Customer Reviews

Canon S800 Photo InkJet Printer

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The Canon S800 exceeded my expectations for a true photo printer. Previously, I was using an HP model that I thought gave good results. However, there was no comparison to the quality of the output of the Canon. Seeing the same prints side by side from the two printers convinced me that I made a wise purchase. The Canon 4 x 6 and 8 x 10 prints really look as if they came from film that was professionally developed and processed.

I have used several different brands of paper with the S800 and I am impressed with all of them (Canon, Kodak, Jet Print). The non-Canon papers do require some driver tweaking but that proved to be not a big deal.

The S800 prints relatively quickly and is one of the quietest photo printers available (good if your spouse is trying to sleep). After pressing the power button, the S800 is ready to print in only 15 seconds. (There is no long, drawn out start up routine.) I also like that the Canon has individual ink tanks. I take a lot of photos of lighthouses (and clouds) against blue skies. So, I was always running out of cyan ink first. Now, this is not an issue because I need only replace that one color more often.

Recently Canon sent registered owners of their 8200 printers free replacement ink and updated drivers. This proved to me that Canon is committed to providing outstanding customer service. How can you argue about that kind of treatment?

Canon printers are also not known to have nozzle clogging problems and color fade issues. I had been seriously considering another brand but I didn't want to risk a chance that my photos would fade or that I would be wasting time runing cleaning routines. This was important to me as my purchase has to last me a few years.

Bottom line - this is a great printer from a great company. You won't be disappointed.

After doing extensive on-line research and reading virtually every "professional" and user review available, I decided to purchase an S800. I was also considering an HP DeskJet 960 and Epson 890, but the overwhelming praise for the S800 won me as a Canon convert. We also own a DeskJet 722C (which still does an admirable job on HP photo paper) but we wanted a true photo-quality printer. The prints from the S800 are truly AMAZING. As we are primarily using it for photo printing, we are printing almost exclusively on Canon's Photo Paper Pro .... One magazine review said that the S800 came closer to dye sublimation output quality than any other ink jet printer they had tested, and I totally agree. I won't go into the print speeds - its photo output is almost certainly several times faster than any other inkjet you've ever used. I would also like to mention that Canon's print driver is excellent. Not only does it give you a multitude of print options, but it is fast (at least compared to the 722C and 970C drivers). We are still using a 333MHz with 160MB RAM and making selections in the different printer setting screens is much faster than with the DeskJets. It sometimes takes 5-10 seconds for the driver to process a new selection (such as changing from Normal to Best print mode, or portrait to landscape mode) whereas the Canon takes less than 1 second. While other users with faster PCs may not be able to appreciate Canon's efficient driver, those of us who are holding on to older computers welcome it. I have seen first hand and read about the best HP and Epson have to offer. Anyone replacing a printer two years old or older would be amazed with the output quality from their printers. But, for the very best ink jet photo output available today, the S800 wins hands down.

This is quite possibly the best printer Canon has manufactured to date. You cannot get better than this. I replaced my Canon BJC 5000 printer with this and I was pleasantly surprised!

Six individual cartridges make for convenient replacement. No more replacing an entire tri-color cartridge when one color in it runs out; only one color in one cartridge! The amount of ink in each tank is generous; it's easy to see the ink levels at a glance, and you can access the print monitor installed on your system to see the levels on your screen without having to open the front panel. The total cost of replacing all six cartridges is less than replacing the basic three (black, tri-color and enhanced black) for the 5000 model! The Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta make the difference with the quality output this printer produces in addition to the standard CYMK cartridges.

Printing is whisper quiet. My prior Canon BJ printers were never as quiet as this, and print-out is very fast. Color is sharp, clear and well-defined with no smudges or streaks. As with all Canon BJ printers, it has a wide variety of print media - Banner Paper is one of my favorites. Try using High Resolution Paper from Canon! The print margins are even improved; I was frustrated at the large unprintable margins of Canon's previous BJC printers, this one gives a much smaller unprintable margin, allowing you to print closer to the paper edge.

It is difficult to add or improve upon the prior review; it helped me with my decision on this purchase, and Amazon's price cannot be beat. It produces consistent, vivid colors, handles photos professionally and will truly meet and exceed your expectations for your demanding printer needs.

I bought this printer after getting a Kodak DC4800 Digicam, and I must say, the results are nothing short of amazing!! When using photo paper (both Kodak and Canon's paper work equally as well) the picture that's printed out has the quality of a picture developed by the corner photo shop.

I knew the output was good, but even with high expectations, I was pleasently surprised. One major difference with the S600 and the S800 is that the cheaper S600 is not as good at printing skin tones. For landscape, both are pretty good. The S800 even came with a compact-flash reader to read my digital fillm. Well done Canon!

