opened up an image, changed it to grayscale, chose to print in grayscale, and no image was printed. In other words, "grayscale" mode is not grayscale, and the printer is only useful if you keep buying the color cartridges (unless you only want to print text). It looks like the yellow and pink were leftover ink on the printhead.

I'd recommend getting a printer with a dedicated "photo black" cartridge. That way, you only have to replace one color only. Or if you can't pass up a deal on this printer, get this for color prints only, and then get a laser printer (or less shady inkjet if you know one) to do the grayscale prints.

I just picked up my iP3000 and this is light years ahead of my ancient HP 812C it replaced. I was amazed at the ease of use and installation even on XP(the hardest part was carefully removing the tabs from the ink cartridges!) and was up and running in minutes.

Although bigger in size than the 812C, it feels lighter to move around and the quality of the pictures (photo or not) makes up for it in big ways. The cost of the entire printer with 4 color tanks included was about the same price as replacing the black/color ones on the HP. No more wasted ink with the Canon as you only replace the cartridge that needs to be changed out. Dual feeding trays is a nice feature because you don't have to fumble around with paper sizes as much, just press a button and you can select to print from the top or bottom trays. Dual sided printing is a bonus, I don't use it very often, but its nice to know that its there.

The iP3000 partners up with my 3.2 MP Canon SD110 Digital Elph and they make a excellent team. The PictBridge integration between camera and printer lets you take a picture and have great quality photos all in under a minute (without a PC). All of the pictures I have taken so far are under the lowest resolution and came out better than if I paid Wal-Mart's Photo Center to do it...just makes me drool thinking about how they would of turned out if I had used the higher resolutions!

This one is a real keeper and would suggest it to anyone who is looking to get the most out of their Canon digital camera. The only thing I would suggest is to invest in a AC adapter kit because the battery seems to drain rather quick, although I haven't tested how many pictures I can print before its time to recharge (it came with only 5 sheets of 4x6 photo paper which is better than none; will update this once I get more sheets)

So far this is the least expensive printer I have bought, but it has performed the best. I had only used HP or Lexmark, but found after a few performances, these printers would break down. I still cannot believe that for under $80, you can get a printer like the Canon iP3000. It prints photo-quality photos, is compact, and prints duplex (2-sided) so you can save on paper. The footprint is smaller than most printers because of its ingenious design - everything folds into itself. The best part, though, is the cartridges - the ink colors comes in their own individual cartridge so you don't have to replace the entire cartridge when one color runs out. The cartridges can be found for less than $10, too. Canon has listened to what consumers like us want- a printer that works, does not take up too much space, and is economical. It makes you wonder how other printer brands can charge so much for the printer and the ink cartridges.

I bought this printer a couple of months ago to replace my old HP OfficeJet that was slow and expensive on ink. At the time I had already known that Canon makes nice inkjets with excellent print quality and low cost ink. But the ip3000 exceeded my (already high) expectations.

Pros:
Excellent Quality
Small footprint
Prints full (borderless) pages
Duplex printing
Low cost printer
Low cost ink
Quite, fast and slick

Cons:
Comes with no USB cable (alas they all do...)

It's a no-brainer - Canon rocks!

I previously reviewed this printer before taking delivery. That review covered my primary reasons for buying this printer which are listed below.

1- My previous experience with Canon printers was excellent. I'm still not sure why I bought an HP after my Canon was stolen.
2- User-replaceable print head. My HP is now in the garbage as the cost of having the print head replaced was ridiculously high.
3- 1 year warranty. HP only gave me 90 days and the printer lasted less than two years with very light use
4- Cost of ink cartridges is substantially less with Canon than with Epson or HP. Almost every review I've read mentioned this fact.
5- Canon includes a real set of ink cartridges. Not the chintzy starter cartridges that HP or Epson put in the box.

Using Amazon's $30 discount for opening a credit card account, the cost of the ip3000 was less than having the HP repaired..... or even replacing its cartridges.

Having received the printer a little over a week ago, I've put it through its paces and it's performed flawlessly. Setup took less than 15 minutes from the time I opened the box until I made my first print.

The included software works perfectly with Windows XP. However, I'm a bit perplexed as to why it can't locate (and therefore cannot print) .tif files. I've had to convert .tif files to .jpg in order for them to be recognized. Perhaps I've missed something in the owner's manual, but this is very strange.

The set-up guide, printed manual and on-screen support are all acceptably clear.

Not that it matters, but this is a really good-looking printer. Its looks remind me of expensive audio equipment. With the front panel closed, it's very attractive.

Speaking of the front panel; it feels pretty flimsy. It has to be open for the printer to operate and, due to space restrictions, I can't keep it open all the time. I wonder how well it's going to handle the opening and closing routine.

This is, obviously, not a high-end printer. It only takes 4 ink cartridges and can't produce the larger print sizes that can be generated by more expensive models.

However, I've compared prints made with the ip3000 to those from an Epson printer costing 5 times as much. The Epson takes 8 ink cartridges and prints up to (I believe) 13x19 inches.

To keep things equal, I printed only 4x6 and 8.5x11 using my leftover HP glossy paper. The file was from a 4000dpi scan of a properly exposed Kodachrome slide. Maybe someone else can see where the Epson is superior under those conditions. I can't.

Colors were pretty much identical and I actually preferred the skin tones produced by the Canon. Of course, if you need to print 13x19 this Canon model isn't going to do the job. However, if your needs as to print size are less demanding, it may suit you just fine.

Although I haven't kept a count, I've made a "lot" of prints since I got the Canon. The levels in the ink tanks have barely moved. My friend with the Epson admits that his printer sucks up ink at an alarming rate. So much so, that he's considering having his larger prints made by a local custom lab.

Bottom line? If you're looking for an inexpensive (to purchase and operate) photo printer that produces great prints with a minimum of effort, the Canon Pixma ip3000 should be seriously considered.