Photo Printer: Canon i950

Speed Results

Apart from when it is used in photo mode, the i950 is three times slower than the i850, in spite of its record number of nozzles. But it's still faster than the average.

In ordinary resolution, the first page prints out in about twenty seconds (in color or in black and white).

A4 photos at 300 dpi take a little under three minutes.

Conclusion

The i950 is faster, cheaper and better than the average inkjet printer (mean of 70 models released since the end of 2000).

It gave us a nice surprise with its moderate cost per page and the quality of its office printing, much better than that of the earlier S900. Graphics are bright, color blocks even and all the characters perfectly legible. Its photos are definitely superb. The dots are invisible and no raster can be seen, even when you enlarge the image by three. It's not easy to tell these prints from lab photos.

But it is not absolutely perfect.

It would have been nice to find it had paper detection and automatic print settings adjustment like HP has.

• As with the i850, when the photo paper is not protected, the colors do not last well. You are advised to keep your prints under glass or plastic (in an album, say).
• Colors in default mode could be truer.
• Black and white photos come out on the blue side.
• In Europe, it is too expensive!
• The ink soaks into the paper too much. Double-sided printing is impossible.

In spite of all that, this i950 is a real achievement. Like the i850, it cannot really be described solely as a "photo printer," because when it is used to print text, it does it a lot better than many so-called office printers.