I purchased this printer last night and was absolutely amazed at the quality. I have owned and used many color printers including an HP4500N color laser printer that I use all the time for work. And believe it or not, the quality of these print outs is better. Canon included a pack of sample 4x6 glossy paper and I printed out a picture that I took with my digital camera while in Milan. It was unbelievable. It looked exactly like a normal 35mm photo.

In purchasing this printer I also considered the S630, and the HP 1218, 1215 and 1115 models. I can't speak for the quality of those printers but I can speak for the quality of this printer and it is exceptional. It prints at 2400x1200 which is the same as the other printers but it uses more separate color cartridges which I think makes the difference. The HP printers use one cartridge which gets expensive when you have to replace it. The S630 uses 2 color cartridges but the S800 uses 6 individual ink tanks.

There are a couple of things that were not perfect. 1. Setup took longer than I expected. (mainly because my wife was helping J) 2. It does not print edge to edge. Meaning that it will not print all the way to the edge of the paper. But to get that feature, you will pay a lot more and probably wont get the same quality. Its just as good to get this printer and the paper that is perforated.

Believe me when I say that I am very impressed. The photo quality is unbeatable. You literally can't tell the difference between a developed 35mm photo and these print outs. You will not be disappointed. I highly recommend this printer.

I had just bought a new digital camera and I was looking to upgrade from my old Epson printer to get photo quality printouts. I research a lot of printers,read reviews, went to stores to get test prints, and decided on the Canon S800 based on reviews and it's individual ink cartridge system. Overall, I am very happy with the results. Setup was very easy, about 20 minutes from the box to printing my first picture. Very fast and whisper quiet; it took about 10 seconds to print a 4X6 photo on regular mode from a 600K JPEG file, about 30 seconds for a 8X11 for the same file. Results were excellent, very hard to distinguish from a real photo, no visible dots at all, colors were sharp and life-like. However, the results vary greatly with the paper that you use, I got the best results from the Canon photo pro paper and Epson glossy photo paper. I got very grainy results with HP and JetPrint photo paper; I've tried to tweak the settings from the Printer properties, but the pictures do not come out as good as on the Canon and Epson paper. Canon paper is also hard to find, I have only found it on sale online and only the 8X11 paper. Also I have not been able to figure out how to make it print borderless. Plain text printouts on plain paper is a bit fuzzy, but I have not tried it with the glossy inkjet paper. Overall a very good photo printer if you use the right paper and a so-so printer for plain text.

I bought the S800 to get true photo quality and am not disappointed. Comparing my S800 prints (from scans of professionally printed color film photos) with the original color prints, there was literally no difference to the naked eye. The ink management system is superior, and media handling is very solid with different kinds and sizes of paper etc. Time to print an 8x10 photo at highest quality on best glossy paper is 60-90 seconds. While I wouldn't recommend this printer for an office productivity use (there are cheaper ones better suited to that purpose), I'd give it a high recommendation for digital photo and graphic printing.

This great printer truly exceeded my expectations! It was very easy to install, works great (even with a computer that is not current generation) and produces lovely photo prints. In the 3 months since buying my S800, I have printed a large number of 4" x 6" and 8" x 10" prints, and the results are truly wonderful. Many reviewers say that "you cannot tell the difference between a print and film" (and let me say that I was never totally persuaded reading these effusions) but after using it for a few months I must admit that I am highly impressed and that my expectations were dramatically exceeded. A thorough comparison of all of the details and variables would be a very long article indeed, so I will summarize my thoughts thus:

*** The quality of the photos printed by the S800 is a function of the quality of the image you send it and of the paper you use. But if the image and paper are both of high quality, my experience has been that the printout will be as good as (and sometimes noticeably better than) any film-prints produced by garden-variety film photo processors. ***

The S800's print speed is nothing short of amazing. I used to own an inkjet printer that took longer to print a single page of black text than the S800 takes to print an 8" x 10" photo print. Canon has really done something right in this regard.

On the other hand, the S800's print quality for documents, receipts, and other things besides photos is, in my judgment, "above average" for an inkjet printer. Just bear in mind that no inkjet printer really equals a laser printer for text. So save your laser printer for resumes, or make sure you have access to one elsewhere for the occasions when one is needed.

Some tips on paper: my experience over the past 3 months has been that Canon photo paper (which is, no surprise, recommended by the manual) is extremely hard to track down even on the internet and quite expensive once you do. However, I have had excellent results with both Kodak Ultima and HP photo papers, in both matte and glossy finishes. I suggest that you save some of your time and money and use either of those papers instead.

This is my first photo-quality printer, and I am simply blown away by the results. As many of the other reviews say, on the best quality paper you cannot tell that that pictures didn't come from a lab. The separate inks are a nice touch, and the speed is good. This is a great product.

This is the best photo printer I have used yet. Great on ink, individual ink tanks, quite, fast, gorgeous photos even on plain paper. I use this printer with my Olympus C-3030 and it looks like I'm using film. I have an 8x10 at work that my co-workers cannot believe came of a printer.